


Blame It on My Youth

by youreyestheyglow



Series: Family Portrait [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Abuse, Adoption, Blow Jobs, But I don't go into detail or description for the most part, Contains most of the topics touched on in the books, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Porn, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, fostering, the mafia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 50
Words: 530,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24648907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: 10 years after the end of The King's Men, Andrew and Neil have decided to foster a kid. They have low expectations for themselves--they're not exactly ideal parenting material--but at the very least, the kid will be safe with them. But neither Andrew nor Neil do temporary very well.Full disclosure: highly character-driven, minimally plot-driven. Things happen, but I have 200k written so far and there's no plot.
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game), Betsy Dobson/Abby Winfield/David Wymack, Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Matt Boyd/Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose, mentions of others including
Series: Family Portrait [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690699
Comments: 3172
Kudos: 1585





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Things to expect:  
> • Lack of realism. I don’t care if ipads weren’t out when I say they were. Other unrealistic things: training schedules, school schedules, when gay marriage became legal, the timeline altogether—this is set 10 years after the end of the trilogy, but it is not set in the 00s, even if the books were set in the 90s.  
> • Excessive melodrama. Love me a good reveal, and love my boys looking scary, and realism is the least of my concerns.  
> • Gratuitous and extremely self-indulgent smut. Gratuitous and extremely self-indulgent softness. I imagined where they’d be 10 years later, and it turns out they’re holding hands in a grocery store and super in love and grossing out their kids.  
> • Much rehashing of trauma.   
> • I have never read the extra content. anything in here that comes from the extra content i only know about because of tumblr, and even then i cherry-picked what I wanted to keep, so if you're big on the ec, this will probably be ooc.
> 
> As stated in the description, I have a solid 200k written already, so I'll be updating this once or twice a week.

It took time and some Moriyama-bargaining, but Andrew and Neil got permission to foster a child.

Bargaining with the Moriyamas was less difficult than Neil would have thought. They’d already agreed, after all, to let Kevin and Thea have children that would not be indebted to the Moriyamas, and Jean and Jeremy had adopted two children already. The bargaining was more this:

A man in a blue suit whose name Neil didn’t know had laughed until he almost puked. “If they let you and Andrew Minyard foster a child, I’ll eat my left foot.”

Neil had shrugged. “There’s no reason for most of our past to be on official records.”

And then the man’s laughter had died down.

It was a challenge: how much of their Moriyama-associated activity is in a file?

The answer was this: very, very little.

The answer was this: some queries would go to the FBI. Neil was unconcerned about those. Some queries would go to people the Moriyamas paid off. Hell, even some of Andrew’s past would go through the Moriyamas—they didn’t want anyone asking questions about Drake or how or why he’d gone to South Carolina. If the Moriyamas had real control over their people, it would be a non-issue. If their control was less than perfect, there would be problems.

There were no problems.

And now Andrew and Neil are waiting to pick up their child, in Colorado—Neil suspects that this distance has something to do with the Moriyamas, something to do with slipups, little misses that would prevent anyone from noticing that Neil and Andrew were less-than-ideal foster parents until it was too late. Things that would keep anyone from looking too closely at precisely what charities Neil was donating to.

Her name is Natalie, and she is 14 years old.

It was the _Natalie_ that had done it. They’d asked for a roster of the most difficult children to place; Natalie, a 14-year-old runaway, was known for being difficult, for disappearing for months at a time, for getting into fights at school. She was 14 years old; who adopted kids that old? Who _cared_ about kids that old? Nobody. Nobody at all.

She wasn’t the only one on that list, but she was the only one named _Natalie_. Renee’s old name, and a feminized version of Nathan. Neil didn’t believe in fate, but sometimes, every once in a while, the universe tried to catch his eye, and there it was.

They’re sitting in a booth, and the busboy brings a woman and a child to them. They’re in an Applebee’s. It isn’t fancy, but they aren’t here long; their flight is two hours out, and the airport is two miles away.

“Hi,” says the woman, stretching out her hand. “I’m Harmony, Natalie’s caseworker. I’m excited that you’re fostering her!”

Neil shakes her hand. “We’re excited to foster her, too,” he says, lamely.

Harmony smiles at him. He’d worn makeup today, specifically to avoid the stares he knew he’d get from any caseworker about to give up a charge—although maybe she wouldn’t care. And anyway, Andrew’s having a bad day, what with the two-flights-in-one-day thing, and compared to him, Neil is largely unremarkable. 

Andrew points at the suitcase next to his leg. “For your stuff,” he tells Natalie.

Much though Neil may appreciate the lack of scrutiny he and Andrew received as prospective foster parents, he does _not_ appreciate the need to fly. Andrew hates it, and making him pick up a kid in the middle of two flights is cruel. Couldn’t the Moriyamas have stuck them in North Carolina? Someplace within driving distance?

Natalie unzips the suitcase, dumps her trashbag full of possessions into it, and zips it up. All clothes, then. Nothing breakable.

Andrew had said there would be no point in bringing a full-size suitcase. Neil had been torn—on the one hand, what if she’d had a lot of stuff? Nevermind the fact that neither Neil nor foster kids ever had much stuff—what if she _had_? But on the other hand, he’d hated parting with his stuff. Checking a bag would have given him separation anxiety, as a teenager. If her stuff fits in the carry-on-sized bag, then—all to the better. And, of course, Andrew had been right.

“We’ll be headed out, then,” Neil says, glancing at his watch. “Got a plane to catch. If that’s all right with you, Natalie? We can grab food once we’re in the airport.”

She shrugs.

“I’m sure that’s fine,” Harmony says, smiling wider, a desperate attempt to make up for Natalie’s unwillingness to emote.

Neil shrugs. “Let us know if it’s not.” A lack of a smile is not particularly troubling to Neil—he’s more worried about Natalie than he is put off by it. And he’d expected an unhappy kid.

Andrew gets up, allowing Neil to slide out of the booth, and takes the card Harmony is pulling out of her wallet. He glances at it, and then drops it on the table and heads for the door.

“We’ll call you if we need anything,” Neil says, shaking Harmony’s hand again. Hello and goodbye, in two seconds flat.

They lose Natalie within thirty minutes.

They make it to the airport, and through security, and then she’s gone.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew stares back.

They knew what they signed up for.

They talk to some TSA agents, who find Natalie in the VIP section for American Airlines passengers.

“I’m not getting on that plane,” Natalie says. Loudly. Clearly. Firmly. In front of several TSA agents.

“Why not?” Neil asks.

“You don’t want me. I’ll run away. I do that very, very well, and when we’re not in an airport, it’ll be impossible to find me. I’ll leave.”

“Why?” Neil asks.

“I’m not leaving Colorado. The last two families tried to take me. I found my way back, and they asked for different foster children.”

“Why?”

“Because!”

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew sighs. “Is it that you don’t want to leave with _us_ , or that you don’t want to leave _this state_?”

Natalie shrugs.

“Is it the weather? Is it the mode of transportation? Is it the school system? Do you have friends here you don’t want to lose? If you tell us, we can help you. If you don’t tell us, we can’t help you.”

Natalie stares, stone-faced, at the floor.

Neil looks at the TSA agents. “Could you leave for a minute? Here—” he hands over paperwork, specifying that they’re Natalie’s legal guardians. “This is personal.”

The agents look at the 14-year-old girl, and then at the two grown men. They hand back the paperwork. “We’ll turn around.”

They turn around.

They don’t leave the room.

Andrew shrugs. He pulls out his phone and dials Harmony’s number.

“Harmony Anderson speaking,” says a cheery voice on the other end of the line. Andrew holds the phone between himself and Neil, trying to get Neil in on the conversation without welcoming the TSA agents into it.

“Andrew Minyard. Natalie Gray’s foster father. Why doesn’t she want leave Colorado?”

A GPS gives directions in the background. Neil hears a turn signal.

Neil and Andrew wait, patiently.

“I’d assume,” Harmony says finally, less cheery than before, “it’s because of her sister.”

Sister?

“What about her?” Andrew asks.

“We usually try to keep siblings together, in the foster system. Twins, in particular. But when Natalie and Paige are in the same house, things go—very badly. One man was hospitalized.”

“And when they’re not in the same house?” Neil asks.

“People tend not to get hospitalized, for a start.”

Neil frowns. He glances at Natalie. Defiant, distressed, furious, terrified—yes. Ready to hospitalize a grown man? No. Maybe her sister goads her on? Neil and Andrew shrug at each other; it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been hospitalized.

“Is Paige up for fostering?” Andrew asks.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I think,” Neil says, “That we have training tomorrow, and can’t move to Colorado. Is Paige up for fostering?” If they’re going to do this thing, they should do it right. They’re not going to split up siblings.

“I can find out,” Harmony says dubiously.

“Do that,” Andrew says, and then he hangs up.

They sit in silence, the three of them. Two of the three TSA agents leave, apparently with better things to do.

When Andrew’s phone rings twenty minutes later, Natalie jumps.

Neil notices.

Andrew answers. “Well?”

“It’s not a good idea, Mr. Minyard,” Harmony says.

“Noted.”

“Her current foster family is happy to give her up. Where should we meet?”

Neil and Andrew miss their plane. Neil is happy to do it. _Happy to give her up_. Well, fine, then. What is she, a psychopath? How bad could she be? Neil and Andrew will take her in.

Neil is uncertain about how protective he already feels about her. His protective streak doesn’t usually kick in until he’s known someone for at _least_ a week. He must be getting old.

They meet Harmony at the entrance to the airport, where she hands over a 14-year-old girl who is small and blonde next to her big-boned, brunette twin sister. They’re both taller than Neil.

“Are you willing to leave Colorado now?” Andrew asks.

Natalie stares him down. She’s holding Paige’s hand, and there’s a protectiveness to Natalie that bodes poorly for anyone who looks at Paige the wrong way. Neil revises his earlier ideas; this is not about one goading the other. It’s about someone hurting one of them. 

Paige’s trashbag fits into Natalie’s suitcase.

Neil notices. He remembers living that life.

He looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks at him.

“I don’t know how to make them feel safe,” Neil says, in Russian.

Andrew shrugs. “Can’t start until we get home.” He turns and wanders back into the airport, and Neil waves the kids forward.

They make the next flight, two hours later. The four of them sit in three different rows, and they have to make a connecting flight, and it’s economy instead of first class, but it helps that Natalie’s bag is small enough to count as a carry-on, and Andrew and Neil didn’t bring any luggage.

The connecting flight is equally spread out—four rows, this time. Neil sends Andrew an apologetic look, which Andrew returns blankly: there can be no vulnerability, not on a plane with two kids. Equally, though, there can be little to no Andrew, and Neil is getting worried.

And then they land.

“Should we stop for dinner?” Neil asks. “Or eat at home?”

Silence all around.

Andrew turns and walks out of the airport—no need to stop for luggage—and the kids follow him, and Neil follows them, worrying, worrying. It’s been so long since Andrew had a breakdown like this, and this is the worst possible time for it. It’s precisely what Neil had been worried about, when Andrew had first suggested fostering.

It’s a short walk to the self-parked Maserati—no valet, not for Andrew—which beeps as they near it.

“Do you want to keep your stuff in the backseat with you?” Neil asks. “Or do you want me to put the bag in the trunk?”

Two pairs of eyes stare up at him.

Well, he knew what he signed up for. “I’ll leave it in the backseat with you,” he decides. It’s what he would have wanted, back when everything he owned fit in a duffel.

The trunk opens, of its own accord.

“Drew, it’s everything they own,” Neil says.

Nothing.

He swaps to Russian. “Remember when you picked me up? The first time? You made me put my bag in the trunk. I wasn’t willing to argue about it. I also wasn’t happy about it.”

Andrew gets out of the car and looks at Neil.

_It’s a Maserati._

_Well then. Get another. For non-kid days._

_A waste._

_There’s not even any dirt on these wheels. The suitcase is brand-ass-new. Drew._

Andrew passes Neil to close the trunk, and gets back in the driver’s seat.

Neil gestures, and Paige gets in the car. Neil puts the suitcase in after her, and Natalie gets in after the suitcase. Neil shuts the door for her and gets into the car.

Andrew waits.

Neil glances in the back. “Buckles,” he says, and Natalie buckles up. This isn’t good. Neil can’t do this on his own, for a start. For a finish, he remembers being greeted by people who hated him. It sucked when he was 18; it would have sucked more if he was 14.

Andrew backs out of the space and pulls out of the parking lot.

“We’ll eat at home,” Neil decides.

It feels like he’s talking to himself.

He considers annoying Andrew into speaking—it’s the only thing he can think of to do right now that might drag Andrew out of this spiral—but there’s kids in the car. He glances in the rearview mirror. They’re both staring straight ahead, not a smile to be seen.

He feels, abruptly, woefully unprepared. There weren’t exactly guidebooks written for _raising two foster kids._ The guidebook was Andrew, and the guidebook said to watch the fuck out. Maybe if Neil was a psychologist, he’d know more.

Then again, maybe these kids are anti-psych. He certainly was. Is.

He puts his hand in between his and Andrew’s seats, palm down, pinky out.

Andrew links their pinkies.

Neil smiles. They’ll be okay.


	2. Chapter 2

Pulling up to the house is a relief. It’s 9:00 at night, and they’ve been out—and flying—essentially all day. Neil unlocks the door, trusting Andrew to get the suitcase, and breathes in a full breath for the first time in three days. Kids are here, and safe, and that’s something, at least.

“Shit, Drew, we only have one room set up,” he says, half to himself. “We have to register Paige for school. _We only bought one backpack_.”

Andrew locks the door behind them and taps Neil’s hand as Andrew walks past him and towards the kitchen. “AC,” is all he says.

“The thermostat is over here,” Neil tells Natalie and Paige. “If you’re cold, hot, whatever, you can change it, we can afford it.”

They stare at him.

Neil stares right back.

Neil hears the stovetop click on, and frowns. “What are you—here, sorry, the kitchen is this way, I’ll give you a tour in a second—what are you cooking?” He asks, walking into the kitchen. “Everything we’ve got is frozen. Just stick something in the instant pot.”

“Pasta.”

“Protein?”

“Peas.”

Neil knows a compromise when he needs it. “I’m going to show the kids around, now.”

Andrew waves a couple fingers.

Well, Neil will deal with it later. If it can be dealt with. If not, Neil will do his best to shield the kids from it.

Neil walks them through the house—the living room, the dining room, points out the bathroom, and then brings them upstairs. “This is Natalie’s room,” he says, pushing the door open. There’s a twin bed, a desk, a dresser, a bookshelf—all empty, all waiting to be filled, except the bed, which has grey sheets and a yellow comforter. “The bathroom is here. And this is Paige’s room.” He pushes open the door to the guest bedroom. The vents aren’t even open. The bed is a pull-out couch. There’s a desk and a dresser in there, at least, and they’d cleared it out before deciding that Natalie should get the other bedroom—it’s smaller, but it gets more sunlight. “We’ll—fix it. Sorry. We didn’t expect there to be two of you.”

They say nothing.

The door to Neil’s and Andrew’s bedroom creaks, and an orange cat streaks out of it and down the stairs.

“There’s cats,” Neil says, unnecessarily. “The orange one is King Fluffikins, King for short. The brown one is Sir Fat Cat McCatterson, who answers to Sir. King is a horrible boy, and very mean. Sir is an angel who is bullied by King. They’re shy around new people, but they’ll warm up. And that door is to mine and Andrew’s bedroom. If we’re in it, knock before you go in.”

They say nothing, which is a shame, because he really would’ve thought that the cats would’ve elicited _some_ kind of reaction.

Neil walks into Paige’s bedroom and opens the vents. He’s up here, he may as well.

He turns around, and they’re watching him.

“I’m gonna go help Andrew with dinner. You guys can get comfy up here, if you want?”

He feels like he’s in _The Shining_. Except that they’re absolutely silent.

“Cool,” he says. They step back to let him through, and he jogs down the stairs to take refuge in the kitchen.

“Are the three of you feeding off each other?” he asks, pulling out a pan. Tomatoes are a fruit, so tomato sauce is healthy. Peas. He finds chopped carrots and half an onion in the back of the fridge.

Andrew says nothing.

Neil leans against the counter. “Hey. Drew.”

Nothing.

“Andrew. Andrew. Andrew. Drew. Drew. Drew.”

Andrew glances at him.

“Andrew Joseph Minyard, you _cannot_ do this to me.”

“I can do whatever I want.”

Neil grins. Oh, good. Petulance. “Well, start _wanting_ to not make me stand here talking to myself.”

“I wonder what he did.”

“Who?”

“ _One man was hospitalized_. What did he do?”

“Drew.”

“I didn’t expect them to be twins.”

“I know.”

“I won’t make you talk to yourself all night.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to chop that onion?”

Neil picks up the knife and chops the onion.

Twenty minutes later, they’ve put together a dinner that’s passably homemade, and Neil feels oddly proud of it. It would be one thing if it was just for the two of them—they’ve done that plenty often—but they’ve just put food on the table for kids. It feels more grown-up than most things Neil does.

“I’ll get them,” Andrew says.

Neil sets out plates, and forks, and then Andrew comes down the stairs, Natalie and Paige in tow.

They sit down, and Neil doesn’t entirely know what to do. Serve? Offer? It’s been a long time since he sat at a table with people he didn’t know, people who weren’t comfortable just taking some goddamn food.

Andrew stands up, so he can reach across the table, and serves the pasta.

Neil wonders if, maybe, he’s getting old. Losing touch with the youth.

“You’ll be going to George W. Prep,” Neil says, as Natalie and Paige stare at their plates. “It’s a private school. It’s nice. I’ll get Paige registered in the morning.”

“We’re not private school kids,” Natalie says.

Neil suppresses a grin. _Success_. _They speak._ “Fine by me.”

“I get into fights.”

“Keep your thumb outside your fist, if you’re going to punch someone,” Andrew says. “A broken thumb hurts.”

“I _will_ hit people.”

Natalie twitches as Paige kicks her under the table.

“Don’t get caught,” Neil says cheerfully.

“Do they have a zero tolerance policy? I’ll break it.”

“Do you not want to go?” Neil asks. “Is it because it’s a private school? Or because it’s school, at all?”

“We don’t do well with other people.”

“Do you not want to go?”

“Would you keep us home if I said no?”

Neil shrugs. “Depends on why you don’t want to go.”

“Oh. You’re _that_ kind of person,” Natalie says. “You’re going to treat us like _adults_.”

“Is that a type of person?”

Natalie stabs her pasta.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew sighs. “Cass.”

“My name’s Natalie, thanks,” Natalie says, frigid.

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

Natalie chews, furiously.

“Is that a bad thing?” Neil asks.

“It depends.”

Neil rubs at his eyes. “Drew.”

“Do they think you’re old enough to have thoughts? Or just—old enough?” Andrew’s hand twitches, abortively, for one of his knives. Not on him. Can’t fly with them.

“Oh,” Neil says. “You know, the guest bed isn’t made.”

Andrew drops his fork and vanishes, upstairs, to his knives, to safety.

Natalie and Paige watch him go, tracking stray movements, tense, still, small.

Neil notices.

Would it help to say that, here, they’re safe?

Unlikely.

Would it help to ignore it?

Equally unlikely.

He sighs. “Andrew was in foster care until he was around your age,” he says. “He…” he casts around for the right words, the ones that will work without giving away Andrew’s secrets. Although, if the girls have done any digging, they’ll figure it out. So many of Andrew’s secrets aren’t particularly secret. “He’s not angry with you. And he won’t hurt you.”

Natalie and Paige just look at him.

Neil shrugs. He finishes his food—much more slowly, somehow, than the two girls, who bolt it down like they’re nervous it’s going to be taken away from them. Well. Maybe, in the past, it has been.

Still, they sit there, waiting for him to finish, which feels odd—they don’t speak, and he’s too busy eating, trying to finish his plate so they don’t have to wait for him.

“We’ll have to leave at 7 tomorrow,” Neil says once he’s done eating. “We’ll drive you to school—normally, you’ll take the bus, but I have to get Paige registered. There’s only one backpack, but I have a duffel you can use. We’ll go shopping tomorrow. Is there anything you guys want? Anywhere you want to go?”

Paige shakes her head. Natalie twitches—Paige must have kicked her again—and then shakes her head.

“We’ve got school uniforms for Natalie—Paige, will you fit into her clothes? Until we can get sets for you?”

Paige nods. They’re the same height, at least, and Natalie’s a little bigger than Paige is, so it should be easy to stick a belt on the pants, and a baggy shirt isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Neil washes the pot. The girls put their dishes in the dishwasher.

He doesn’t entirely know what to do with them.

He doesn’t know what to say that will make them answer. He doesn’t know what they’ll want to talk about, or how to get them to tell him what they want to talk about, or how to prove to them that they’re safe here, or how to make them less furious and scared. They’re 14. When Neil was 14, he had his mom. By the time he was on his own, he knew how to run, knew the mechanics of it—although maybe they do too; Natalie had seemed very confident in her ability to get from South Carolina to Colorado without any adult assistance, if it came down to it. Neil knew full well that it could be done—he’d gotten from Northern California to Millport, Arizona, and could have gone farther if he’d been up for it. He’d been an adult, mostly, and these were just kids, kids who seemed very _young_ , but still.

He turns off the porch lights, checks the locks, and—

“What are those?” Paige asks.

Neil turns.

She’s pointing at the medals, framed, hanging on the living room wall.

Neil grins. “Olympic medals.”

“How’d you get them?”

“Exy.”

“You’re exy players?” Paige asks, turning to look at him.

“Yes. Pro, and we play for the U.S. Court. We won gold in the last two Olympics.” He crosses the living room, flipping the switch on the way over, and takes the box off the command strips anchoring them to the wall—he knew it was a good investment, using the ones that Velcro together. He carries it over to her, pulling off the back, so she can see them without the glass in the way.

She stares at them.

“Do you play any sports?” Neil asks.

“Natalie can run.”

“I love to run,” Neil says, grinning at Natalie, who rewards him for his interest with a furious glare.

“She could be an Olympian, someday,” Paige says.

“Shut up,” Natalie says.

“W. Prep has a running team,” Neil says. “You could join it, if you’d like.”

“No,” Natalie says, forcefully.

Neil shrugs. “The offer’s open, if you want it.”

“Once the year starts, I won’t be able to join anyway,” Natalie says, like she’s won an argument.

“I could get you in. Assuming you’re good.”

“You can’t just do whatever you want,” she says, blatantly ignoring the pleading looks Paige is sending her way.

“No, but I can do a lot.”

“I don’t understand you. And I don’t like you. You can’t just— _get_ a kid. You can’t just say, _hey, give me Paige_ , and then an hour later, there she is. You can’t just _do_ that.”

“But we did it.”

Natalie points at him. “I don’t like that. I don’t know who you are, but I think it’s someone bad.”

Neil almost tells her to google him, but it’s clear that neither of them did—they wouldn’t be surprised about the Olympic medals if they had—and maybe that’s for the best. Any digging at all would pull up frankly terrifying backstories.

“I don’t know why you want me,” Natalie continues, “but I’m nothing. So don’t bother.”

“Why I… want you?”

“I’m a lot of trouble,” she tells him, with the confidence only a furious teenager can summon. “And I was a lot of trouble from the start. I don’t understand why you made a big deal of getting Paige to come along, too. You should’ve just left me there. We’re going to run away, anyway. Didn’t you hear? I’m a runaway.”

“Did you want to be left there?”

“That’s not the _point_! The _point_ is you should get rid of both of us. You may as well. We’re _dangerous_. We’re a pain in the ass. A waste of time.”

Neil places the medals back in their box and places the box back on the wall. “I’ve handled danger before,” he says, after some consideration. Why is she so insistent that he should abandon them? “And it hasn’t killed me yet. And I’m familiar with runaways.” He flips the light switch. “Bedtime, let’s go.”

They head up the stairs ahead of him, Natalie storming, Paige trying to be tiny. They go to their separate rooms.

“Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” Neil says, loudly, trying to reach both their rooms. “There’s toothpaste and toothbrushes under the sink, if you need them.”

Neither door opens.

A fight for another day, maybe.

Neil wanders into his and Andrew’s room to find Andrew throwing knives at the dartboard.

“Are you feeling any better?” Neil asks, refraining from reaching out.

He sees the battle going on inside Andrew, a battle that has only recently become necessary. One part of Andrew, the stronger part, is _separate_. It’s _away_. It says: _I am dangerous, and dead, and I feel nothing, need nothing, want nothing._ The other part says: _I need to rip my skin off and jump in a vat of acid_. And a third part says: _Neil_.

He’d had bad days, when Neil met him; Neil vividly remembers sparring matches with Renee, a broken window and bloody knuckles. But the bad days had been tempered by Andrew’s ability to _not feel_ , an ability Neil and therapy have slowly been wearing down. And behind that ability is this: Andrew, furious, raging, terrified. Sometimes vomit is involved. Sometimes Andrew has to sleep on the couch, because being in a bed at all—let alone with another human being—is unbearable. It made Neil nervous about bringing a kid into the house, and Andrew more adamant that it needed to be done. “ _They’re kids, Neil,_ ” he’d said, “ _in the same situation I was in. I can’t just_ leave _them there_.” And he’d been getting so much better—making leaps and strides forward, every saying people use when talking about someone’s improvement. Neil hasn’t seen him like this in a year, or else he wouldn’t have agreed to foster kids.

It doesn’t help that, on these days, Andrew is worried about offending or angering _Neil_.

Neil is neither offended nor angry. There’s only so much Andrew can do about his issues, and Neil knows full well he’s doing what he can.

So Neil shrugs at Andrew’s lack of response, and wanders into the bathroom to brush his teeth. 

He and Andrew sleep on separate sides of the bed, that night—although Neil isn’t sure how much _sleep_ Andrew actually gets. He lies still, still enough to not wake Neil, but that might just mean that any sensation of touch is too much, including the feeling of rolling over. And he doesn’t get up when Neil’s alarm goes off.

He doesn’t get up when Neil comes out of the bathroom, makeup done and ready for the day.

He doesn’t get up when Neil gets dressed, or when Neil edges towards the bedroom door.

So Neil goes downstairs, carrying his old duffel bag, and finds Natalie and Paige already downstairs and waiting for him, holding the backpack. They’re in matching uniforms; Paige’s is a little baggy on her, as expected, but nothing that can’t be dealt with for a few days.

“Is cereal okay? Or do you guys want eggs? I can make them scrambled and fried.”

“Cereal is fine,” Paige says, when Natalie refuses to respond.

So he makes the three of them bowls of cereal, and they eat in silence, the girls bolting theirs down and putting their dishes in the dishwasher in record time. Neil remembers eating like that, but in his memories, it’s always his first meal after 24 or 36 hours, a meal grabbed at a gas station while his mom filled up the tank mid-cross-country-flight, a meal bought only when Mary was certain they’d lost their pursuers at least ten miles previously, granting them a few minutes of freedom. He’d never eaten like that while in a house; _in a house_ usually correlated to _reasonably safe_ , or at least, _safe for enough time to eat a meal_.

He checks the clock.

It’s 6:58.

“Hang on,” Neil says, and runs up the stairs. He knocks on the bedroom door, receives no response, and cracks it open. “Andrew?”

“I’m not coming,” Andrew says.

“Do you want me to leave the Maserati?”

Andrew waves a hand, and is silent.

Neil closes the door.

“Looks like it’s just you guys and me,” he says, mustering cheer as he grabs his keys.

Natalie and Paige don’t seem to care much one way or the other, let alone to the point of being cheery about it, but that doesn’t particularly bother Neil.

They walk out the door.

The girls pause as Neil freezes—taking the Maserati feels like giving up. He glances at the garage, where his Honda sits, perfectly practical. The Maserati is blocking it in; Neil only drives the Honda when he’s going somewhere Andrew is not going, which happens rarely, and which they didn’t expect to happen today. Andrew refuses to drive the Honda, which earned his hatred when Neil brought it home and it wasn’t a six-figure car. If Neil takes the Maserati, Andrew’s at home for the day.

He sighs. “Maserati it is,” he says, and slides into the driver’s seat as the girls get into the back.

He waits.

Natalie buckles her seatbelt. Paige is already buckled in.

It doesn’t quite make sense, Neil thinks as he pulls out of the driveway. The silence makes some kind of sense—no one can hit you for saying the wrong thing if you don’t say anything. The anger, certainly, he understands. Paige’s desperate obedience, too. But actively attempting to provoke one’s caretaker? Never mind that Neil refuses to be provoked; Natalie doesn’t know that. And it makes _very_ little sense to ask a foster family to toss both her and her sister out on the street; they’d just end up with another foster family. If they wanted to run, they could just do that, but they don’t seem to be on the verge of running away.

Harmony had called Natalie a runaway, but hadn’t mentioned Paige. Running doesn’t seem like quite _their_ thing, not as long as they’re together. Although Natalie keeps threatening to do so anyway. “Is there a radio station you guys want to listen to?” He asks.

Silence in the backseat.

He flips on whatever station Andrew had been listening to two days ago—metal—and then turns it down from its ear-breaking volume.

So not running away—well, of course, if they do, they might get separated again. And _clearly_ twitchy, clearly nervous; they think they’re going to get hit, or get in trouble, or have their food taken away. It makes Neil want to find all previous foster parents and carve them into 100 pieces, but it doesn’t make Natalie’s behavior make sense. What’s her endgame? What’s her goal?

Maybe there is no goal. Maybe she’s just—Andrew, stabbing Kevin for saying the wrong thing, even though Kevin was one of the few people who had stood by him. Maybe she’s just protecting herself from inevitable disappointment.

He parks the car in the school’s visitor parking lot. It’s tough to find a spot; there are busses, but this is an expensive school, and plenty of parents drive their kids. Neil feels an odd pang when Paige, in her baggy clothes, swings Neil’s duffel over her shoulder. He leads them into the school.

“Parents are only allowed in the foyer,” says a bored school official when he walks in. “We understand that—”

“I have to register my ward,” Neil interrupts.

She blinks at him. “It’s the first day of school.”

Neil stares at her.

“You can’t just—it’s the first day of school.”

Neil waits.

“The office is back there, to the left,” she says, “but they’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Thanks,” Neil says, and leads his wards past her, to the door on the left.

“I have to register my ward for school,” he tells the first person he sees.

“We’re full,” he says.

Neil stares at him.

“We’ve filled all our spots,” the man reiterates.

“I have to register her,” Neil says, slowly, like the man is stupid, there’s nothing men hate more, “for school.”

“Fine,” the man says, annoyed, “let’s pull up the application—and—whoops—this year isn’t an option.”

“Her sister is already registered. It’s one more kid.”

“If her sister is registered, why isn’t she?”

Neil stares at him. Brings his stare down a couple degrees, just a _touch_ colder, just a _touch_ deader. Andrew isn’t the only one who can stare a man down.

“Look, there’ll be late fees, and overflow charges,” the man said, meaningless words.

Neil waits.

The man picks up a phone and dials an extension. “George,” he says, “there’s a man here to register his kid. One kid is already registered.” A pause. “I told him.” Another pause. “I told him that, too.” A third pause. “Well, maybe he’ll listen to you. His name—what’s your name?”

“Neil Josten,” Neil says. “Natalie Gray is registered. Paige Gray will be joining her.”

“His name is Neil Josten—oh. Okay. You can go right back,” the man says, “to the right. You’re looking for George’s office.”

“Thanks,” Neil says, and heads past the man and to the right. He finds George’s office, opens the door, holds it for the girls, and shuts it behind him. “Hi, George.”

George is standing, and reaches out a hand to shake Neil’s.

“Hi, Neil. Nice to see you again. What can I do for you?”

“We thought we were just getting one kid,” Neil says, letting a proud smile spread across his face, “but it turns out we were getting two! They’re twins,” he says, “and we just couldn’t split them up, it would be too sad.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can to get them into the same classes, but no promises,” George says, smiling at the girls. “But maybe having some time apart would be good for them! I know _I_ hated having the same classes as my siblings, when I was their age. What do you girls think? Which one of you is Natalie?”

Natalie holds her hand up.

“Nice to meet you, Natalie,” George says, extending his hand, which Natalie shakes like she’s never done that before. “And you are?” George asks, holding his hand out to Paige.

“Paige,” she says, shaking his hand, smiling a little. “We don’t mind, one way or the other.”

Natalie throws her a glare, one that Neil interprets as easily as if she’d spoken German or French— _we don’t_?

Paige looks down. That, too, is a gesture Neil understands: _we can’t._

George sits down, waves them into seats; there’s only two, so Neil gestures to the girls to sit, and remains standing. George clicks and types, rapid-fire. “Do you have the paperwork establishing you as Paige’s guardian?”

Neil hands it over. They’d had to rush it, but it’s got Harmony’s signature on it, and that’s what matters.

Five minutes later, George says, “Credit card? I _am_ sorry, there will be extra fees, because the school year has already started.”

“That’s fine,” Neil says. “I understand.”

George shines with gratitude, likely faked, but that’s irrelevant. The gratitude, too, is irrelevant. But there it is.

George prints out a barcode. “We won’t have your student ID ready until tomorrow,” he tells Paige, “but for today, this will do. You can scan it in the lunch line for food. And—here’s your schedule. Natalie, your ID is out front—I apologize for not having it on hand. But you girls had best get going! The school day is about to start!” He smiles, bright first-school-day cheer shining out of him, and Neil shakes his hand.

“Thanks, George. I appreciate this.”

“If you need anything else, let me know,” George says. “I won’t make any promises, but I can make quite a bit happen.”

“Will do,” Neil says, and then shuttles the girls out of the office and back out front, where they pick up Natalie’s ID. She already has her schedule, and she and Paige seem to have the same first class, so they head off together, without looking back at Neil.

Well, that’s one difficult conversation taken care of.

The other happens when Neil gets to the South Carolina Jaguar’s stadium; he turns up five minutes late and missing Andrew.

“Neil, what the fuck?” Kevin says, with no preamble.

Clark, the team’s Captain, holds out his hands—both a _shut up_ to Kevin and a _yeah, though,_ to Neil.

“Had to register Paige,” Neil says, finding that proud smile, the one that says _all is well in Josten Land_. “Turns out Natalie is a twin!”

“ _Twins_?” Riley gasps, clasping her hands. “You have _twins_?”

“That’s what I said. It’s unexpected, but we’re not complaining,” Neil says, heading to his locker. “But I did have to register her for school today, which is why I’m late. Won’t happen again.”

“Andrew?” Clark says.

“Sick,” Neil says, meeting Clark’s gaze. “Decided to spare us all, and take the day off.”

“Sick,” Kevin repeats.

Neil heads towards the bathroom to get changed.

“ _Sick_? Neil.”

“Kevin.”

“Josten.”

“Day. Look, we can keep going, but I’m already late.”

“I’ll call him.”

“I’ll snap your neck like a twig.”

“Look,” Clark interrupts. “Enough. Andrew is well within his rights to take a sick day. Neil, get changed.”

Neil shuts the bathroom door without another word.

After practice, he goes home.

The girls have already been home for twenty minutes, he finds, sitting in the living room. He gets the feeling that he’s interrupting something when he walks in the door—their heads were bent together, and then they are not.

King shoots out from between them.

Neil grins. “King likes you. That’s a good sign. He only likes people worth liking.”

Paige smiles, a little. Natalie does not.

“How was school? Do you think you’ll be okay there? Were the teachers good?”

Natalie shrugs.

“It was okay,” Paige says, glancing at Natalie. “We’ll be fine. Thank you for getting me enrolled. I thought there would be a test?”

“No test to get in, but if your grades drop they’ll kick you out. But it wasn’t a problem. George is an exy fan.”

“Oh, great,” Natalie says. “Good thing we’ve got exy superstar Neil Josten on our side. Pulling strings. Getting us into expensive schools.”

Neil drops into a chair. “We wanted to give you the best.”

“Public schools are _terrible_. Too bad we’ve been going to public schools all our lives, and are stupid. Good thing there’s no test to get into the private school. We just have to have money. Thank god we live with rich people!”

“I didn’t say public schools churned out stupid people,” Neil points out. It’s not worth his time to say that he went to public school, when he went to school at all, and that Andrew went to public school until he went to juvie. “I just don’t know what you guys want to _do_. If you’re athletic, here’s some programs. If you’re looking more towards academia, it’ll be easier to get into a good college with a fancy name on your résumé.”

“We’re not going to make it to college,” Natalie declares.

Neil shrugs. “Fine by me. Are you looking to get into a trade? We can look for trade schools.”

“We’re going to be homeless.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Unlikely. Do you know what you want to do, at all? If not, then we’ll get you the best schooling possible, and then you can decide later on whether or not you want to use it.”

“You keep saying _we_. Where _is_ Andrew? _He_ doesn’t give a shit about us. _He_ wasn’t involved in this.”

“Andrew picked George W. himself. He cares plenty. He’s just—having a bad day. Was he down here when you got home?”

“No. Because us being here makes him so sad he won’t even leave his bedroom.”

Neil cocks his head to the side. “What makes you think it has anything to do with you?”

“He wouldn’t say anything when we left the airport. He didn’t want to be there to give us the tour. He barely said anything during dinner, and then left before he finished his food. He hasn’t been down all day. We’ve _had_ foster families who didn’t want us. You don’t _have_ to keep us. You’re not _special_.”

Neil counts to ten. They’re not wrong; this _does_ have something to do with them. “It’s not that Andrew doesn’t want you,” he says, carefully, looking for the words that will reassure them. “It’s more that—Andrew—he’s going through—stuff. And he’s doing his best. But _someone’s best_ isn’t always _perfect._ Give him a few days.”

“Why do _we_ have to give _him_ a few days?” Natalie asks, voice rising, ignoring Paige’s grip on her wrist. “We’re nothing! Just kick us out! Then he doesn’t have to deal with us anymore!”

“We’re not kicking you out,” Neil says. “Andrew—he’ll come around. Do you have any homework?”

“A little,” Paige says, cutting off Natalie. “Just reading. They gave us books.”

“Do you guys wanna do that now or later?”

“I don’t want to do it right now,” Natalie says.

“Wanna watch TV?”

“What’s on?” Paige asks.

He passes her the remote. “Whatever you want. I’m going to go check on Andrew, and then I’ll be back down.”

She turns the TV on, and he heads up the stairs. Knocks on his bedroom door. Receives no response. Opens the door.

Andrew is lying in bed.

Neil goes to the bathroom. There’s a glass in there—a couple nights old, but clean. He fills it up and brings it to Andrew. “Drink something, Drew,” he says softly. “You have to. Have you eaten anything?”

Andrew flicks one eye open, and Neil knows it’s one of _those_ days. The days where the touch of clothing is hell, but the concept of being naked is worse. Neil puts the water down on the bedside table, and goes to sit against the wall.

“I got Paige registered,” he says, quietly. “Had to stare a couple people down, but it got done. There were extra fees, because we registered her so late, but nothing unaffordable.” Although what _unaffordable_ means is, honestly, batshit crazy, on their salaries, even after the Moriyamas get their cut of Neil’s. “I have to take them shopping, I almost forgot. Paige needs a bed. A backpack. You should’ve seen her, with my duffel. I almost didn’t know what to do. She’s so _small_.

“Practice today was nothing. Kevin was pissed about you not being there, but he survived.” He doesn’t have much else to say. Not without telling him that Natalie and Paige have decided that they’re unwanted, and _that_ is not a productive conversation starter. Neil sighs and stands. “I should take them shopping now, before they get too entrenched in the couch. Although I don’t hear the TV. But maybe they’ve got it on low? I don’t know. They need… time. Time, and patience. Natalie keeps telling me to give them away. I don’t particularly know what to do with that. Or with them, at all. Is this why Wymack decided to be a college coach? Because with adults, you don’t have to do much? I shouldn’t say that. Wymack did a _lot_. Still does.” 

“Cell phones,” Andrew says, and it’s so unexpected Neil almost dismisses it as imagined. “Get them cell phones.”

Neil smiles. “I will. I love you.”

“Neil.”

Neil looks at Andrew, and Andrew looks at him.

An eternity later, Andrew looks away, and Neil walks out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things happen. Plot, insofar as there is one, advances. Characters develop. The storm breaks.

Shopping is an ordeal.

If Andrew were with them, it would not be. It would be easy enough to get the parts of the bed into a cart and then into the trunk (Neil takes the Honda—the concept of putting chunks of bed in the Maserati’s trunk made him want to run away) if Andrew were with him; as is, it requires an employee, who is not as strong as Neil and _absolutely_ not as strong as Andrew. Clothes shopping would have been much more fun if Andrew were there, even if it wouldn’t have necessarily been any _easier_.

Shopping for sheets, to be fair, couldn’t actually _be_ easier—Paige knows precisely what she likes, and since her bedding is her own, she’s freed from Natalie’s silence long enough to pick out something grey and something pink.

Neil gets them cell phones. Good ones. Not the flip phone Andrew still has, and not the querty Neil has, but actual smartphones. “I’ve heard the kids these days use smartphones,” he says, after the phones get set up. “It’s either kids, or businessmen, and I’m not sure which.”

They ignore him.

When they get home, Andrew is on the porch, waiting for them. Wearing long sleeves and sweatpants, but waiting for them all the same. Neil’s relief is whole-body, every one of his muscles melting into the seat. He can’t help his grin when he gets out of the car.

Andrew’s expression doesn’t change, but he looks at Neil, and looks, and looks, and that’s something.

“Are we going to stand here forever?” Natalie asks after a couple seconds.

“ _Nat_ ,” Paige hisses.

“I have homework to do,” Natalie says.

Neil points at the trunk, and looks at Andrew. “Help?”

Andrew walks to them, and with his help, the mattress and bed get up the stairs.

“Clothes need to be washed before you can wear them,” Neil says. He’d once made the mistake of telling Riley that he wore clothes straight from the store, unwashed, at which point she’d spent ten full minutes telling him how horrifically dirty they were. It wouldn’t have mattered to him, growing up; he’d never had time to care. As an adult, though, things are different. And _his_ wards won’t be wearing dirty clothes.

He directs them to the laundry room, and watches as they demonstrate that they know full well how to use a washing machine. He tosses the sheets into the machine and then leaves them there, ripping off tags, and joins Andrew in Paige’s room.

Andrew’s pushed the pull-out couch over to one wall, and he’s got the parts of the bed out on the floor and the toolbox splayed open next to him.

Neil squats next to the toolbox. “Is building this going to be easier, the second time around?”

Andrew sighs. “Yes.” He reaches over, and Neil reaches out, and Andrew links their pinkies. “It’s not over,” he says, quietly, “but it’s taking a break.”

“You can probably take tomorrow off, too. I told them you were sick. Vomiting.”

“Liar.”

“Well, I didn’t tell them you were vomiting. But I _can_.”

“I’ll go.”

“Don’t force it.”

Andrew gives Neil a _look_ , takes his pinky back, and gives Neil the directions. “You do the bottom of the bed, I’ll do the top?”

“What about the middle?”

“I’ll be done before you are.”

He’s right. He, after all, remembers exactly which screws go in which holes, and doesn’t need to pause to look at the directions.

They have the frame together by the time Paige and Natalie make their way back into the bedroom.

“Watch out,” Neil says, as he holds the box with the mattress in it. Andrew hauls the mattress out, and it hits the floor and begins re-inflating.

“How was school?” Andrew asks.

“You’d know if you’d been downstairs earlier when we told Neil,” Natalie spits.

“ _Nat. Ah. Lee,”_ Paige says, grabbing Natalie’s hand.

Andrew looks at her. “I would have. But I wasn’t. Which is why I’m asking.”

“It’s boring.”

“It is. Did you do anything? Or was it just the syllabus?”

“Pretty much just the syllabus,” Paige says. “And we all introduced ourselves.”

“Do you have any fun classes?”

Paige shrugs. “Too early to tell.”

“Do you have homework?”

Paige sighs. “Yeah.”

“No point in doing it,” Natalie says. “We’re going to run away.”

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil’s eyebrows say, _see? Told you_.

Andrew’s eyes say, _it’s a familiar line_.

Neil’s gaze is a challenge.

“You sound like someone else I used to know,” Andrew says, moving his eyes back to Natalie. “Someone else who kept insisting he was going to run away. He wasn’t as… _forthright_ about it as you are. I had to drag it out of him. But every time something went wrong, he went running. It was always a shock when he came back.”

“Let me guess,” Natalie drawls. “It was you.”

Andrew shakes his head. “No. I’ll ask you the same question I asked him: what will it take to get you to stay?”

“It wasn’t you. All right. What was his name?”

“Nathaniel,” Neil says when Andrew hesitates. “Nathaniel Wesninski.”

“What made _him_ stay?”

“One year. The promise of one year of shelter and safety.”

“And at the end of that year?”

“At the end of that year, he was going to leave.”

“Did he?”

“What will it take?” Andrew repeats. “To get you to stay?”

“What happened to Nathaniel Wesninski?”

“He died. What will it take to get you to stay?”

“Did you fail? Or did he die _after_ the year?”

“His father kidnapped him, and they died together. During that year. I failed. I won’t fail again. What will it take to get you to stay?”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

Neil rubs at his eyes. “He’s not telling you the ending,” he says.

“A dead boy can’t do more stuff,” Natalie rejoins, prompting an expression of absolute terror to hit Paige’s face.

Neil notices.

“A dead boy can’t, no. But sometimes, that boy leaves the house where his father died, sells out to the FBI, and with the help of his boyfriend, bullies them into giving him a name change. Also, Nathaniel had talked Andrew into releasing him from the promise before shit went down. Andrew didn’t fail.” He stands. The sheets will need to get changed around soon, and Paige can’t go to sleep until they’re dry. “Neil Josten couldn’t live until Nathaniel Wesninski was dead.”

“You didn’t have to force him to talk to us,” Natalie says, annoyed, in Neil’s general direction. “Or to tell us that. I don’t even know who you _are_. But I don’t think I like anyone who talks to the government. Are you in witness protection?”

“I’m not. And I didn’t tell him to talk to you,” Neil says. The rest of it—the rest of it he leaves.

Natalie rolls her eyes and storms out, dragging Paige with her. Paige scurries, small, looking torn between staying where she is and running away—running away, Neil knows full well, is a surprisingly effective way of making a parent beat you. Neil's protective instinct, honed as it is by years of having family, flares up; he wants to tell her she's safe, wants to tell her he won't hit her, wants her to _know_ that she's safe, the way Neil knows he's safe with Andrew, the way he knows he's safe with his family. And he can't. He can't, because she doesn't trust him, because of course she doesn't trust him. Neil wants to speedrun some trust-building exercises. Maybe some trust falls. 

Andrew sits down on the edge of the bed. “Do you think she’d talk to Bee if I brought her with me to my next session?”

“Absolutely not,” Neil says. “Can I sit next to you?”

Andrew scoots to one side, and Neil sits, leaving space between them. He puts his hand out, but Andrew doesn’t look at it. Neil takes it back.

“What will it take to get her to stay?”

Neil shrugs. “I wouldn’t have agreed to stay, if you’d asked me before I watched you stop Riko in his tracks.”

Andrew doesn’t respond.

He doesn’t speak for the rest of the night, either.

Instead, he eats a bowl of cereal and goes to bed early.

Neil makes dinner, which now seems like a much bigger deal than it was before he had to feed two teenagers, and makes Paige’s bed, and goes for a run while Paige and Natalie do homework. They brush their teeth, that night. It makes Neil obscurely happy. He was never supposed to survive this long, long enough to have kids who had to brush their teeth. And here he is, telling kids to brush their teeth. It was one of the things his mother had always insisted on; she could stitch him up, pop in a dislocated shoulder, and find antibiotics, but she couldn’t extract a cavity, and dentalcare was a luxury they didn’t have time to stop for.

The next day, Paige and Natalie take the bus.

Neil walks them to the bus stop.

They ignore him, and he doesn’t try to talk to them, and the other kids at the bus stop ignore all three of them, and Neil hopes with everything he’s got that Paige and Natalie make some goddamn friends.

He jogs back home after they get on the bus, and Andrew is waiting in the Maserati.

Neil gets in the passenger seat. “Are you sure?”

Andrew just turns the car on.

Training that day is an anxiety-inducing mess. Not because anything goes wrong; things go well, actually. Just fine. Just perfectly. Andrew doesn’t speak once, and Kevin spends the entire time glancing at him, and Riley tries to speak to Andrew, only to walk away five minutes later, and Maria gives him a stare he doesn’t return. Clark barely talks to Andrew, once he realizes Andrew isn’t even talking to Neil. Andrew’s just—trying so hard to be _dead_.

Neil showers fast, _fast_ , and is ready to go before Andrew wanders out of the shower with blank eyes and a silent mouth.

Andrew won’t even look at him.

Riley catches Neil’s eye and jerks her head at Andrew.

Neil waves her off.

Andrew drives them home, music blasting.

The girls are home when they get there, waiting on the porch.

Andrew blows right past them.

“You have keys,” Neil says. “You could’ve gone in.”

“No one was home,” Paige says.

“You can go in even if we’re not home. It’s safer than sitting on the porch. Not that this is a particularly dangerous neighborhood. But.”

“How do you know we won’t steal anything?”

“You have keys,” Neil says. “You could walk in, stick something in your backpack, and then come out here and sit on the porch, and tell me you hadn’t been in.”

“Is that a tutorial?” Natalie asks, annoyed.

“If you want it to be one. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. Andrew would notice.” Theoretically. "I would also notice." Theoretically.

“What’s wrong with him?” Natalie asks, pointing up the stairs.

“Bad day,” Neil says.

“At sports practice.”

“In his head.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“It means, sometimes, he has bad days. And he’s having them now.”

“Why?”

“I’m not spilling his life story.”

“He told us yours.”

“No, he didn’t. He told you _some_ of it. With my permission.”

“You said you didn’t tell him to talk to us.”

“I didn’t. I did, though, give him permission to tell you that. He hasn’t given me permission to tell you his story, or parts of it, so I won’t.”

Paige hauls Natalie into the living room.

Neil watches them go.

It makes some sense: if the adult you’re living with is prone to outbursts, you want to know. It makes no sense: provoking an adult you live with is a bad idea. Never mind the fact that, this time, it makes no difference; Neil isn’t going to hit them, or take away their food, or even ground them. But she doesn’t know that. There’s no way to prove a negative. The fact that he _hasn’t_ yet done any of that isn’t proof that he _won’t._ Yet, there she is, provoking away. Prodding. Trying to see what she can get away with? Looking for limits? She hasn’t actually _done_ anything. All talk.

The TV turns on, as quiet as it can be without being muted.

Neil notices.

He wanders into the living room. “Don’t forget your homework,” he says. Paige jumps. Natalie freezes. Neil notices. “Dinner’s in two hours.”

He walks out.

He doesn’t particularly know what to do.

He wants to go sit with Andrew. He can’t decide if that’s a good idea or not. He strains his ears and hears nothing—no TV, nothing—and isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or not. Andrew’s in the bedroom, so maybe he’s better than he could be. On the other hand, maybe he’s trying not to distress the girls, and he’s pushing himself farther than he needs to go.

Maybe they should hang a punching bag in _there_. They have one in the basement, but using it means walking past Natalie and Paige, and that’s too much for a fucked-up Andrew.

Neil goes out back and sits on the porch.

He considers calling Bee, alerting her to Andrew’s situation, but he’s not sure how that’ll help.

He remembers what she told him, back when all this started: “When trauma is actually happening, people can’t often react to it; it’s too important to _be safe_. If it’s fast, and then over—stepping out of the way of a falling anvil—they may react soon afterwards, because they won’t be in danger anymore, and can focus on processing that near-miss, rather than just on staying alive. For Andrew, that’s never been a possibility. He’s never felt safe enough to deal with this before. This is a good sign, Neil. It means Andrew finally feels _safe_. It’s going to be tough—tougher for Andrew than for you, but tough on you, too. But he needs to do it. If you need me, you know how to reach me.”

Neil clings to that. Clings to the fact that this is only happening because Andrew feels safe enough that his brain doesn’t have to protect him from it anymore.

Maybe they shouldn’t have fostered children. They’re safe here, sure, but bringing two kids into Andrew’s space, and into a space with a struggling Andrew, can’t possibly have been a good idea. But Andrew hadn’t seemed like he was struggling, for the past few months—but then, Neil thinks, maybe that’s wrong. They’d been trying to meet foster requirements. They’d been stressed. Neil had been stressed, and Andrew had been trying not to be stressed. They hadn’t gone on a date in two months. Andrew had probably been sliding backwards for weeks, trying his level best to hold his head up, and now—a whole day spent flying, and kids, _twins_ —and now Andrew’s got nothing left.

Neil should have paid more attention. Should’ve insisted on taking a night off from worrying. Should’ve made Andrew talk to him.

He wishes they didn’t have kids. Then Neil could go upstairs; if Andrew needed to scream, to let something out, he could. The problem is that _kids_ are not _scratchy couches_. They’d had one of those, for two weeks, until Andrew dragged it outside and chainsawed it in half. Then they’d gotten a new one. Can’t do that with kids. Neil wants a cigarette—never mind that he’d quit years ago—but there’s kids. Kids, kids, kids— _plural_ , jesus, that wasn’t what they’d asked for. Wasn’t what they’d prepared for. They barely know how to take care of one kid, how can they take care of two? They couldn’t have separated Natalie and Paige, of course, that goes without saying, but—

Neil counts. Up, up, up, to one hundred, and then in hundreds to one thousand, and then in thousands to one hundred thousand.

And then he switches languages, and does the same thing.

And then he gets up, goes inside, and makes dinner, and discovers that the serrated knife is missing.

It had been in the dishwasher; it is not in the dishwasher. It’s not in the knife block. Neil surreptitiously checks the utensil drawer, in case it had ended up there somehow, but it’s not there, either.

Neil puts his plate in the dishwasher. So they’re missing a knife. Maybe it’s nothing.

Well. He’ll have to sleep lightly tonight.

He gets the TV while Natalie and Paige do their homework, in the kitchen, where there’s minimal distraction. They have desks in their rooms, but he’s reasonably certain that he’s read before that the bedroom is supposed to be just for sleep, and that doing other things in there makes it harder to fall asleep at night. He can’t use his own experience as a guide; sleep was always a very disciplined thing for him, wherein he got it when he was safe, and didn’t when he was not. Whether or not he’d been doing other things in the room where he intended to sleep had never made much of a difference.

And then he sends the kids up to bed.

Neil dithers around downstairs, until he remembers that tomorrow’s a school day, and a workday, and he has to sleep eventually, and he gives in and goes upstairs. Knocks on his bedroom door. Receives no answer. Contemplates sleeping on the couch. Presses his forehead against the door. He’ll brush his teeth, get changed, and leave.

He walks in.

Andrew may or may not be sleeping, Neil can’t tell. Certainly he’s motionless, and it’s dark.

He brings his pajamas into the bathroom. He has no problem changing in front of Andrew, but today, Andrew might have a problem seeing Neil naked. He brushes his teeth at record speed, changes, and creeps towards the bedroom door.

Andrew’s table lamp flicks on.

Not asleep, then.

“I’m just leaving,” Neil murmurs.

Andrew shakes his head.

“I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s fine.”

Andrew glares at him, and then points to the bed.

Neil dithers.

Andrew waits.

It’s not Neil’s job to tell Andrew what he can and can’t handle. He slides into bed, keeping firmly to his side, and the light goes out.

“Natalie and Paige might have our serrated knife,” Neil tells the darkness.

The darkness doesn’t respond.

Neil worries, and worries, and his mind drifts, until he’s so zoned out he can’t tell whether or not he’s asleep.

And then he wakes up. Andrew is moving.

The AC is on; it usually shuts off at 11:30, when the house is cool enough without it. He’d gone to bed at 11. “Drew?” he mumbles.

Andrew doesn’t answer. Either Neil didn’t actually say anything, or Andrew can’t talk. The bedroom door creaks open.

It doesn’t creak closed.

Neil blinks, hard, trying to make his eyes work, and looks up.

Andrew’s just standing in the doorway.

“Drew?”

“Were you coming to stab us in our sleep?” Andrew says.

And then Neil is out of bed.

He looks over Andrew’s shoulder, and sees Natalie, standing there, holding the serrated knife. She looks like she’s been arrested mid-motion, and she’s twisted toward Neil and Andrew’s room, but that’s not where her feet were headed—they’re pointed towards Paige’s room.

Paige’s door bursts open, and she barrels out. “No, she was coming to stab me,” she says, nonsensically, looking almost as surprised by the words as Neil feels.

“No, I was sleepwalking,” Natalie blurts out.

“Paige, why are you awake?” Neil asks. “You went to bed an hour ago.”

No one speaks.

Neil rubs his eyes, exhausted. This is a lot.

“The knife’s been missing since this afternoon,” Andrew says. “That’s a long sleepwalk.”

“And you weren’t going to stab Paige. Paige, why are you awake?” The answer, Neil feels, would present itself, if only he were _awake_. Alert. Not stressed and tired.

“One man was hospitalized,” Andrew says. “What did he do? What men so often do. Helpless little foster child. Why did you have a knife, Natalie? Not now. Then. You had the knife because it had happened before. Did they split you up? Put you in different rooms? I bet they did. I bet he _insisted._ You knew better, though. You snuck into her room, every night, with a knife, until he got brave enough. And then you stabbed him.”

Andrew seems only nominally aware that everyone around him is frozen.

“Don’t hold the knife like that,” Neil finds himself saying. “It gives you less maneuverability.”

Natalie stares at him.

Maybe, if he were more awake, he’d be more horrified. As is, it’s taking his brain too long to move for the horror to hit just yet. Or maybe it has. Maybe his brain is protecting him. He can’t be horrified now; there’s two kids awake on a school night. And anyway, he knew she had the knife. It’s not really a surprise. “Would you be able to sleep if you were in the same room? Paige?”

Paige doesn’t say anything, but the surprise on her face speaks loudly enough.

“Two beds won’t fit in Natalie’s room,” Andrew says.

“Pull-out couch, though.”

“Couch and desks in Natalie’s room; twins, beds, and dressers in Paige’s room.”

“Can’t do _all_ of that tonight. It’s late.” Neil shudders, not with cold—just tired. The cold that comes from slow-moving blood. Even finding Natalie in the hallway with a knife wasn’t enough to get his blood pumping. Maybe, he thinks, maybe he’s been through a bit much in his life. A child with a knife at night should be an adrenaline pumping experience.

Andrew walks downstairs.

“Natalie, we’re going to take apart your bed when he gets back upstairs.”

Natalie stares at him.

Neil shrugs. “In case you have anything hidden in there.”

She stares at him.

“Bed’s a good hiding place, if you live with people who don’t know that.”

She stares at him. He’s rambling.

Andrew returns with the toolbox. He sets it down next to Paige’s door, takes out the drill, and proceeds to remove the doorknob.

“I’m sorry,” Paige says, breathless, pleading. “I’m sorry. We won’t do it again. We’ll be good.”

Neil flaps a hand at Paige, silencing her. “He’s not taking away the knob,” he tells Paige. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but he wouldn’t do that.”

She doesn’t look reassured, and Andrew doesn’t explain.

Andrew stands, doorknob in one hand and drill in the other. He aims one hand in the direction of Natalie’s room. “Mattress,” he says, before heading back down the stairs.

Neil goes into Natalie’s room, and jumps at the sound of a drill—downstairs.

Not his business, and not his problem.

He removes the pillow. The bed is still made—rumpled where she’d been sitting on it, but made. It looks not-slept-in. She must’ve been sleeping in Paige’s room, terrified, waiting for the opportunity to arm herself. Neil takes deep breaths; they will keep these kids safe; they will do their best; at the very least Natalie and Paige won’t have to stab anyone. He pulls the mattress off the bedframe with the sheets and blanket still on it, and hauls it out into the hallway and then into Paige’s room.

Andrew returns—with the doorknob from the garage door. He installs the doorknob on Paige’s door. And then he beckons Paige closer and, without touching her, dumps three keys into her hand. “To the garage door. Now, to your door. That’s mine, Neil’s, and the spare; you and Natalie have the ones on your keyrings. No one else has one.

“I was thinking,” he continues, “not very hard, given, but I _was_ thinking, and I’m thinking I was asking the wrong person. Because, Natalie, you don’t care. You have no instinct for self-preservation. You care about _Paige_ , and have a Paige-preservation instinct. I understand this. Paige. What would it take to get you to stay?”

He turns his gaze to her, and she stares at him, hands still out, still holding three of the five keys to her room.

Andrew gives her a minute, and then gets bored. He flicks a finger at Neil, who follows him into Natalie’s old room. They examine the bedframe. It’s a fancy one.

“Angled,” Neil says, and Andrew nods.

They turn the frame sideways, and then angle it until they can push it through the doorway. It goes down the hallway, which is just wide enough—Natalie hauls Paige out of the way, still holding the knife, that can’t be good—and into Paige’s room, now Natalie-and-Paige’s room.

They right it. The room is very crowded.

“Pull-out couch,” Neil says, and Andrew nods. They maneuver it around the two beds, out into the hallway, and into the—work room? Neil will pick a name in the morning.

“Why are you doing this?” Paige asks, when they get back into the hallway.

It takes Andrew a minute. “Neither of you will sleep until you feel safe. Neither of you feel safe in separate rooms. If we put you in the same bedroom, you will feel safe enough to sleep, or at least safe enough to not creep around the house holding knives—Natalie, you’re still holding that wrong, put it down. Also, it’s meant for bread, not people. Here. Swap.” He produces a knife from his armband, and holds it out to her, handle first.

She stares at it.

“That will catch on skin. Great if you know what you’re doing and want to cause pain; not great for sliding between a man’s ribs. This one won’t catch. Take it.”

Natalie takes it, and Andrew takes the kitchen knife. Natalie looks at the knife like she’s never seen a knife before. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to let her know that one of the men she’s living with is habitually armed.

“In the morning—no, not on a school day. Saturday we have a game. Mm. I will call up the woman who taught me how to use a knife, and on Sunday she will come down and teach you the basics. If you’d like to learn more, she can teach you how to do more.”

Natalie looks up at him.

Andrew carries the kitchen knife back down into the kitchen, and returns in time to watch Neil force the mattress back onto the bed.

“Do you want the beds pushed together?” Neil asks.

Paige and Natalie stare at him.

He’s so tired.

“Why?” Paige asks. But she’s not looking at him, she’s looking at the knife in Natalie’s hand. She looks up at Andrew. “Why?”

“You aren’t the first helpless little kid to go through the foster system,” Andrew says eventually. “What will it take to get you to stay?”

“Why?”

Andrew stares at her. Paige stares at him. Neil stares at Natalie. Natalie stares at the knife in her hand.

Andrew, moving like every inch is a struggle, turns to stare at Neil.

Neil meets his gaze.

He wishes he were awake enough for this, but as is, he can barely strangle a yawn.

“I can’t fix my childhood,” Andrew says, still looking at Neil. “I can’t make it go away. I can’t make it better. I can’t go back and kill everyone who deserves to be dead, and I can’t make it stop.” He looks at Paige. “And I can’t fix yours. And I can’t fix Natalie’s. And I can’t stab everyone who deserves to be stabbed. And I can’t change whatever happened that would make you think I would take away your fucking doorknob. But I can— _I can_ —make sure that you are safe for the rest of it. I will never be—the fucking dream dad, the guy who is the father you always wanted. I might never be a good dad. If you don’t like us, we won’t even _be_ dads. But I can tell you two things: you will be safe here. And if you’re supposed to be home by 10, and you’re not, we’ll be fucking worried about you.”

Paige holds out her hand.

Andrew slowly, slowly, every inch a struggle, anticipation a horrible pain, takes her hand.

She shakes it. “Deal.”

“What’s the deal?”

“We’re safe here. You worry about us if we’re not home by curfew. And we’ll stay. For a year.” She looks at Natalie, who looks exhausted, beyond exhausted. “We stay.”

Natalie nods.

Neil gives them a minute. “So… did you want your beds together or not?”

Paige looks at the beds. “We’ll rearrange in the morning.”

“Okay.”

Neil leaves the room, and Paige and Natalie walk into it, shut the door, and lock it.

“Does this mean we don’t have a doorknob on our garage door?” Neil asks.

“I pushed a chair against it so the cats can’t go out.”

“Okay.” Neil smiles at Andrew. _Thank you_. “Good night.”

Except Andrew follows Neil into the bedroom, shuts the door behind him, and gets into bed.

Okay.

Neil joins him, sticking firmly to his side of the bed.

Andrew taps his shoulder, and Neil looks at him. Andrew beckons him over.

“Are you sure?” Neil says.

“Yes,” Andrew says.

Neil goes, rolling towards him to meet him in the middle of the bed. It’s easy—the bed has a noticeable dip there. Andrew tangles his fingers with Neil’s.

“I miss you,” Andrew says, like he’s not entirely sure what the words mean.

“I’m right here.”

“When I fall apart,” Andrew clarifies. “I miss you.”

“Oh. I’m going to kiss your hand,” Neil says, and when Andrew doesn’t protest, he does just that, lifting Andrew’s calloused palm to his mouth. “I miss you, too. But I’m glad you’re working through it.”

Andrew curves his hand to fit Neil’s face. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’m sorry I left you to take care of two kids.”

Neil shakes his head, clutching at Andrew’s hand. “Don’t apologize. Not for that. Not for this. I was happy to do it.”

“You didn’t want to. Not until I was—better. And apparently, I am not.”

“Sure, but what was I going to do, tell them to come back later? _Look_ at them.”

“Should I go break into their room to stare them down?”

Neil rolls his eyes. “There’s been too much _staring_ going on these past few days.”

“Half our communication is nonverbal.”

“There’s been more staring than usual.”

“There’s more people doing the staring.”

Neil grins, and falls in love with Andrew all over again. It happens approximately every other day. Neil still isn’t used to it.

Andrew leans in and kisses Neil’s forehead.

Neil closes his eyes and lets the weight of Andrew’s gaze soothe him to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the kids speak!
> 
> Also there's porn in this one.

The next day feels like a different universe.

“What’s it like to play exy? Isn’t it violent?” Paige asks, within three seconds of spotting Neil and Andrew coming down the stairs. She looks not quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but close—almost relaxed. Like she's slept, maybe.

“Depends on who I’m up against,” Neil says, doing his level best to act like this is definitely the kid he’d picked up at the airport a couple days ago. “Some teams are rougher than others. There’s just about always bruises, though.”

“What position do you play?”

Neil and Andrew exchange a glance. The girls still haven’t googled them. Well, maybe they just don’t realize how much there is to _find._ “I’m a striker. Andrew’s a goalkeeper.”

“Strikers get hit a lot, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Andrew says. “And Neil likes to get in the middle of things.”

“Not _much_ ,” Neil protests. “I _try_ not to worry you.”

“You always worry me.”

“I stay out of fights,” Neil tells Paige. “But sometimes, the fights come to me, or my mark bodyslams me, or…”

“Or,” Andrew says, “you tell a guy he’s a jackass with no friends, and then he tries to break your nose.”

“Or, that,” Neil admits.

“Are you feeling better, Andrew?” Paige asks.

“I am,” he says.

“What was wrong? I heard Neil say he told your team that you were sick.”

“You heard that. From the laundry room.”

“Well, no, from right outside the door.”

Andrew shoots her a look, but she looks remarkably unrepentant. Natalie looks like she’s thirty seconds away from an absolute breakdown. “Eavesdropping is bad manners,” Andrew says.

Paige shrugs. She must wholeheartedly believe that promise of safety. Natalie must not believe it at all.

“According to my therapist,” Andrew says, “when you experience trauma, your brain does what it needs to do to get you through it and away from it. It doesn’t process what’s happening, because trying to process the traumatic event will prevent you from getting away to safety. And then, sometimes years after the fact, when you’re safe, your brain will realize that, hey, that traumatic event was bad. And then it hits you. And that’s what my brain has been doing, for the past couple years. Realizing that traumatic things were bad, and processing them, which results in me lying in bed, sometimes for days at a clip.”

“Will that happen to me?” Paige asks. “Will it happen to Natalie?”

Neil wants, desperately, to bar all the doors and put Paige and Natalie both in a saferoom.

“I can introduce you to my therapist, if you want,” Andrew says.

“That’s not an answer,” Natalie says.

“No. It’s not.”

“Why won’t you answer the question?”

“I’m not a psychologist. I don’t know.”

“If that’s how trauma _works_ , then that’s how it _works_.”

Andrew points at Neil. “Why aren’t _you_ having breakdowns?”

Neil shrugs. “Over what?”

Andrew reaches out and plants one finger over the smooth burn on Neil’s cheek. His aim is perfect, in spite of the makeup Neil has on to hide the scar.

“Well, sure, but I _had_ that breakdown,” Neil says reasonably.

Andrew waves a hand, as if to say: _you see_?

“Do _you_ have a therapist?” Paige asks Neil.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Neil shrugs. “For a while, it was on principle, and now, it’s out of habit. I don’t talk to therapists.”

“Why not?”

“Yeah, Neil,” Andrew says. “Why not?”

“I just—don’t. What’s she going to do? Tell me I’ve got problems? I know. Tell me what they are? I know what they are. Tell me how to fix them? I’d need different parents for that.”

“That’s not what therapy _is_ ,” Andrew says. It’s an old argument. They’ve had it several times over the past few years. “Therapy is when you don’t know why you had a panic attack two days ago over something that happened fifteen years ago, and then you go tell Bee, and she tells you _why_ , and then helps you figure out how to _deal with it_.”

“I don’t have panic attacks. Much.”

Andrew just stares at him.

“Anymore.”

Andrew continues staring.

“We talked about the staring.”

“Did you guys meet through exy?” Paige asks.

“Yeah—we were on the same team in college.”

“Was it love at first sight?”

“He took my breath away. If you don’t eat, you’ll miss the bus.”

That does the trick; Paige eats almost without chewing, and beats Natalie to the sink and then out the door.

“I thought you wanted them to talk more,” Andrew says.

“Smugness isn’t a good look on you.”

“Sorry, I’m still feeling smug from when you said I took your breath away. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Kissing Andrew for the first time in a couple days is like drinking coffee for the first time in four weeks—Neil’s almost forgotten how it makes his heart race.

Andrew pulls away. “Ready?”

Neil follows him into the car.

Training goes fast—faster than usual; everyone’s so relieved that Andrew is alive that they make practice fun—and then they’re pulling into the driveway.

Neil calls Paige.

“Hello?”

“You guys wanna come out? We need to fix our lock situation, and this way you can decide what lock you want on your door.”

“Oh, we get to pick?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“We’ll be out in a minute.”

She hangs up, and two minutes later, she and Natalie are coming out the front door. Paige waits as Natalie locks the door behind her.

“This feels weird,” Andrew mutters. “Parents are supposed to have fourteen years before they have to come to terms with having two fourteen-year-old twin daughters.”

“We don’t technically have daughters,” Neil reminds him as Paige and Natalie come down the walkway. “We’re fostering them.”

Andrew tilts his head to look at Neil as Paige opens the door, Natalie walking around to get in the other side.

“But I know what you mean,” Neil says.

“About what?” Paige asks.

“Don’t worry about it. How was school?”

“School. What language were you speaking the day you picked us up? Why haven’t you spoken it since?”

“Russian,” Neil answers. “We decided, while we were going through the certification process, that we shouldn’t speak a language you don’t know in front of you. Feels rude. The first day, it seemed more rude to say what I was saying in front of you, so I said it in Russian.”

“What were you saying?”

“He said _I don’t know how to make them feel safe_ ,” Andrew says. “And then, when he was putting your bag in the car, he reminded me of when I first picked him up from the airport. I had him put his duffel in the trunk. He was pretending to be quiet and unobtrusive at the time and didn’t argue.”

“You have a good memory,” Natalie says. “Oh. Speaking of. How’d you know when I took the knife?”

Odd association to make, Neil thinks, but he's not going to say that and neither, apparently, is Andrew, who only says: “Neil told me.”

“You _knew_?” she asks, turning on Neil.

“It should’ve been in the dishwasher. It wasn’t in the dishwasher. It wasn’t in the knife block. Neither of us would’ve put it in the utensil drawer, but I checked there anyway, and it wasn’t there. And I’d already told you how easy it would be to take something. The better question would be why you took a knife we’d _miss_ —should’ve taken a steak knife, something we’ve got a bunch of.”

“Why weren’t you angry? Why didn’t you ask for it back?”

Neil shrugs. “If I’d asked, you’d have just said you didn’t have it. I’m not gonna search you guys. So we’d be right back where we started, except you’d have been even more nervous than you already were.”

“Still, though,” Natalie says, “I mean—how’d you know I’d taken it that afternoon?”

“When else would you have taken it?”

Natalie is silent, but not happy—one glance in the rearview mirror shows Neil that she’s still upset. Neil understands that just fine. It sucks, feeling like she can’t hide, feeling like she’s got no secrets. Neil could apologize for that, but it would mean exposing her feelings, and Neil won’t do that to her. So they finish the drive in silence, Andrew parking in the back of the parking lot to protect the Maserati. Neil gets out of the car and links his pinky with Andrew’s. The girls get out, and Andrew locks the car, and they wander into the store.

“Is there anything else we need?” Neil asks. “While we’re here? Do you guys want a safe? We can get one.”

“A safe?” Natalie asks.

“Yeah. To put things you don’t want us to see. Or to put your money.”

“We don’t have money. And if we have things we don’t want you to see, we’re not going to tell you about them.”

“Two safes, then,” Neil decides, grabbing a cart. “And an allowance. How much is a normal allowance?”

“An allowance?” Paige asks.

“You have to have _some_ kind of money. Well, I guess you don’t _have_ to, but I’m an adult married to an adult and between the two of us we have plenty of money, and we can afford to give you an allowance. To teach you the value of money, or whatever. The real question is: Should we get you credit cards? I don’t think 14-year-olds _can_ have credit cards, actually.”

“Did _you_ have a credit card?” Natalie asks.

“No, but I was living under different circumstances.”

“They can’t,” Andrew says. “We’ll stick with debit cards. We’ll need to open up bank accounts for them."

Neil grins at him. “I know nothing about bank accounts. Is there a minimum amount of money they need to have?”

Andrew shoots him a raised eyebrow. “You’re asking the wrong person.”

“Did _you_ have a debit card?” Natalie asks Andrew. "When you were our age, I mean."

Andrew snorts. “They don’t give you those in juvie.”

“Why did you go to juvie?”

Andrew waves a hand.

“Oh, Andrew, you guys can’t do knife stuff on Sunday,” Neil says, frowning as his brain makes a connection he’d missed. “Katelyn and Aaron are coming over.”

“And?” Andrew says, examining doorknobs.

Neil waits.

Andrew gives up and turns around.

Neil gives him a _look_.

“And?” Andrew repeats.

“If Katelyn gets out of the car toting her _very_ small child and sees a bunch of people tossing knives around, she will get back in that car and _leave_.”

Andrew shrugs.

“Who’s that?” Paige asks.

“Aaron is Andrew’s brother, and Katelyn is his wife. The first Sunday of every month, we have dinner.”

“Why?”

Neil holds his hand up in a shrug. “Andrew and Aaron worked it out.”

“That way we don’t have to see each other on any holidays, except the Super Bowl, which gives us an excuse to not go to any Super Bowl parties,” Andrew says.

Neil snorts.

“Why can’t we just learn on a school day?”

“Renee lives in New York, she won’t come down on a worknight.”

“Can’t you teach us?”

“I am not a teacher.”

“Who taught Renee?”

“That’s her story to tell.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Since college.”

Neil grins and looks away. They’re here to buy things. A doorknob. He examines the options.

“I like that one,” Paige says, pointing at a fancy gold doorknob.

Andrew looks to Natalie.

Natalie shrugs.

“You both have to agree,” Andrew says.

Paige looks at Natalie.

“I like silver better,” Natalie says.

Andrew looks at Paige.

“I’ll do silver as long as it’s fancy,” Paige says. Natalie holds out a hand, and they shake on it and move down the aisle.

“What?” Andrew says.

Neil shrugs. “Nothing.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew says, digging one finger into Neil’s cheek and pushing his face away—he must still be feeling raw, then.

“Andrew Joseph Minyard, you are the light and love of my life, and one day, you’ll get used to that.” Neil looks back at Andrew. “And I like looking at you.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, leaning down, cupping one hand around Andrew’s face.

“Bluh,” Natalie says, from the other end of the aisle. “Gross. Only teenagers are supposed to make out in public.”

Neil snorts. He drops his hand from Andrew’s face, and Andrew links their pinkies. “I don’t think that counted as _making out_. Did you guys pick one?”

They point.

It’s fancy and silver.

Andrew puts two into the cart. “For the other bedroom,” he says.

“So they can… lock the door while they do homework?”

Andrew shrugs. “That. Also, in case they ever decide they want their own rooms.”

Neil shrugs. “Safes, then.”

They pick up two safes. It’s much easier than picking doorknobs.

They stop at the bank on the way home, and open two bank accounts. Natalie and Paige accept their debit cards like the plastic is actually gold.

“We don’t have wallets,” Paige says as they walk out the door.

So then they stop at a Burlington Coat Factory and pick up wallets and a backpack for Paige. The Burlington is right next to a farmer’s market, where they stop for oranges. And then they go home, where they find that Paige’s new uniforms have come in.

Paige rushes into the bathroom to get changed, and comes out ecstatic—the clothes fit. She hugs Natalie, and then turns towards the bathroom, and then turns back.

“Can I hug you?” She asks Neil.

“Sure,” he says, holding his arms out tentatively, and she jumps at him, clings tightly to him for a minute, an odd experience, bounces backwards, and looks at Andrew.

“Can I hug you?” She asks.

Andrew tilts his head, staring at her, and then—shocking Neil to the core of his being—nods.

Paige bounces at him, too, slinging her arms around his neck for a second before jumping away, back into the bathroom to get changed.

“Clothes are that big a deal?” Neil asks Natalie.

“I guess you’ve never had clothes that don’t fit,” Natalie says, looking him over.

Andrew snorts. “His clothes _only_ fit because I buy them for him. When I met him, every single thing he owned was two sizes too big. He has a _terrible_ fashion sense.”

Neil shrugs. “My fashion sense was perfectly good, for what I needed.”

“What did you need?” Natalie asks.

“To hide.”

“From who?”

Neil opens his mouth, and shuts it again. It would be inaccurate to say _his father_ ; baggy clothes didn’t make much difference there. It would be more accurate to say that he was hiding his scars; scars were noticeable, scars drew questions. Which, of course, meant that the answer was: “Everyone.”

“Dramatic,” Natalie says, rolling her eyes. And then Paige is out of the bathroom.

“Wanna help cook dinner?” Neil asks.

“We have to do homework,” Paige protests, and Neil can’t argue with that. They go upstairs, and Neil grabs the toolbox and the new doorknobs and follows them, leaving Andrew downstairs to get dinner started.

With Natalie and Paige’s help, Neil pushes the guest room desk into the new homework room, and then they push Natalie’s (emptied) dresser into the bedroom. The girls make themselves comfortable at separate desks as Neil replaces the dresser drawers. He feels overwhelmingly gratified by that trust; he would never have let someone else touch his stuff. He’d hardly been willing to let his mother touch his stuff. They don’t seem to _have_ much stuff—Natalie’s drawers are half-empty—but in Neil’s experience, that only makes it more precious.

He swaps out the doorknobs, puts the keys on the girls’ pillows, and heads downstairs to replace the garage doorknob. And then he carries the safes up the stairs, leaving them open in the girls’ room with the instructions inside.

He’s feeling smugly productive when he returns to the kitchen, where Andrew is watching chicken simmer in a pan.

“How are you doing?” Neil asks.

“Present.” Andrew reaches out one hand to touch Neil’s cheek, leaving a trail of goosebumps wherever his fingers touch. Andrew glances over, eyes dark, heavy against Neil’s skin.

“Oh,” Neil says. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, already turning towards Neil, one hand curving around the back of Neil’s neck to pull him down, the other sliding up Neil’s shirt, picking its way familiarly around old scars. Neil threads his fingers through Andrew’s hair, memorizing the way Andrew tastes, the way he feels, tucking it away, memorizing the slide of Andrew’s tongue against his own, the way Andrew’s hand slides around Neil’s hip to pull him closer, the smell of burning chicken—

Neil and Andrew pull apart as Andrew grabs for the spatula.

Neil backs up a little, tucking his hands into his pockets. There must be something better he can do. Something useful. He starts peeling oranges.

Five minutes later, they have balsamic tomato chicken and a bunch of oranges on the table.

“Natalie! Paige!” Neil calls. “Dinner!”

They come running down the stairs, silently. The floor doesn’t even creak—they avoid the creaky board on the fourth step.

Neil wonders when they learned the necessity of silence.

Natalie wrinkles her nose. “Is something burnt?”

“The chicken, a little bit,” Andrew says.

Natalie makes a face, but it doesn’t stop her from eating it.

Neil wonders how often she’s had to shove down food she hates, because the alternative was starvation.

“What foods do you like?” Neil asks.

Natalie shrugs. Paige shrugs.

“What foods do you _not_ like?”

The twins shrug.

“If there was one food I had to subsist on for the rest of my life,” Neil says as he chews, “it would probably be… pasta. Even plain pasta tastes pretty good.” He looks at Andrew.

“Ice cream,” Andrew says without hesitation. He looks at Natalie.

She looks up after a minute. “What?”

“One food,” he says. “Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Oh. I have to do this?” She pops a piece of lightly burnt chicken in her mouth. “Mozzarella cheese.”

She looks at Paige.

“Apples. Honeycrisp.”

Neil nods. “None of that Red Delicious bullshit.”

Paige fake-gags. “Disgusting.”

“On the other hand,” Neil says, “if there was one food I had to cut out forever… Brussels sprouts.”

“Artichokes.” Andrew says. He looks at Natalie.

“Is this what you guys talk about when we’re not here?” She asks.

“No,” Andrew answers.

“We’re not babies. We don’t have to play stupid-ass games.”

“Great,” Neil says. “Then what foods do you like, and what foods do you not like?”

“Who cares?” Natalie says, flicking a finger.

“Me. We can keep playing stupid-ass games, or you could just answer me.”

“What, do you want a 12-point, double-spaced, Times New Roman, typed-up list?”

Neil shrugs. “That would work. A quick verbal rundown would be just as good, but I’ll take whatever.”

“Why?” Paige asks.

Neil puts some food in his mouth to avoid answering.

Paige finishes her last bite of food, and then sits there, arms crossed, waiting.

Neil could outlast her.

Then again, why bother? “You two eat like it’s the end times. The chicken is burnt and you stuffed it down like it was a delicacy. I’m willing to bet we could feed stuff you’re actively allergic to, and you wouldn’t say a word. Also, I probably wouldn’t have bought mozzarella cheese or honeycrisp apples on my next grocery trip, and I’m thinking you’d never have told me you liked those foods.”

“So what?” Natalie says.

Neil leans back in his chair. “I don’t want to make you guys eat foods you don’t like, and I want to make sure you have foods you enjoy.”

“Why?” Paige asks. “We’ll eat whatever. You don’t have to go out of your way for us.”

“Sure,” Andrew says, “but picking up specific foods at the store isn’t _out of the way_. You’re going to eat three meals a day for the entirety of the time you’re under this roof, and you should enjoy them, not hate them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Natalie says, slamming her chair backwards as she stands up. She and Paige both go bloodlessly white in an instant, and perfectly still.

Neil glances over his shoulder—what did they see? There’s nothing there. And then he glances at Andrew, and realizes that Andrew knows, and that _knowing_ tells Neil everything he needs to know. The twins are looking at Neil and Andrew. They’re waiting to get hit, because Natalie lost her temper.

Oh, jesus.

He doesn’t even know what to do. Speak? They’re standing so still. Certainly he can’t get up. He never planned for this. He was always the abused boy, never the abuser. Always the one checking armlengths for safety, never the one whose arms had to be measured.

“It’s okay, Natalie,” Andrew says, his voice flat, apathetic. Walls up. Angry. Not at them. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Natalie steps backwards, a movement born of fear unleashed. “You’re angry,” she says, terrified and accusatory.

“Yes,” Andrew says. “But not at you. I’m going to stand up, and I’m going to take your dishes, and I’m going to put them in the sink. I’m not going to touch you. Yes or no?”

Natalie nods. Andrew stands, slowly, and takes Natalie’s and Paige’s plates. He brings them to the sink. He begins washing them.

“Can we go upstairs?” Paige asks, still glued to her chair.

“Yes,” Neil says, and the two of them bolt, silently. They avoid the creaky stair. He hears their bedroom door lock.

Neil stands, and dries dishes.

There’s not much else to do. He's not going to go talk to them. Maybe he should, maybe that's what a good parent would do, but Neil and Andrew have just given them a safe place, and they've claimed it, and he's not going to violate that. He could text them instead, but that feels equally cruel—a reminder that he doesn't have to knock down their door in order to get access to them. Neil looks at Andrew, and Andrew looks at Neil, and Neil sighs and Andrew shrugs. Trust is not gained overnight. They'll keep working at it. Until then, there's no sense in sitting around worrying about it.

They take the remaining orange into the living room, turn on the TV, and find Property Brothers. Neil peels off an orange slice and hands it to Andrew, and peels off another and eats it. They start off shoulder to shoulder and move over the course of the episode, Neil’s feet on the couch and his back against Andrew’s shoulder, hands tangling, arms tangling, Neil’s lips on Andrew’s neck, Andrew’s eyes going hooded and dark.

“How are you doing?” Neil whispers.

“Present,” Andrew murmurs. “Right here. With you.”

Neil gropes for the remote and turns off the TV. The silence is sudden, and in it, their panting breath is loud. Neil quiets Andrew for just a moment with a kiss, and then Andrew’s on his feet, pulling Neil up, hands clasped as they make their way around the house, checking the locks and the lights, and then up the stairs, stepping directly onto the creaky stair—letting the kids know where they are, so they don't have to wonder—locking the bedroom door behind them.

Neil turns, and Andrew is pulling off his shirt, and Neil wants desperately to touch him. Andrew touches Neil’s shirt. Neil takes it off. Andrew swipes the makeup wipes from the dresser, and tosses one at Neil, who wipes his face clean. Andrew climbs into bed, hauling Neil after him, hauling Neil on top of him, pulling Neil’s face down for a burning hot kiss, one that tastes like oranges. Neil puts one hand on the pillow next to Andrew’s head, one hand on Andrew’s chest, holding himself up—and then Andrew palms Neil through his jeans, and it’s all Neil can think about, pulled in so many directions it’s painful, Andrew’s hot skin under Neil’s hand, Andrew’s mouth on Neil’s, Andrew’s hand rubbing Neil’s dick, all unbearable friction and heat and _Andrew_. Neil slides his hand up Andrew’s throat, listening to the way Andrew’s breath hitches and feeling how he stops kissing Neil, distracted for a moment from that all-important task, his hand twitching against Neil’s dick, and Neil drops his mouth to Andrew’s neck, looking to prolong the moment, to make Andrew sigh, to make him move.

Andrew tugs at Neil’s pants, pushing them off of him, and Neil kicks them away, and then Andrew’s hand is directly on Neil’s dick, and Neil sighs relief against Andrew’s lips.

Andrew pushes, twists, and suddenly he’s on top, a development Neil welcomes; it leaves both his hands free to tangle in Andrew’s hair, soft and silky and just long enough for Neil to dig into. Andrew pulls away, prompting a low whine from Neil, but it’s just to unbutton his own pants, pulling them down around his thighs, and then he grabs the lube and returns to Neil, with a sigh that says he’s as relieved to have the contact as Neil is—and the sound of it makes Neil’s hips shift involuntarily, desperately looking for _something_ , and it finds that something. It finds Andrew’s dick, Andrew’s hand, cold lube. Neil shudders, arches his back, as Andrew’s dick slides against his own, Andrew’s hand holding them together.

“Legs,” Andrew breathes, and Neil wraps his legs around Andrew’s hips with something like gratitude—more, more, _more,_ his skin is singing, begging for contact. He can feel _everything_ , and it’s not _enough_ , and he tugs until Andrew’s mouth comes back to his own, although not for long—Neil breaks away to bite off a groan as Andrew’s hips twitch. He looks up at Andrew to find Andrew’s eyes closed and studies him, flushed cheeks and long eyelashes, until Andrew opens his eyes to look for Neil, pinning Neil to the bed with the weight of his stare, hungry, starving, memorizing. Sometimes Neil feels it, like a physical touch—Andrew memorizing him, on purpose, not just incidentally, not just as a fact of Andrew’s existence, but _on purpose_ , looking at Neil with express intent to have and to hold the moment, forever, and Neil likes it. Neil likes knowing that he can’t be forgotten. That he can’t disappear and fade away. That he’s held in this world, in this space, in this body and name, by more than just a fake driver’s license, never mind that the one he has these days is real. He stares back, holding Andrew’s gaze, until Andrew gets tired of being stared at and moves his thumb in a way that makes Neil tense up and close his eyes almost involuntarily, toes curling and breath hitching in anticipation, and that’s all the encouragement Andrew needs to speed up, to lean in and slide his tongue into Neil’s mouth, to kiss Neil until he’s nothing but a pile of nerves and _need_ and—

And—

Neil’s head tips backwards, Andrew’s head presses into Neil’s shoulder, and Neil is gone.

Neil turns his head to press his nose into Andrew’s hair, inhaling familiar shampoo, and feels Andrew’s lips on his skin for a moment before Andrew pulls back and away.

Neil watches him head into the bathroom, and falls back into the pillows to wait his turn.

“Up,” Andrew says an indeterminate amount of time later, and Neil opens his eyes and stands.

Why’s he up?

Oh. He’s naked and messy.

He cleans himself off and returns, in pajama pants, to bed, where Andrew links his pinky with Neil’s.

“We should watch _Game of Thrones_ ,” Andrew says.

“Yeah,” Neil agrees. The other Foxes are watching it. It would be something to talk about. But, jesus, there’s a lot of rape. Andrew keeps saying it would be fine. Neil keeps agreeing. They never watch it. They watch House Hunters instead.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Andrew says.

“Probably not,” Neil agrees.

“Kids.”

“Right.”

Neil rolls his head to the side to look at Andrew.

“I don’t particularly want to watch it,” Andrew says.

“No.”

“I don’t want to make you sit out of conversations just because I won’t watch that fucking show.”

“I don’t particularly want to be in conversations about that fucking show.”

Andrew examines him, looking for some sign that Neil actually does want to watch the show.

Neil waits.

Andrew finds nothing.

This seems to be acceptable to him, because he puts a hand over Neil’s eyes until he feels Neil’s eyelashes brush his palm, Neil’s eyes closing for the night. Andrew brushes Neil’s hair back, removes his hand, and Neil falls into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I have a habit of ending chapters when Neil falls asleep. I'm working on it, but also, I have little patience for cliffhangers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They play exy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did absolutely forget to post this last night. This one's on me. 
> 
> Also, important disclaimer: I did two seconds of research on adoption and no research on fostering, bank accounts, or literally anything else. Most of this is bullshit I created specifically for the drama.

He wakes up the next morning with the thought that they really should invite Riley over.

She _is_ his friend. And they usually have dinner Wednesday nights, which Neil had skipped this week, due to having kids. And she’s very good at video games. And maybe the girls would like to play. Or to learn.

He makes the case while Andrew brushes his teeth. Neil is also brushing his teeth at the time, which, perhaps, isn’t the best way to ask permission to invite someone over, but Andrew doesn’t argue.

“What day?” Andrew asks, wiping his face dry, giving Neil the entirety of the sink counter.

Ten years down the line, maybe Neil should be a little neater with his makeup, but somehow, he still isn’t—it gets everywhere. To be fair, he isn’t in the habit of doing it much anymore. There wasn’t much need, for a while; his team sees him makeup-less every time they train, and he doesn’t generally care what people at the grocery store think. But he doesn’t want the girls to see his scars. He’ll have to get over that eventually; putting makeup on twice a day is already becoming a pain in the ass, and it’s only the fourth day. And it’s annoying, making sure his forearms are covered all the time. He’d lost the habit of covering up those scars, too. But somehow, every time he thinks about two 14-year-old girls with their own baggage seeing his scars, he wants desperately to cover them up.

“Maybe Tuesday?” Neil suggests. That’s the day Andrew goes to therapy after training. Usually. He’d skipped that week, due to being incapable of leaving his bed.

“So I won’t be here.”

Neil meets Andrew’s eyes in the mirror. “So you don’t _have_ to be here,” he corrects. “If you want to be here, I’ll pick a different day.”

Andrew watches Neil for a minute. “Do you not want the girls to see your face?”

Neil considers himself in the mirror.

It’s odd, how easily he’s giving up his scars. He’d gotten so used to them. His hair, his eyes, his nose, the shape of his face, everything is his father’s, and these days, it’s getting worse—he’s closing in on the age Nathan was when Neil ran away, and the way age has filled out his face has brought him closer to his father than he’s ever been. He clings to his scars; they make his face into _his face_ , the thing he looks at in the mirror, the thing that smiles and laughs and crinkles in all different ways, the thing that feels Andrew’s mouth and Andrew’s hands. And yet, the most annoying thing about losing his scars daily to makeup is the actual application.

He shrugs. “What if they ask questions? What if they want to know how I got them? What the hell do I tell them?”

“All they have to do is hop online, and they’ll find out. There’s pictures. Videos. A variety of articles. All from before the scars started to fade. Do you want them to find out from you, or from the internet?”

Neil turns and leans against the counter. “What’s wrong?”

Andrew meets his eyes, but says nothing.

“You hate when I wear makeup,” Neil says.

“It’s not what you look like.”

“It’s not like I’m using color contacts and hair dye,” Neil says, although he doesn’t know why he’s arguing—he agrees, wholeheartedly.

Andrew shrugs, wordlessly.

“I don’t want to scare them off. I don’t want them thinking about—about how they’re living with the son of a gangster.”

“You already told them you sold out to the FBI. You think they haven’t figured out that you’re something?”

“I don’t know. They’re not asking. They were tired and scared; I don’t even know that they paid it much attention. They were more annoyed than anything else. I’m not—I’m not up for it yet. I’m not ready to tell them half a story.”

“Why only half?”

Neil gives Andrew a _look_. “I’m not telling them about the Moriyamas.”

“Why not?”

Neil stares at him.

He’s serious.

“That’s nothing a kid needs to know,” Neil says.

“Why don’t you ask Kevin?”

“Kevin is why I _know_ that’s nothing a kid needs to know.”

“Kevin was with them all the time. Natalie and Paige are not.”

“No, but they’re with _me,_ and the Moriyamas own me.”

Andrew closes up. He hates that. Neil knows he hates that. But it’s a fact, and Neil can’t change it, or take it back. It didn’t have anything to do with him in the first place; it was a truth as soon as his mom got pregnant with him.

“I’m gonna get tired of doing this soon,” Neil promises.

“And then the Moriyamas and your past will vanish into thin air,” Andrew says.

“I’ll think of something by then.”

“Wednesday,” Andrew says.

“That’s very soon,” Neil says.

“Invite Riley over Wednesday,” Andrew clarifies.

“All right. Drew.”

Andrew pauses on his way out the door.

“I’m sorry. I’ll figure it out.”

Andrew stands there, hand on the doorknob, and struggles.

They’d had fights, previously, that went like this:

_“Go to therapy.”_

_“No.”_

_“I can’t fix you. I don’t even know if I can help you.”_

_“I’m dealing with it.”_

_“You’re not superhuman. Is it Bee? Is she the problem? I’ll help you find someone else.”_

_“I’m dealing with it.”_

Neil had always dealt with it. There was often research involved. Late days at the court. Sessions in the basement with the punching bag. It rarely took him long. The longest struggle he’d had was two weeks during which he was convinced that either his whole life was a dream or that it was about to crumble around him; the idea that he’d somehow made it to adulthood alive was so far-fetched he’d decided it was a lie. He’d watched _The Last Holiday_ five times in a row, gone for a run, and had decided that not only was he still alive, but that it didn’t matter if his life was about to come down on his head: Everyone’s life was always two steps away from ending, and he just had to live every day like it was his last.

They’d also had fights that had gone like this:

Neil said something Andrew didn’t like.

Andrew shut down.

Four days later, Andrew would inform Neil that Andrew was severely unhappy.

This was the fight they seemed to be having now.

Neil was doing something Andrew thought was wrong; Neil was also unwilling to either come to terms with the root of the problem, or to simply stop doing it. Rather than rehash the therapy fight, Andrew would shut down, back off, walk away. Detached. Apathetic. These days, Bee called it _passive aggressive_. Andrew _hated_ that. Bee said: _not all coping mechanisms need to stick around once they’ve served their purpose. This one has outlived its usefulness.  
_

Neil might be unwilling to talk to Bee in a professional capacity on principle, but he _did_ like her.

Andrew turns to face Neil and places a finger on Neil’s burn scar. “Okay,” he says simply. And then, looking lightly distressed about it, he says: “I trust you.”

Every knot of tension in Neil’s body disappears, and he leans into Andrew’s hand. “Thank you.”

Andrew sighs, takes his hand back, and leaves.

Neil cleans up the sink and follows him.

Riley accepts the invitation with nothing short of joy. “I’ll bring my playstation,” she promises. “What games do you want me to bring? Would the girls like anything? Ask them! Text me!”

“I don’t have your collection memorized,” Neil says. “Send me a picture, and I’ll ask them if there’s anything they want to play.”

“No. You don’t get it. If they want to play something that I don’t have, I’ll go out and buy it. Hey! Hey grumpypants!” She calls across the locker room.

Kevin, Andrew, and Maria all look up.

“Grumpypants _Josten_ ,” she specifies.

“He didn’t actually—”

Riley waves Neil off in favor of yelling across the room. “Are you going to be home when I’m there?”

Andrew nods.

“Want any particular video game?”

Andrew shakes his head.

“Cool!”

“He didn’t actually take my last name,” Neil says.

She flaps a hand at him. “Does it look like I care?”

“No,” Neil admits.

“ _Josten_ is a good name.”

“So is Minyard.”

“Then why didn’t you take his name?” She asks, the _checkmate_ at the end silent yet audible.

“I worked hard for my name,” Neil tells her.

Riley sighs. “You always know how to bring a girl down, huh.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you like this with everyone?”

“No,” Neil admits, “just you. Everyone else knows me too well.”

“It’s been _six years_.”

Neil shrugs. She doesn’t know about the Moriyamas, and only knows what the press knows about Neil’s past. She’ll never know Neil as well as his family does. “It’s not a bad thing,” he says. “It’s nice.”

“Hey. Why are you wearing makeup?” She asks, frowning.

“The girls.”

“It freaks them out?”

“They haven’t seen him without makeup,” Andrew says, passing them on the way to the door.

“They _haven’t_?” Riley asks, aghast. “It’s been— _multiple days_. And they _haven’t seen you without makeup_?”

Andrew gives Neil a _look,_ and heads onto the court, followed by Clark, and by Kevin, and by the rest of the team, all moving out. Neil joins the line.

“It’ll freak them out,” Neil says. “I don’t want to scare them.”

“Haven’t they looked you up yet?”

“Nope.”

“Gossiping,” Kevin says.

Neil shuts his mouth. They have a game tomorrow. He should be more focused.

Riley knows that, too.

She shuts her mouth and focuses.

All the way until the end of the day, when she sees Neil reapplying his makeup.

“You can’t do this forever,” she says. “You just can’t keep it up.”

Neil shrugs.

Riley looks at Andrew. “Talk to him!”

Andrew shrugs. “I tried. He’s stubborn.”

Riley looks at Neil and points at Andrew. “Listen to him!”

Neil shrugs.

Kevin stops to stand by Andrew.

“There’s no point,” he says. “You may as well just get it over with. Like a bandaid.”

“Cheerful,” Neil says.

“You can’t tell me you’re more worried about what two kids think than about what literally everyone else thinks.”

“ _Everyone else_ doesn’t live with me.”

“You have to wipe it off before we play tomorrow,” Kevin says, crossing his arms. “I don’t want it running into your eyes.”

“Yup.” Neil turns around to see Andrew and Riley exchanging a glance. “What?”

Riley rolls her eyes. “One-track mind.”

Andrew nods.

“You should put on eyeliner,” Maria says, joining the group of onlookers. “Go goth.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“Look. Eyeliner. Black eyeshadow. Purple lipstick. Purple blush. Maybe dye your hair black. If you’re going to put on makeup, you should go all out.”

“No hair dye,” Neil says.

“Why?”

“FBI.”

Riley snorts. “Brings a girl down.”

“Is that your only problem with this?” Maria says. “Because I have literally all of that makeup in my bag right now.”

“I don’t want to look like a corpse, thanks.”

“Andrew, he’d look hot. Tell him he’d look hot.”

“I don’t want him to look like a corpse,” Andrew says.

“You’re all so _boring_.”

“We are?” Neil asks.

“When it counts,” Maria says, already drifting away.

“Should I be offended?” Neil asks his audience.

He gets matching shrugs.

When he and Andrew get in the car, Neil says, “I could try that purple lipstick.”

He gets no reaction.

“Red?”

Andrew hums.

“Next time I’m out.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I don’t have to put it on.”

“Lipstick probably tastes bad.”

“Almost certainly.”

“Do _you_ want to wear lipstick?”

“I don’t know,” Neil says, considering. “I’ve never tried. Red might clash with my hair.”

Andrew snorts, and it’s almost a laugh, and Neil watches him, immeasurably content.

When they get home, Paige meets them at the door, Sir purring in her arms.

“Paige,” Neil says in greeting. “Sir.”

Sir purrs loudly.

“How did you know you were gay?” Paige asks as Neil drops mail in the trashcan by the door. Mostly junk.

“I’m not,” he says. “Were you waiting at the door to ask me this?”

“How did you know you were bi?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re married to a man.”

“That I am,” Neil allows. “Have you ever heard of aromanticism? Asexuality?”

“I thought that meant that you didn’t want to get married? Or have sex?”

Neil waves a hand; Sir’s eyes follow it, looking for a toy. “ _Aromantic_ means you don’t experience romantic attraction; _asexual_ means you don’t experience sexual attraction. Aromantic people might get married for tax benefits; asexual people might have sex because they like how it feels, even if they’re not attracted to anyone. Or aromantic people might never get married, and asexual people might hate the concept of having sex. But they’re also umbrella terms, in that there’s identities that are close, but not quite. For instance: demi, which means you can only experience attraction once you get to know a person—if you’re demisexual, you don’t find actors attractive, because you don’t know them. And then there’s grey. Grey-ace, and grey-aro. And that means that you might experience attraction, but rarely, or only to very few people. And that’s what I am. For me, it’s only ever been Andrew.”

“Gross,” Natalie calls from the kitchen. “Sappy.”

Neil shrugs, and carries the two remaining useful pieces of mail—from the bank where Natalie and Paige’s accounts are held—into the kitchen, where Natalie is lying on the floor, playing with King. King is not mauling her, which is a good sign. “It’s true, though,” he says, giving her the letter with her name on it and handing Paige’s to Paige. “I kissed a girl when I was a teenager. Nothing. Nothing, ever, until Andrew, and nothing for anyone else since.”

He grabs a glass, and turns back around to find that Natalie and Paige are frozen.

Oh. Staring at their letters. And ignoring him, which is probably for the best.

“Don’t get much mail, huh,” he asks.

Natalie looks up from the floor to stare at him.

“You should’ve seen my face when Andrew gave me a key to his cousin’s house.”

“He looked like I’d given him the sun,” Andrew says from the doorway. “Also, like he was about to have a breakdown.”

Paige looks up. Her face is working up something like tears. “We _live_ here.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Yes, you do.”

“What happens when we _leave_?”

“Why are you leaving?”

“Foster homes aren’t forever!”

Neil shrugs. That's an important reminder to him; the girls are leaving. This isn't forever. Paige and Natalie have only asked for a year. “If you want to leave, we can talk about it. If not, we’ll figure it out. Until then, you’ve got bank accounts, and you should have them no matter what; they’re in Andrew’s care, because you’re too young for them to be yours for real, and as long as we’re legally your guardians, it’ll stay that way. If you leave and go to new foster parents, we might have to transfer the accounts to their care. And once you guys are 18, Andrew’s name will come off the account, and it’ll be yours.”

“What if we save our money?” Natalie says.

“What do you mean?”

“If we save it, will you take it back?”

“No, why would we?”

“We had an older foster sister. She was 17. She had a job, and our guardians took all the money she made.”

Neil breathes. “We won’t take your money.”

“If we leave, will you hold onto the accounts?”

“If you’d like us to, we will.”

“And it’ll just sit there? Until we turn 18?”

“Unless you spend it.”

“We’ll have money?”

“Yes. Although, speaking of which, we haven’t decided what your allowance will be. Is Friday a good day to give out an allowance? That way you can do things Friday nights and on the weekends? You’re 14. How much stuff do 14-year-olds do? How much should you get?” He looks at Andrew.

“What would you do with it?” Andrew asks.

Natalie and Paige just stare at him.

Sir gets bored and jumps out of Paige’s arms, prompting King to chase him out of the room.

“Movies? Games? You won’t have to pay for clothes, books, or food; if you’re going out for any of that, we can give you extra money. Does $50 a week sound right? $100 a week sounds like too much. What if we start you up savings accounts? $50 per week into the savings accounts, $50 per week into the checking accounts. Thoughts?”

Natalie and Paige stare at him.

“Sounds good to me,” Neil says. “We’ll have to make another trip to the bank next week to open savings accounts.”

“And to AT&T,” Andrew says.

Neil waits.

Andrew looks like he’s just eaten three lemons. “Fastest way to deposit money into their accounts is using a cell phone. I’ll need to buy a smartphone.”

Neil laughs. He laughs so hard he doubles over.

“Fuck you,” Andrew says.

“Nicky is going to _scream_.”

“Who’s Nicky?” Paige asks.

“Andrew’s cousin. Who has been _desperate_ for us to buy _good_ phones so that he can call us over _wifi_ and stop paying so much for regular phone calls.”

“I’m getting you a smartphone, too,” Andrew says.

The smile drops off Neil’s face. “ _No._ ”

“Time to let Nicky bother _you_.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Watch me,” Andrew says.

Neil considers for a second, but, well—“now Matt can send me more videos.”

“And he can stop bugging me to get a smartphone,” Andrew says, twirling a knife in one hand.

“Isn’t he going to a car show in two weeks?” Neil asks.

Andrew glares at Neil.

Neil grins. “You know, we could probably access bank accounts on a computer.”

“Mm.”

“And at the very least, we could just stop by the bank weekly. We don’t _have_ to get smartphones. Unless you _really_ want those car videos.”

“What car do you want?” Paige asks.

“The Maserati is only two years old,” Neil says. “What else is there?”

“Maybe nothing,” Andrew says. “Maybe the Demon.”

“Andrew!”

Andrew shrugs. “I just want to see it.”

“What’s the Demon?” Natalie asks.

“It goes fast,” Andrew says.

“It’s very expensive,” Neil says, grinning.

Andrew ignores him.

“Have you started your homework yet?” Neil asks the girls.

Natalie groans. “Do I _have_ to do it? I’m never going to _be_ anything.”

“Why don’t you want to do it?” Neil asks. “Also, I would hope you’ll never be a thing.”

She gives him a look that should have stripped the flesh from his bones, but Neil is impervious to harsh looks. Kevin Day is one of his best friends, after all. “It’s stupid.”

“Why? Is it busy work?”

“German is hard,” Paige says.

“Get it out, I’ll help you.”

“You can’t just _help_ with _German_ ,” Natalie says.

“I’m fluent in it.”

“No, you’re fluent in _Russian_.”

“And German. So is Andrew. It’s why I signed you both up for it.”

“You’re trilingual?” Paige asks.

“No.”

“Is this the same thing as you not being gay?” Paige asks. “I’m not asking the right question. How many languages do you speak?”

“Five fluently; there are two or three more wherein if I met a speaker, I could probably get by. Get out your homework. I’ll help you with it.”

Sighing in such a way that Neil understands that this is much more work than is strictly necessary, Natalie and Paige haul their books out and put them—soundlessly, gently—on the table. Neil takes one seat, and Andrew takes another, and thirty minutes later their German homework is done.

“Do we have to do the rest now?” Natalie asks.

“No, but you do have to do it tonight,” Neil says.

“It’s Friday.”

“Yup. Oh. Do you want to come to the game tomorrow? Or do you want to stay home? Or do you want to go out with friends?”

“We can stay home?” Paige asks.

“Don’t use the stove, and don’t shower. I don’t think there’s anything else you could do that would kill you. Don’t play with knives. And if you change your mind and decide to go out, text us where you’re going and who you’re going with.”

“But we can just… stay home?” Paige asks. “Neither of you will be here?”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Do you _know_ that that makes it sound like you two are going to burn the house down?”

She shakes her head violently. “We wouldn’t! We wouldn’t do that.”

“It was a joke,” Neil says softly. “I know you won’t. Yes, you can stay home. Is that what you want to do? You don’t both have to do the same thing.”

Paige and Natalie look at each other.

“We’ll stay home,” Paige says, decided.

Natalie stands. “I want to go for a run.”

“Okay,” Neil says.

“I don’t know where to go.”

“You can just run through the neighborhood. The blocks are all square, it’s hard to get lost.”

Natalie glares at him.

“Sorry, I know, you wouldn’t get lost.”

She glares at him harder.

“Neil,” Andrew says, “you’re going for a run.”

“I am?” He looks at Andrew, and then back at Natalie. “Oh. Okay. I am. Let me get changed. Are you going to run in jeans?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, I’m going to go get changed too.”

“Okay.”

Neil gets changed, checks that his makeup is firmly in place and waterproof, and meets Natalie in the front hall.

What does she want to ask him about, that she needs to get him alone?

Nothing, it turns out.

They go running.

More of a light jog, for Neil; Natalie’s still young, and while she's taller than he is, he suspects that the past four days have been some of the few in her life where she had three square meals a day.

But.

Neil guides her along his usual route, and whenever they get a chance to cut it short, he asks her if she wants to stop, and she glares at him and keeps running. 

He cuts it short anyway. He doesn’t tell her that usually he’d run six miles. Two is plenty. She’s so young.

When they get back inside, she nods at him and goes upstairs. She avoids the creaky step. The shower cuts on.

Paige and Andrew are in the living room. Each one of them has a cat. A Disney movie is on.

“How far did you run?” Paige asks, carefully not moving, unwilling to disturb King.

“Two miles.”

“It took a long time, for two miles,” she says.

Neil shrugs.

“She’s better than that. I promise. She’ll get better. She just hasn’t—we haven’t been in the best shape, recently.”

“I’m not particularly worried about it,” Neil says carefully. “She can be as fast or as slow as she wants, as long as she’s having a good time.”

“Oh. I thought you wanted her to be an athlete?”

Neil falls onto the couch next to Andrew; Sir doesn’t budge, and neither does Andrew. Normally, he’d be worried about being gross. He should probably check his makeup. But it was a slow two miles, and he barely broke a sweat. “I want her to be whatever she wants to be. If she wants to be an athlete, I’ll do what I can to help her. If she doesn’t, I’ll do what I can to help her. If she wants to go for a run once in a while, I’ll do what I can to help her.”

“Oh.” Paige scratches King’s head. “I’m just saying. She’s not worthless.”

The heartbreak is instant and familiar. “I know.”

“Okay.”

“Neither are you,” Neil says.

“Okay.”

Andrew takes Neil’s hand.

“Paige?” Neil says.

“Yes?”

“You’re not.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” she says, and it’s a terrible response, all the more so for how toneless it is, how perfectly calculated it is not to anger.

Neil could push.

Or he could not.

This change isn’t going to happen overnight.

Instead, he leans against Andrew, unshakeable, sturdy, the only person in this world capable of standing next to him, and an hour and a half later he wakes up.

He’s still leaning on Andrew, holding Andrew’s hand, his nose full of Andrew’s soap, and he feels safe, so safe, painfully comfortable. He lifts his head, just a little, just enough to place a kiss on Andrew’s cheek, and remembers a conversation held years ago, when Neil, exhausted by finals, had fallen asleep on Andrew, had drooled on his shirt. He’d expected Andrew to be annoyed. Andrew had, instead, been—surprised. Neil had woken to find that Andrew hadn’t moved at all.

“ _I have knives,_ ” Andrew had said.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Neil had answered, bemused, because of course he did.

“ _You trusted me enough to fall asleep._ ”

“ _I do every night._ ”

“ _I don’t usually have my knives on me, when I sleep._ ”

“ _Are you going to... stab me in my sleep_?”

“ _How do you know I won’t_?”

“I love you,” Neil whispers in the present day.

Andrew turns to bump his forehead against Neil’s. “I love you,” he says. “Help me make dinner?”

“’Course.”

Dinner consists of sticking a bunch of food in the instant pot and turning it on.

“Where are the girls?” Neil asks.

“Upstairs. Doing homework.”

Neil closes his eyes, still cozily tired, and feels Andrew, pressed against him, pressing him into the counter, just standing. Neil lets his head dip forward to touch Andrew’s, and Andrew curls one hand around Neil’s cheek. They stay there, breathing, until the timer goes off, and Andrew pops the pressure release. Neil pulls out his phone to text the girls— _5 minutes until dinner._

Probably they shouldn’t have their phones while they’re doing homework.

It doesn’t seem to matter.

Natalie complains hotly about math all through dinner, and Neil does his best to explain it to her, prompting her to exclaim: “I don’t want to _learn_ , I want to _complain_.”

He shut his mouth and let her get on with it.

“On Wednesday,” he says once she seems to have exhausted herself, “my friend Riley is coming over—she’s got a playstation, she wants to know if there are any games you want to play. She’s got basically everything.” He feels no guilt over the white lie; if he tells the girls that Riley will buy whatever they want, they’ll never pick anything, and regardless, her money gives her enough access to everything Gamestop’s got that she essentially does have basically everything.

“Oh, she’s rich too?” Natalie says.

“She’s one of the strikers on my team.”

“So, yes,” Natalie says.

“Do you know anyone who _isn’t_ rich?” Paige asks.

Neil chews thoughtfully. “Wymack. Our old college coach.”

“Do you even still talk to him?”

“Yeah. Speaking of which, I think Matt and Dan will be coming down soon,” he tells Andrew. “So we’ll be having dinner at Abby’s.”

“What’s Abby’s?” Paige asks. “Who are Matt and Dan?”

“Matt and Dan are two of our old teammates. Dan’s an exy coach; she’s going to take over for Wymack when he retires. Matt’s—something important. Does CFO sound about right?”

Andrew nods.

“He plans on switching jobs to move down here, when Dan takes Wymack’s place. Abby is the nurse for the Foxes, our old college team, and also not rich. She’s Wymack’s—I don’t know. They’re together, but they won’t get married. They’re happy, anyway, and Andrew’s therapist, Bee—also not rich—is involved in there, somewhere. Dan thinks of Wymack as her father. And our _other_ old teammate and current teammate Kevin Day is Wymack’s _actual_ son, and he’s a better dad than either of us ever had, so anytime Matt and Dan come down, they bring Renee and Allison—two more former teammates—with them, and we all head to Abby’s for dinner. And sometimes we drag Wymack over here, but he’s busy right now—school year just started.”

“Wymack is a fun first name,” Natalie says.

“Sorry—it’s his last name. His first name is David. Kevin has his mom's last name, because his mom didn't tell anyone who his dad was for years, and Kevin didn't find out until he was almost in college.”

This is allowed to pass without further questioning, and dinner ends in silence. Neil is almost scared to speak, on the off chance it’ll provoke another round of questioning.

But they’re talking. Natalie and Paige are talking. And Neil is content with that, if unused to being interrogated all dinner long.

Saturday’s game is _fun_.

Neil, Kevin, Riley, and Maria are a balanced force of strikers. Neil had trained Riley and Maria in Raven footwork before Kevin had signed, and once Kevin and Neil were on the same team again, they’d started inventing new footwork, new drills, new moves. These days, it’s smooth, thoughtless, second-nature. Riley is Neil’s opposite—tall where Neil is short, broad where Neil is slim, and working with her is _fun_. She laughs with him, as thrilled by the gameplay as Neil, more joyful than Kevin. She rarely gets in fights—she’s as tall as, if not taller than, most of her marks, and it’s easy to be intimidated by her.

Playing with Maria usually results in more fights—she’s smaller than Riley, and combined with her very real joy in provoking her opponents, people like to take a swing at her. Neil’s only ever allowed to play with her in the first half; in the second half Andrew comes on the court, and then the fear isn’t that someone’ll get injured, it’s that Neil and Maria will join forces and Andrew will run to defend Neil and there’ll be a bloodbath. Today he doesn’t even get that—he’s on with Riley in the first quarter and Kevin in the fourth.

And playing side-by-side with Kevin is, as it’s always been, a challenge. Can Neil go faster? Can he throw harder? Can he aim more accurately? Which one of them can run themselves into the ground faster? There’s less laughter, with Kevin, than there is with Riley, but there’s more fierce grinning, clacking of racquets, French.

Neil spends the second quarter, as he always does, pacing. Watching. Andrew stands, a pillar, watching Charlie Zhang in the goal, watching Kevin and Maria dance. Neil’s path takes him from the end of the windows to Andrew and back again. He can’t let himself get cold; then he’ll have to warm up all over again, and who’s got the time for that?

Maria’s backliner mark gets angry, five minutes before halftime. Maria isn’t thin, and she’s not as fast as Neil—but inevitably, people interpret that as _slow_. Even people who have played against her before underestimate her. She’s _nimble_. She can stop on a dime and swerve, and combined with Raven footwork and Neil and Kevin’s latest drills, she’s managed to ditch her mark five times in the past three minutes, and she’s made it clear what she thinks of him for it, and he’s unhappy about it.

He drops his racquet and goes for her.

It’s always a mistake. Maria never shows her hand until her mark is too pissed to take advantage of it. She skips out of the way and pitches the ball into the goal, which lights up red; Neil bangs the wall in support.

Thirty seconds later, her mark checks her into the wall, and then she’s up and swinging, and then Alfie Lin is there, and then the referees.

Maria takes her foul shot, and makes it with ease.

After that, her mark gets wise; he calms down a bit, does his best to stay the course and not get angry. It’s not enough to stop her from scoring three more times, but it makes a difference.

When halftime comes around, she stomps off the court. “You,” she says, pointing at Andrew, “are not gonna let his girlfriend take so much as a singular point.”

Andrew stares at her.

She doesn’t wait for confirmation.

“Am I supposed to let them take any points, at all?” Andrew asks.

Neil shrugs. “You can only do so much,” he says.

Andrew shoots him a dirty look. “Fuck you.”

“Then do more,” Neil says lightly, cheerful.

Andrew does.

Watching him, watching him make the impossible saves that have become his hallmark, Neil wants, so desperately, to be out there, to be on the court, the blood buzzing in his veins, that _need_ to be part of it—part of the well-oiled machine that is their team, the roar of the crowd replaced with the roar of his pumping adrenaline. Never mind that he’s already been out on the court today, and never mind that he’s been doing this for a decade; exy is still his gift to himself, his reward for surviving this long.

And then he’s on, clacking sticks with Maria as he passes her, standing next to Kevin, waiting for Alfie to deal, and he can feel Andrew at his back, a solid presence.

Neil watches, when he can, when he can trust himself to watch without getting distracted. So he sees North California’s Gary Gitta dodge Frank, sees him race out of Frank’s reach, sees him, right up against the goal, swing his racquet—

And there’s Andrew.

The ball flies halfway across the court in Neil’s direction, and Neil dodges his backliner and takes off.

Andrew has, over the course of the last year, let in a total of fifteen goals.

At the end of the game, that number is unchanged.

Neil grabs Kevin’s racquet, meeting Kevin’s grin with one of his own. They’re shoo-ins for championships. This game was the last one they needed. They could sit out the next three games, and they’d still be good to go.

They collect their backliners, Frank and Athena, and Frank hauls Alfie in for a hug, and Andrew is there, waiting for them, in the goal, helmet off, absolutely _shining_ with pride.

Frank slaps Andrew on the shoulder. “We won! We’re in! We fucking _made_ it! You could be a _little_ happy, dude.”

“I am,” Andrew says, absentmindedly, eyes on Neil.

Neil can’t stop grinning. “Incredible. You were incredible. Fuck. Fuck!” He tangles his fingers in Andrew’s hair, bumps their foreheads together. “I can’t fucking believe you made that save— _incredible—_ "

“Of course I made it,” Andrew says.

“Why is _incredible_ your adverb of choice?” Alfie asks. “Have you ever tried _amazing_? Some variety?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, pulling away to grin at the rest of his team. “It didn’t work as well.”

The rest of their team ambushes them there, and then they line up, shake hands with North Carolina, and head back into the locker room.

Neil’s on press duty, along with Maria, and they do their makeup together, albeit to remarkably different ends: Neil looks largely like he’s not wearing makeup, and Maria looks thoroughly goth. She holds out a fist; he bumps it. “Ready?”

Maria nods.

They meet the press together, Neil still grinning, still euphoric, Maria still bouncing with adrenaline.

The questions are normal, easy, for all of five minutes, until—

“Are you wearing _makeup_?”

Maria looks in the voice’s direction. “Did you think this was _natural_?”

“Not you—Josten!”

Neil glances at Maria—she would’ve told him if he’d done something wrong, right? She shrugs. “Is it that obvious?” He asks with a laugh. Can Natalie and Paige tell when he’s wearing it? He really thought he’d been doing a good job of making it look natural.

“We know what your face looks like,” says another reporter, to a chuckle of agreement from the crowd. That chuckle says: _We know you, Neil Josten, and what you look like. We’re part of the crowd that’s used to it. We’re not those exy newcomers who stare and ask questions._

“You do?” Maria asks, buying Neil a minute. “I really thought you were all new here.”

What to say? He doesn’t want to tell them he’s fostering kids. That doesn’t seem like anything they need to know—and anyway, in the exy community, everyone knows enough about Andrew’s and Neil’s pasts that their ability to foster children would raise flags. “I am,” he tells them. “Gotta go grocery shopping after this, and I’m tired of cashiers having to spend five minutes staring before they start scanning—if those self-checkout machines made any sense, I’d use them instead,” he says, cheerfully, to a general murmur of agreement.

He’s lying a lot, these days. Andrew won’t be happy about it. But Neil isn’t telling anyone about Natalie and Paige. Not this crowd. Not these people, with their cameras and their talk shows and their noisy speculation. Neil remembers very well the lesson he learned from Kevin: When people talk, secrets have a way of getting out and hurting people.

The reporters move on.

“Vultures,” Maria mutters as they head out the door.

“Can you tell?” Neil asks. “That I’m wearing makeup?”

“Neil, your face is so fucking recognizable that anyone who _can’t_ tell is blind. But your makeup is impeccable. If your kids don’t know what you look like, they won’t notice you’re wearing makeup.”

Neil breathes a sigh of relief as they reach the parking lot.

“You may as well just tell them, though,” she says. “One of these days, they’re going to look you up, and then it’s going to be out of your hands.”

“That’s what Andrew says,” Neil says mournfully.

“Well, if you want, I can come over,” she says. “I’ll dig out my _full_ goth gear. It might not all fit anymore. Well, I’ll dig it out anyway. I’ve got no fewer than 18 pins that say _freak_. They won’t even _look_ at you.”

“Thanks.”

“Go make out with your boy, now,” she orders, pointing at the Maserati.

“I will. Go make out with your girl.”

She grimaces. “We’re off again.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “What happened?”

“I just—didn’t want to be with her anymore.”

Neil stops. “ _You_ broke up with _her_?”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” she says, but she sounds pleased. “It was just like, am I in love with her? Or am I in love with the possibility that she loves me? And do I want _her_ to love me? Or do I just want _someone_ to love me, and it feels like she’s my best shot? Like, do I want to date _her_ , or do I just want to _date_? Do I like the way she makes me feel, or is it just nice to get back together again? You know?”

Neil looks at her, and tries to know. “Probably I’m not the best person to ask about this,” he says delicately. Is this a thing most people feel? Neil has trouble watching romcoms because he understands so little about how other people handle love. “But I think that if you’re asking yourself if she’s right for you so often you have to break up with her to think about it, then maybe, she’s not right.”

“Did you ever wonder? About Andrew?”

Neil opens his mouth to say no, but that’s not entirely true. “I did. I didn’t really know what was happening, or have any kind of clarity on what I felt, or on what we had—but I didn’t come to the conclusion that I should cut it off, I decided that I wanted to explore it more. It sounds like you’ve explored far enough.”

Maria chews on her lip. Neil wonders vaguely how her lipstick stays on—he worries constantly about his makeup, and there’s no real reason for him to touch his face. Lipstick seems so _fragile_. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she says. “That’s—comforting.”

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

She looks at him and snorts. “You don’t care at all, do you. If you had to tell me I was ruining my life you wouldn’t blink an eye.”

“That’s not true,” Neil says defensively. “I’d probably blink both eyes.” She laughs. “I’m just not very good at being comforting.”

“Well, thanks anyway. Go have fun with your adorable little relationship. I’m going home to be lonely.”

“Sorry,” Neil says, but he offers her a two-fingered salute, and she returns it, and they head in opposite directions. He slides into the Maserati.

“Grocery shopping?” Andrew says drily.

“I’m not telling them about the twins,” Neil says.

Andrew twists sideways in the seat so he can stare at Neil.

Neil stares back.

“I miss your face.”

“Me, too.”

“Neil.”

“I’m serious. Look. _You_ know it’s true, people really do stare. I’m not pretty.”

“Neil Josten, you are one of the prettiest people I’ve ever seen,” Andrew says softly, eyes boring into Neil’s. “And I’m not alone in thinking that.”

Neil smiles at him, gooey. “It doesn’t stop people from staring. They’re grossed out. I can see it. And when it’s reporters, cashiers, bank tellers, I don’t care. But.” He can practically hear his mother’s voice, telling him to hide them, to blend in, to look like nothing and no one.

“But,” Andrew prompts.

“It’s not so hard to be confident, when I only have to do it for a minute. When I can get in the car and leave. I can’t do that at home. And—we already scare them. People with scarred faces aren’t exactly thought of as _more_ trustworthy than people with smooth skin. I just—can’t handle it. Yet. I just need more time. Just a little.”

Andrew watches him.

“Why do you still wear your armbands, Drew?” Neil asks gently.

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Those are on me. The scars on your face? Those aren’t from your own—” Andrew sits there, mouth half open, strangling on his own words. And then he straightens out in his seat to look out the windshield.

And then he punches the steering wheel. “ _Wanting._ I _wanted_. I was supposed to be her son.”

Neil waits.

Eventually, Andrew breathes again. Puts his hand over the center console.

Neil takes it, gently, examining his knuckles. Red, but no split skin.

“I get it,” Andrew says. “The makeup.”

Neil threads their fingers together.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t let me force you. I won’t let myself force you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m always worried.”

But he drives home, hand in Neil’s.

The house is still standing.

“How was the game?” Paige asks.

“Good,” Neil says. “Did you watch it?”

She looks a little guilty. “No.”

Neil feels a crashing wave of relief—if they didn’t watch the game, they didn’t see the reporters ask about his makeup. “Don’t worry about it. Did you guys do anything fun while we were gone?”

“We watched _Pride and Prejudice_. Did you guys get hurt?”

“No. No more than the usual bruises. Did you like the movie?”

“She’s very smart,” Natalie says. “And very cool.”

“And very pretty,” Paige says.

And then they go silent.

Neil pulls out board games—Clue, Sorry, Life. He saves Monopoly for another day. Natalie beats them all, handily, at Sorry; Andrew wins Clue, but only because his turn came before Paige’s. Neil wins Life, by virtue of several extremely good spins.

And then they rewatch _Pride and Prejudice_ , by unanimous vote.

“Are Katelyn and Aaron still coming over tomorrow?” Paige asks as the credits roll.

“Yes,” Andrew answers.

Neil waits.

No questions are asked.

“They’re nice,” Neil says. “They have a baby boy. Freddie. Fredrick, but no one calls babies Fredrick.”

“Oh,” Paige says noncommittally.

“Are you nervous?” Neil asks.

“Why would we be?”

“You seem to be.”

“I mean, we’re—outsiders.”

Neil shrugs. “Katelyn can talk to anyone. Whether or not she already knows you is a non-issue.”

“Okay. Can we go upstairs?”

“You don’t need our permission,” Neil says.

They vanish.

Neil looks at Andrew.

“It’ll be fine,” Neil says. “The worst thing that could happen is that she’ll talk about her nephew for an hour.”

“Lying isn’t a good look on you.”

“It’ll be terrible. Everything is going to go wrong. Aaron and Katelyn are going to leave in tears.”

Andrew looks like he might just agree.

Neil kisses his cheek. “It’ll be fine. I’m putting on 30 Rock.”

He does.

Andrew settles into him, and Neil settles into Andrew, and Neil puts everything he’s got into a desperate prayer that Aaron and Katelyn’s visit goes well.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron and Katelyn come to visit!

Aaron and Katelyn announce themselves with a knock, but by the time Neil opens the door, they’re already spilling through it; Freddie is falling out of Katelyn’s arms, along with a host of toys intended to keep him at least somewhat occupied. 

“Hi!” Katelyn says breathlessly, with a grin. “Sorry, let me just—” and then there are toys in the front hallway. Aaron shuts the door behind him, and nods at Andrew. “You must be the girls!” Katelyn says as Freddie shrieks. “I’m Katelyn, Aaron’s wife.”

“I’m Natalie,” Natalie says, looking at Katelyn’s arms with the terror of one who fully expects to be hugged.

“I’m Paige,” Paige says, wearing the same expression.

Katelyn reads it with the ease of someone who’s known Andrew for longer than she’d like, and keeps her arms down. “It’s nice to meet you! How long have you been here? A week?”

“Since Tuesday,” Natalie answers.

“Oh. How are you settling in?”

Neil turns and grabs Freddie as he contemplates the nearest electrical socket. “We should do this at your place,” he tells Aaron, placing Freddie in the middle of his toy pile.

“We’re doing fine,” Natalie says.

“Katelyn won’t let us,” Aaron mutters. “I tried. She says the house is too messy.”

“What school are you guys going to?” Katelyn asks.

“At least it’s babyproofed,” Neil says, frustrated. How much is he supposed to care about some mess?

“George W. Prep,” Natalie answers.

“That’s what I said,” Aaron says, “but she says _we_ can keep Freddie out of trouble.”

Neil moves Freddie as King emerges from the kitchen, and Aaron grabs King as Freddie reaches for him.

“Is it nice? Do you like it? We’re trying to decide whether or not Freddie should go to private school. Next year we’re going to enroll him in a Montessori school, of course, but whether or not we should keep that _up_ is another matter altogether—Neil,” she says, and Neil turns and grabs Freddie before he can get more than two steps up the staircase.

“I should’ve brought his playpen,” Aaron says. “Do you think Natalie and Paige want to play with him? Look, he’s adorable.”

Neil looks at Freddie, who has sticky grasping hands, and at Natalie and Paige, who look like they absolutely did not sign up for any of this.

“It’s all right,” Natalie says.

“We have to do more research, of course,” Katelyn says, “but Andrew picked George W., and I think that’s a pretty good sign, right?”

Neil places Freddie in his toy stack.

“Right,” Natalie says.

Katelyn smiles, legitimately happy. Looks for Freddie. Glances at Neil. Does a double-take, frowning.

“We bought fresh basil,” Neil says, heading her off. Heading off Aaron, too, who, tipped off by Katelyn, is giving himself a good long look at Neil’s face. “And parsley.”

“Oh, good,” Katelyn says. She gets the hint and turns towards the kitchen. “Andrew, vegetables or chicken?”

Andrew throws a long-suffering glance in Neil’s direction, but he answers. “I’ll take the chicken.” It’s a smart move. Katelyn can pick Freddie up with mushroom on her hands, but Andrew can’t touch him with raw chicken on his hands.

“ _Daddy!_ ” Freddie shrieks.

Aaron grins, and Andrew looks much less long-suffering.

That’s why they all keep doing this, after all. Andrew likes to know that Aaron is happy. And he is; it’s obvious in every glance at Katelyn, at his son.

“Oh, wow,” Natalie says. “Is that what you’d look like if you smiled, ever?”

Andrew glances over his shoulder at her, and then at a still-smiling Aaron. “No.”

Neil glances at Paige in time to watch her wage war against herself: stay silent, or give in to her curiosity?

Curiosity wins. “How do you know?”

“You don’t know what he looks like when he smiles?” Aaron asks.

“He never does,” Natalie says, irritated. “So how would we know?”

“You didn’t look them up?” Aaron asks, absentmindedly waving a dinosaur in front of Freddie’s face.

“No. When did you stop smiling?” Paige asks, following Andrew into the kitchen. Natalie follows her, and Neil follows her, waiting, watching. He’s not sure how to cut this off without it being obvious that he’s cutting it off.

“When I was 11,” Andrew says.

Even as Katelyn sorts through the vegetables, Neil can still see her wince.

“Why do they have pictures of you smiling online when you were a kid?”

“They don’t.”

Neil should stop this. Andrew’s just standing there, staring at the package of chicken.

But he’s still answering. And Neil doesn’t know how to stop this, not without making Paige somehow more curious, not without riling up Natalie. It would be obvious to Katelyn and Aaron that Neil’s cutting the discussion short, but Aaron’s used to that, and Katelyn doesn’t matter _that_ much. At least, whether or not she knows that secrets are being kept isn’t a cause of anxiety for Neil. But he doesn't particularly want Natalie and Paige to know that secrets are being kept, and he's not sure how to stop them from asking questions without knocking them eight steps backwards.

“Then how are there pictures of you smiling?”

Aaron gives up and lifts Freddie. “From when he was drugged,” he says, trying and failing to get Freddie to hold onto a dinosaur.

Aaron looks up at the silence.

“Didn’t you know?” He asks the girls.

“No. Know what? What drugs? _Drugged_. Like, someone did that to you? Or were you a crackhead?” Paige asks.

“He was on anti-psychotics,” Aaron says, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry. I thought you knew.”

“Are you still on them?” Paige asks.

“No,” Andrew says, one hand half-curled, like he’s considering opening the chicken package.

“But you’re not psychotic,” Natalie says cannily. “So they couldn’t be _anti-_ psychotics. Or were you mis-drugged? Or were you taking them for fun?”

“You seem very certain of a lot of things,” Andrew says, picking up the scissors, slicing open the package of chicken.

“What were you on?” Natalie asks.

Freddie throws the dinosaur to the ground. Aaron doesn’t move. Katelyn isn’t chopping vegetables anymore, either.

Andrew places the scissors, gently, on the counter.

Neil walks to the cabinet and grabs a glass.

“Experimental anti-depressants,” Andrew says, every syllable clipped.

“ _Experimental_?” Paige asks, right on cue.

Neil drops ice cubes in there. A lot. The glass will contain more ice cube than liquid water.

“I was the ideal test subject,” Andrew says. “ _A subject who is on the verge of inhumanity should be treated in whatever manner possible,_ ” he says. “ _Andrew Minyard is destructive and joyless, and any measures that can now be taken should be considered._ There’s a law called the _right to try_ law, wherein people on the verge of death can try unproven treatments—they’re going to die anyway, so what’s the worst that can happen if the treatment doesn’t work? And if it _does_ work, that's great for science.”

Neil fills the glass with cold water, listening to the ice snap.

“It’s not hard to bend the law. I was supposed to be grateful they’d done it at all. It kept me out of jail. They gave me the pills, and I was oh-so-happy, and then I got to live my normal life, with a smile plastered on my face and my mood in the air and my _brain_ buzzing on—”

He spins, searching, and Neil is already there, shoving the frigid glass of water into Andrew’s chest. Andrew takes it, reflexively, and the shock of the cold stops him in his tracks. He takes a sip.

“What was the drug called?” Paige asks.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What if it does?”

“It doesn’t. They discontinued it a year after I went through rehab.”

Neil remembers, vividly, Andrew’s fury. He’d gotten a letter, informing him that the study he’d technically been a part of had been discontinued; subjects had reported extreme side effects, including loss of the ability to properly process emotions or negative events, and most of them had been weaned off the drugs within a month of starting them.

Andrew had torn the letter to shreds.

Neil had locked himself and Andrew in the bathroom, and Andrew had raged, silently, violently, until Neil had shoved him into a cold bath. And then Neil had called Bee, and Andrew had gone to an emergency therapy session.

“That’s good,” Paige says. “Right? Were you happy when you heard?”

Andrew gives his glass of water a sardonic look. “It was the only time Neil was ever scared of me.”

Neil frowns. “No, I wasn’t.”

Andrew graces him with a raised eyebrow. “You took away my knives.”

Neil opens his mouth, and closes it again.

Andrew tilts his head— _you see?_ —and turns to the chicken, plopping the pieces out onto a cutting board.

“I wasn’t worried,” Neil says in Russian, “that you would hurt _me_. I was scared that you would hurt yourself.”

Andrew freezes. Tension, through his shoulders and back, like a book Neil knows how to read, every word written in a language Neil speaks. Andrew wants to throw something. He wants to throw a knife. He can do neither. In two seconds, Andrew is going to shove this down to where it can’t hurt anyone else. 

Neil throws caution to the wind. He'll deal with Natalie and Paige later—he has to say something now—he opens his mouth—

“Well, this is going great,” Natalie says, sarcasm snapping in her voice. “This is, what, a monthly thing?”

The tension bleeds out of Andrew. Not shut down, but gone. Neil closes his eyes for a moment, relief coursing through his veins like adrenaline.

Freddie reaches over and grabs Neil’s shirt.

“Yup,” Andrew says, chopping chicken into neat pieces.

“I didn’t know,” Aaron says, apparently unaware of the way Freddie is leaning out of his arms. “Andrew, you didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t ask,” Andrew says, apathetic.

Neil reaches over and takes Freddie from Aaron, who barely notices.

“Oh,” Katelyn says, almost surprised. “Were you on—”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t they take everyone off it after a month or something? Because the side effects were—untenable.”

“Not everyone. Some of us got—” a piece of chicken tries to skitter across the counter, and Andrew grabs it— “special treatment.”

“That’s bullshit,” Aaron says hotly.

“You’re a little late to the outrage party.”

“ _You didn’t tell me_!”

“Figure things out for yourself.”

“Did _he_?” Aaron asks, flinging a finger out at Neil. He sees Freddie in Neil’s arms, playing with the buttons on his Henley, and seems surprised by this.

“Yes,” Andrew says.

“We can’t all be Neil!”

“No. No, we can’t. Aaron.” Andrew looks over his shoulder. “There was nothing you could’ve done when I was on them, and thinking I was psychotic kept everyone out of my business. If you didn’t figure it out, I wasn’t going to tell you. But I’m sorry I didn’t tell you after the fact.”

Aaron is stunned into silence, and Andrew looks back at his chicken.

Neil opens his mouth, to say—what? “Katelyn’s a neurosurgeon,” he says.

Paige, bless her, pounces. “How much money do you make? Why’d you decide to be a neurosurgeon?”

Neil breathes a sigh of relief when Katelyn answers; given a willing audience, Katelyn can go for hours, and Paige is nothing if not a willing audience.

Neil, no longer concerned about Andrew, sets Freddie down and spends the next 45 minutes following him around the house, removing him from situations that should not be dangerous, and yet, somehow, are. God, he’s so glad Natalie and Paige are teenagers. Babies are too much. They’re on the verge of fatal accidents at all times. How Katelyn and Aaron are willing to let the little death magnet out of their sights, Neil doesn’t understand, and why they’re willing to let Neil—of all people, _Neil—_ take care of Freddie is a mystery. Neil is fairly certain that his aura causes people to spontaneously generate trauma.

And then dinner, and Paige and Natalie bolt their food, and Paige turns to Aaron and says: “Were you fostered, too?”

Aaron looks horrified to be thrust into the spotlight, but neither Neil nor Andrew rise to save him. “For a couple days. Mom initially didn’t want kids at all, and then she decided that she could only handle one.”

“Is that why we haven’t met her?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh. Sorry. How’d she die?”

“A car crash.”

“Oh. That sucks. We had a foster mom once who got hit by a drunk driver.”

Aaron looks desperately uncertain as to how to answer that. “Just a regular old crash,” he says finally.

“Is there such a thing as a regular old fatal car crash?”

Aaron glances at Neil, who shrugs—it’s not _his_ fault Paige is curious. “Andrew would know more about it than I would,” he says, ignoring the look Andrew gives him. “He was in the car when it happened.”

“Oh—it’s really lucky you survived, then, if it was enough to kill her,” Paige says. “What’d she hit?”

“I made the car crash,” Andrew says. “I killed her.”

Aaron drops his fork.

Neil shuts his eyes. What kind of damage control can he do for that? How can he make that _better_? Maybe Andrew can say he was joking. That probably wouldn’t work. Well, this fostering thing was a fun little experiment. What’s the statute of limitations on murder?

“Oh,” Paige says, apparently undisturbed. “Why?”

Neil opens his eyes in time to see Katelyn’s horrified face. “ _What_?” She exchanges a glance with Aaron, who’s gone white as a sheet. Neil can only imagine his own face is a similar shade.

“Didn’t you know?” Andrew asks Katelyn, unperturbed. Neil’s going to have to have a talk with him. Is this to fuck over Aaron?

“I—Aaron told me, but—I—” Katelyn waves a hand at Natalie and Paige, who look surprised to be waved at, and absolutely unphased by the knowledge that their foster father is a murderer. “Shouldn’t you two be more—horrified?”

“I don’t know yet,” Paige says. “I mean, did you kill her for giving you up? That sounds like an unreasonable punishment, I think, probably. Or was it something else? Was it self-defense?”

“Paige-protection instinct,” Andrew says, and Natalie and Paige both nod in understanding.

“What?” Aaron says.

Andrew waves it off. Aaron opens his mouth, probably to ask what the fuck Andrew was thinking, telling a couple kids that he’d killed Tilda—Neil is shocked to find himself on Aaron’s side—but Paige gets words out faster.

“Hey, Neil, what about your parents?”

“Both dead,” Neil says.

“Oh. Wait. Wait, you told us your dad died. What about your mom? How’d she die?”

“Dad killed her.”

“Oh.”

Silence for three blessed seconds.

“Where is she buried?”

“California.”

“Oh. Why is she buried in California?”

“It’s where she died.”

“Yeah, but don’t you have to buy a plot and everything? You probably could’ve moved her.”

“This isn’t polite dinner conversation,” Neil says diplomatically.

“But my mom’s death is?” Aaron asks.

“Well, no,” Neil admits.

“Okay,” Paige says, “but _polite dinner conversation_ is a fiction intended to make sure kids shut up. Should I shut up? I can.”

Andrew looks at Neil, and he’s _amused_. He thinks this shit’s funny. It’s part of his usual bullshit—hold Aaron close, but god, not _too_ close. And his face says he’s pretty sure the kids won’t care. Death doesn’t seem to bother them much.

“I don’t think you need to shut up,” Katelyn says. “I mean—how bad could it be? Neil?” She looks at him, as if to say, _she’s just a curious kid. Please, god, give her something to be curious about other than the murder Andrew committed._

Neil sighs. “She got beaten with a tire iron, drove us a very long way away, and died from internal hemorrhage in the car while we were on a beach in California. I couldn’t get her off the seat, so I burned the car with her inside it, stuck the bones in a backpack, walked a couple miles, and buried her.”

Paige looks like she’s regretting opening her mouth, even as she says—“why couldn’t you get her off the seat?”

“The sound of dried blood ripping off vinyl is a lot,” Neil says drily. “It was a bit much.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

Paige’s face twitches.

Neil can see it.

She’s going to ask a question Neil can’t answer, and then it’ll be a whole thing, and Katelyn and Aaron are here and Neil can’t deal with it.

“How’s your nephew?” Neil asks Katelyn.

Katelyn lights up, clearly overjoyed to get the opportunity to talk about anything but dead parents. “Oh, he’s doing great!”

Twenty minutes later, she’s still going.

Natalie gives Neil a _look_ , but other than that, his distraction is successful.

Eventually, Aaron lifts Freddie into the air, tosses him over his shoulder, and, laughing the whole way, hauls him out the door while Freddie shrieks his joy for the whole neighborhood to hear. Neil and Andrew help Katelyn cart the toys to the car, Katelyn gives Neil a hug, and then they’re gone.

Neil and Andrew duck back inside, shutting the door and locking it. Safe. Neil runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t stand her nephew.”

“You’ve never even met him.”

“You hate him too.”

“Only because I can’t handle hearing so _much_ about him.”

“You guys do this _every month_?” Paige says, and Neil turns away from the door to find her holding Sir.

“That was a fucking mess,” Natalie says.

“You guys did great, though,” Andrew says. “Keep asking questions like that, and they might not bother coming over next month.”

Natalie crosses her arms. “You’d be sad if they didn’t.”

“I know.”

Natalie looks utterly disarmed—she’d expected more of an argument.

Neil waits, expecting some mention of murder, but there is none. They clean up. They watch a movie. Eventually, they go to bed, and Neil turns on Andrew. “What the _fuck_ , Drew?”

Andrew looks, shockingly, surprised. “What?”

“Why would you _tell_ them that?”

Andrew shrugs. “I didn’t think they’d care. And I was right.”

Neil follows him into the bathroom. “Drew.”

“Natalie stabbed a man, and you know as well as I do that amateurs don’t aim to wound. She didn’t grab the knife with the hopes of slowing him down. Anything that didn’t kill him wouldn’t be enough to stop him. Those are two kids who understand perfectly well what it means to decide murder is the only option.”

Neil puts his face in his hands. The sink runs. Neil takes a deep breath. It’s fine. It turned out fine. Andrew’s right, and it turned out fine, and there’s no reason to panic.

Something wet pokes his hand—Neil looks up to find Andrew prodding him with a toothbrush, toothpaste already on it. Neil takes it, for lack of anything better to do.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew offers. “I’ll tell you before I tell them anything else.”

Neil waves a hand. “I guess it turned out fine. Jesus, though, Drew.”

Andrew takes his free hand. “I _am_ sorry,” he says, through a mouthful of toothpaste.

Neil bumps his shoulder into Andrew’s. “One of these days,” he says, sticking the toothbrush in his mouth, “one of us is going to get us jailed.”

Andrew rinses his mouth out. “We’ll go on the run,” he says, like that’s the logical response. Neil has learned, in the years since he stopped running, that _going on the run_ is not a logical response. “They’ll never find us.”

“Where will we hide?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Montana. New Zealand. Greenland. Someplace no one would care.” Andrew says his piece flippantly, like he's pulling it off the top of his head.

Neil glances at him. Andrew isn't often flippant. “You’re not serious.”

Andrew makes a face. “Why can’t I be?”

“Besides the obvious?”

“Yes.”

“Aaron. Nicky.”

Andrew makes another face, this one more disgusted than the last. “ _Family_.”

“We never went on a honeymoon.”

“We’ve been on 18 vacations.”

“Sure, but those were all _to_ places, for tourist things. What if we just went to—I don’t know—Iceland for a month? We could even switch hotels a bunch, to keep things fun. Take walks. Eat ice cream. Hang out in the hotel room.”

Andrew looks at Neil. “Are you trying to bribe me?”

“With what? To do what?”

“With responsibility-free time, to behave?”

“More like a reward than a bribe, I think.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

“I forgave you already,” Neil says. “Don’t tell them about other illegal things you did.”

“I can’t tell them about cracker dust?”

“Bad precedent.”

“The underage drinking?”

“ _Very_ bad precedent.”

Andrew’s quiet for a minute, during which Neil washes his face.

“Drugging you?”

“For the love of _god_ , Drew, _please do not_.”

“You’re laughing.”

“Well, sure, but—”

“We can go to bed now,” Andrew decides.

Neil rolls his eyes, but he kisses Andrew’s forehead and follows him to bed.

“We can’t go on a month-long vacation,” Andrew says as he gets into bed, propping his head up on one hand so he can look at Neil. “It would mean either abandoning the kids for a month or taking them out of the country for a month.”

“Well, we kind of just have to wait then, I guess,” Neil says, taking Andrew’s free hand and tracing the tops of his nails with one finger. “Until they go to another home. At the end of the year.”

“What?”

“They wanted one year,” Neil reminds him.

“That doesn’t mean that they’ll leave at the end of it.”

Neil looks up at Andrew. In the faint streetlight glow puddling on the windowsill, Andrew looks disturbed—disturbed by the thought that the kids will leave. “I mean, unless we adopt them, they’re going to leave at _some_ point,” Neil points out.

Andrew _hates_ that.

“Well, maybe not,” Neil says, trying to be comforting. “Maybe they’ll want to stay.”

“Would you want to adopt them?” Andrew asks.

Neil opens his mouth, and nothing comes out.

That’s a ridiculous question. He can’t have _kids_. He’s technically a member of the mafia. He will never, ever be safe, not really, not in any meaningful way, and neither will anyone attached to him. And how can he adopt Natalie and Paige? They don’t even know what he looks like.

Andrew waits.

“I don’t know,” Neil says eventually.

Andrew waits.

“It’s not—” Neil tries, thinking out loud, “that I have any problem with them, or with them being around forever, it’s just—” he hunts for the words that would describe his apprehension. “What kid would ever choose me? I mean—covered in scars, can’t go out in public without getting stares, is technically a member of the mafia. It—I know Kevin and Jean have kids, but I’m the reason we’re all still _in_ the mafia. I dictated the terms, I was the go-between. And the reason for _that_ was because, to Ichirou, my father _was_ someone. Who would want that? Who would want their dad to be that person, who would want to be the Butcher’s Granddaughters? And they don’t even _know_. They don’t even know what I look like.”

Andrew threads his fingers through Neil’s, apparently tired of Neil fidgeting with Andrew’s hands. “You mean, you were the one who negotiated with a mob boss and walked away with your life, Kevin’s life, and Jean’s life. You were the one who walked into a room with your dad and walked out alive. You aren’t responsible for Nathan’s bullshit, Neil, and it’s not your fault you couldn’t defeat the entire Japanese mafia. And anyway,” he says, whipping his hand away and placing it over Neil’s mouth as Neil tries to protest, “who cares? You were born to shitty parents and you’re paying for their mistakes, and in the meantime, maybe you’ll be a great dad, and maybe they’d like to be your daughters. Ooh, you just went so white I can see you with the lights off.”

“ _Daughters_ ,” Neil tells Andrew’s palm.

Andrew snorts, lifting his hand half an inch. “What about them?”

“ _I_ can’t have _daughters_.”

“Why not?”

“I’m— _me_.”

“Congrats. You’re learning to differentiate yourself from the rest of the world. Most people learn that at the age of six or seven months; you’re a little behind, but that’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

“Jackass. I’m not a _dad_.”

“No, you’re not. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Maybe. A little.”

“You would be a dad, too. Thoughts on your daughters?”

“Oh, that wasn’t fair, I know what you mean now, fucker. Jesus.”

Neil laughs. “I’ve never been known for my sportsmanship or fair play.”

Andrew rolls his eyes, leans down, kisses Neil’s nose.

“We’re not done yet,” Neil says, wrapping his arms around Andrew’s shoulders. “How are you holding up?”

“Holding up what?”

“After this evening,” Neil says. “When you talked about your drugs.”

He feels Andrew go still, and then Andrew lets the arm holding him up crumple, resulting in a controlled fall against Neil’s chest. “I’m all right.”

“Mm. Like, all _right_ all right, or just, like, all right?”

“An English major, you are not.”

“Yoda, you are. Answer the question.”

Andrew sighs against Neil’s collarbone. “Wasn’t expecting it. Forgot to hold space in my mind. But it’s all right now.”

Neil strokes Andrew’s hair. “I’m sorry I let you stress out for the past two months.”

“No one _lets_ me do anything.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say something, then.”

“You were stressed, too.”

“We could’ve taken a night to switch places.”

“Next time, then.”

Neil can’t ask for more than that. Instead, he rolls Andrew off of him. Andrew accepts that he’s little spoon tonight, and lets Neil curve around him. Neil waits until Andrew’s breath drops off—and thinks about the amount of time it’s taken for Andrew to feel safe enough to sleep with Neil at his back—and then Neil closes his eyes, counts Andrew’s breaths, and falls asleep himself.

Monday, in comparison to Sunday, is an absolute relief.

It’s Andrew’s and Neil’s day off, and they don’t get up with the girls. Neil figures they’re fully capable of making themselves breakfast and getting to the bus stop, and when he hears the front door open and close on time, he knows he was right.

Andrew blinks his eyes open and looks at Neil. Peaceful. Content. It’s a _day_ , sure, but it’s a lazy one.

Neil goes for a run. His usual five miles, zig zagging across the neighborhood, running a couple miles alongside the highway, and then back into the neighborhood.

He and Andrew do the laundry in the laundry bin. Neil notices that, while there’s school uniforms in there, there’s no socks or underwear. He’s mostly fine with this; he doesn’t really want to see the kids' underwear. But they’ll have to do their laundry, at some point. He makes a mental note to remind them about it.

Neil cleans the bathrooms as Andrew vacuums.

Somehow, instead of feeling productive, Neil feels lazier.

Neil takes stock of what they’ve got in the kitchen; they should probably take the girls with them to go grocery shopping, though, so he won’t go just yet. He puts his makeup on.

He and Andrew eat lunch; oranges and pistachios. They’re not hungry enough for more.

It’s a day, sure, but it’s a lazy one.

Neil flops himself on the couch and turns on the TV. Andrew tugs at his legs until he’s lying down, and then Andrew climbs on top of him, legs between Neil’s, head on Neil’s chest, and Neil locks his hands across Andrew’s back, and Andrew sighs. Content. Peaceful. The house is clean. It smells nice. The fan blows a breeze across Neil’s face. He breathes in Andrew’s shampoo, closes his eyes against the breeze. Sir jumps up on top of Andrew, and Andrew doesn’t seem to care or to mind.

“Do you guys nap all the time?”

Neil opens his eyes to find Natalie standing over them.

Andrew’s already awake, looking up at her.

“No,” Neil says.

Natalie rolls her eyes. “I want to go for a run.”

“Okay,” Neil says.

She looks at him.

“Oh. Okay. Give me a minute, I have to get up.”

Andrew shows no sign of wanting to move.

Neil meets Andrew’s gaze.

Andrew sighs, reaches behind him to dislodge Sir, and struggles up.

Natalie’s gaze is pitiless. She turns and heads upstairs to get changed.

Neil stumbles to his feet, stutters—his left foot is asleep—and wiggles it, trying to move past the pins and needles, holding onto Andrew for balance. Eventually, he places a kiss on Andrew’s temple. Considers getting changed, but—eh. He’s already in sweatpants and a sweatshirt; what’s he going to change into? Different sweatpants? Realizes he’s still standing there, elbow on Andrew’s shoulder, and can’t bring himself to care. Kisses Andrew’s nose, his cheekbone, the corner of his eye, wonders how much of Andrew’s face Neil’s lips have touched. Andrew gets bored and turns his head, putting his mouth where it needs to be for Neil to kiss it, which is very convenient.

“Are you guys done?”

Neil looks up to find that Natalie is dressed and ready. “We can be.”

She turns towards the door.

Neil grabs one more kiss before turning to follow her out the door.

“I want to run more today,” she says as they head down the driveway. “Four miles.”

Neil shrugs. “All right.”

They do.

Neil’s makeup holds.

They walk inside, and Natalie nods at Neil and goes upstairs.

Neil wanders into the living room, where Paige and Andrew are watching _Ghostbusters_ , a movie of which Neil is inordinately fond; they’re only five minutes in. Neil parks himself on the couch. Andrew lifts Sir off his lap, swings around to stick his head in Neil’s lap, replaces Sir on his chest, and swivels his head, owl-like, to look back at the TV.

The shower cuts on upstairs, and fifteen minutes later it turns off.

Natalie joins them.

Dinner. Homework. Neil and Andrew help them with German, and then Neil helps them with math, and Andrew helps them with English, and it’s just a day, just a lazy day, and Neil thinks that, maybe, if Mary could see him, she’d be okay with this. Maybe even proud. Neil holds Andrew’s hand under the table.

Regardless of what Mary would think, Neil decides, he’s pretty proud of himself.

He lifts Andrew’s hand for an absentminded kiss, and glances up in time to catch both Natalie’s eyeroll and Andrew’s lazy, loving look, and yeah, it’s a good day. 

Maybe they _should_ adopt Natalie and Paige.

A conversation for some other time, Neil decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The nap scene inspired by [this gorgeous art](https://babeyghost.tumblr.com/post/185438409257/so-i-gave-up-then-decided-to-continue-and-now)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's their anniversary!
> 
> There is porn in this one. It's their anniversary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for later in this chapter:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEjYmO5-dLk

Here is the story:

One day, almost exactly seven years before our current story begins, Neil woke up.

He woke up in bed with Andrew and the sunlight was quiet and blue, itself only just waking up, and Neil could practically smell the cool morning air and his legs were already moving. So he brushed his teeth, he got changed, he put his wallet in his pocket, and then he returned to Andrew, awake thanks to Neil’s movement, and placed a kiss on Andrew’s temple.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised.

He took the stairs half at a run already; the day was calling him, and it would not wait. The sun would rise whether he was there to see it or not.

He was there to see it, outside, legs pumping, air sweet in his lungs.

Perhaps if the driver of the blue Toyota had been there to see it, our present-day story would not exist as it does. But the driver was asleep. Not intentionally, and not perfectly, but the car leaned, and curved, and hopped up onto the sidewalk behind Neil, and then Neil had been involved in a hit-and-run, and he was lying on the ground, knowing full well that something was broken and that he was bleeding, and not entirely knowing what, why, or where.

He watched the sky.

It really was a beautiful morning.

Whether he called the ambulance himself or someone else did is up for debate; the record may show that no one ever did check Neil’s phone history, and by the time anyone thought to, he’d already received so many calls that parts of it had self-deleted. But whatever the cause, there was an ambulance, and then there was a hospital, and it was only the second time in Neil’s life that he’d been to one of those, and the first time he’d been to one wherein he hadn’t been chained to the bed.

The hospital had called Palmetto, once they'd figured out who he was, and Palmetto had done their job and gone searching for someone to notify about Neil's location. But Neil Josten had no family, either under his new name or his old one, and it had never occurred to him to set an emergency contact; the hospital, remember, had never been an option at all, and the idea of ending up there was, frankly, laughable. The idea of having someone who could be safely called in an emergency if Neil himself was incapable of making the call was ridiculous. So no one was called.

No one was called until six hours later, when Neil woke up, bandaged and wrapped in a hospital bed, and knew—felt it, a fact, crystallized in his bones—that Andrew was upset.

“I need to call my friend,” he told the nurse. “Where’s my phone?”

She passed the phone over, putting it in his left hand; his right one was bandaged beyond use. He flipped it open to discover an obscene number of missed calls, from Foxes both new and old, and he wasn’t surprised. Andrew would have stopped by all Neil’s haunts, discovered him missing, called Neil—the first five missed calls are from Andrew—and then would have made everyone look. It’s hard to disappear a man when twenty people are searching for him.

“ _Neil_?”

“Andrew, I’m in the hospital. I’m alive, though.”

“I—”

Neil could hear it: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Silence, as Andrew wrestled with words, his feelings pummeling him.

“Look. I’m at—which hospital is this?” He asked the nurse. She told him, and he passed the information along. “It doesn’t look like I’m going to get out today.”

“I’m on my way,” Andrew said, flat. Blank. Neil heard a car door slam.

“I’ll call the others, let them know I’m okay,” Neil said, and then he heard nothing. Andrew had hung up.

Neil called the others.

They asked what happened; he told them. They expressed their relief; he thanked them. They promised visits; he promised that he’d be out in a few days anyway, once his ribs set. They promised to visit regardless, and he knew they meant it, and he knew they’d be there, and he tucked that into his heart for safekeeping. So much of him was still so used to lying, but his heart never bothered. It was why he got into so much trouble.

Andrew didn’t show up.

The hospital was half an hour from Fox Tower; half an hour passed quickly. It was an hour away from many other places; that, too, passed quickly. It wasn’t until 2:02, a full two hours after Neil had called, that Andrew turned up. For a man so small, he somehow still managed to thoroughly darken the entire doorway.

Neil felt his face melt into the smile that Nicky had taken to calling _gooey_ and that Andrew called _don’t look at me like that._ “Where are you coming from?” Neil asked. “Took you a while.”

“The waiting room,” Andrew said, clipped. “Visiting hours are 2:00 to 7:00. I’ve been here for an hour. Only spouses and legal guardians are allowed to visit outside those hours. What’s hurt?”

“No internal bleeding,” Neil said, refraining from reaching out. Over the three years since Andrew had stopped denying that they had a relationship, he’d become more able to hold Neil’s hand, but never in public, and certainly not just then, standing in a hospital looking at a bandaged and broken Neil. “They’re monitoring me for a concussion, but I don’t think I have one. My ankle’s twisted, and a couple ribs broke—they’ll set, though, and I’ve had worse. I ripped half the skin off my upper arm—couldn’t have been my forearm, of course, I’m only allowed to add to my scar collection—and dislocated my shoulder, and also fucked up my skull kinda bad,” he said, remembering that that might be the most important part. He tilted his head forward, so that he could poke at the outlines of where he’d landed, skidded, torn off skin and hair, resulting in a bandage around his head that made him look like he was an old man in an older movie.

Andrew tapped gentle fingers around the wound, and then tangled his fingers in the hair that wasn’t covered by a bandage and stood there. Neil sat, head at an odd angle, content to wait while Andrew did whatever he needed to do.

Eventually, Andrew used his grip to tug Neil’s head around so Neil could meet Andrew’s gaze. In German, he said, “I’m going to tie you to a chair in a padded room, and never let you leave.”

“I’m sorry.”

Andrew released Neil and turned away.

He turned back. “If you ever pull this shit again, I’m leaving you.”

“I didn’t have all that much to do with it.”

“Neil.”

“I know. I’ll try to pay more attention when I run.”

“Who’s your emergency contact?”

“I don’t have one. Who’s yours?”

“Aaron. Why don’t you have an emergency contact?”

“This is only my second time in a hospital.”

“Neil, you don’t set an emergency contact because you think you’re going to spend time in a hospital, you set one because _you might end up here anyway_.”

Neil shrugged. “Who would I want called?”

Andrew’s face was completely blank.

“The Ghostbusters,” Neil answers himself, absurdly proud of his own cultural knowledge.

Andrew stares at him.

“I’ll make you my emergency contact.”

Andrew is blank, blank, an untouched sheet of paper.

“Andrew, it didn’t occur to me. I don’t usually go to the hospital. Usually, I just go to whoever I’m with, and they stitch me up, or if I need to, I stitch myself up. I didn’t think about it. I’m sorry. Andrew.” He held a hand towards Andrew, who was blank, so blank, and Neil understood why, but he could feel Andrew slipping away like a physical thing, like he’d had hands on Andrew and Andrew had removed the hands and walked away.

Andrew took his hand, and it was a relief, even if Andrew was still blank. Neil brought Andrew’s hand to his mouth, to his cheek, an apology.

“Promise me you won’t get yourself killed,” Andrew said.

“I won’t. I’m going to die of old age. Stay with me until then?”

Andrew closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, he was blank again. Calm, though, this time.

Neil spent the next three days in the hospital. Andrew spent all the visitation hours with him; it was lucky that two of the days were a weekend. Wymack signed Andrew out of his Monday classes, with a warning that if Andrew failed, Wymack would make him run three marathons and then kick him off the team.

Neil had other visitors, too—Wymack himself, the Foxes, and Allison and Renee all popped in. Matt and Dan, up in New York, had Nicky bring Neil’s laptop to the hospital, so they could use it to Skype Neil, which kept him company outside of normal visitation hours. He said hi to the high school exy team Dan was coaching; they seemed lightly starstruck, which was gratifying. He ate lunch with Matt.

And then Neil returned to classes.

It had been a while, since he’d had to go to class bandaged up. And with his right hand still wrapped—it had gotten skinned, too, and his pinky had broken, which was fortunately the least important finger when it came to holding a racquet—his notes were nearly illegible. It was still early in the year, though, so he didn’t consider the notes he was missing particularly important. And hopefully, by the end of the week, he'd be able to take the bandages off.

Two days later, Andrew walked into his and Neil’s room. “I don’t have much money,” he said, apropos of nothing.

Neil looked at him. “You can use mine. I still have some.” He didn’t ask what Andrew needed. If Andrew wanted to tell Neil, he would. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t.

Andrew dumped something on top of Neil’s notebook. A necklace. A necklace, with a charm on—oh. Not a charm.

A ring.

Neil picked it up.

Three seconds later, he understood what he was looking at. “Is this a wedding ring?”

“Marry me.”

Neil looked up at Andrew, and Andrew looked back, and Neil realized Andrew was serious. “Is this—were you saying, like, _I don’t have any money, I don’t have anything to offer you except my love_?”

“Yes or no?”

“To a kiss or to marrying you?”

“I can’t get you an engagement ring,” Andrew said, perching on the desk. “I can’t afford one. If you’d prefer, I could wait a year, and then I’ll graduate and make a shit fucking ton of money as an exy player, and then I could buy you an engagement ring and do the whole fuckin’ thing. But a year is a long time. And you can promise whatever you want, there’s no guarantee you’ll stay out of the hospital, and I’m not going to spend hours sitting in the waiting room because I’m not allowed to visit you.”

Neil laughed. He fingered the ring—it looked like it would be his size. Of course it would be.

It was just a gold band. Nothing fancy.

Neil grinned. He wasn’t a particularly fancy man. “Yes.”

“To a kiss or to marrying me?”

“Both?” Neil suggested.

Andrew leaned down to kiss Neil, and maybe it was his imagination—a shocking invention if so—but Neil thought, maybe, he felt Andrew’s mouth twist into a smile, just for a second. It could have just been Neil’s imagination. It might have been his own mouth curving up against Andrew’s.

But then, Neil had never been given to flights of fancy, so maybe it _had_ happened.

Andrew lifted the chain, tugging the ring out of Neil’s hand. He unclasped the chain and pulled the ring off it. “I don’t know if it’ll fit,” he warned, and Neil held out his hand, grinning so hard it hurt. “But Neil Josten, whether it fits or not—” his eyes focused on the ring, sliding onto Neil’s finger, and Neil recognized it for what it was: distance, desperately needed— “I love you, and would be honored to spend the rest of my life with you.”

That was when Nicky either ruined or saved the day—depending on who you ask—by barging in, already halfway through asking to borrow the car before his brain caught up with his eyes.

“Is that a _ring_?” He shrieked, voice hitting a pitch Neil had previously believed unreachable. “Are you _married_?”

“No,” Neil said, leaving his hand in Andrew’s. It might just have been the only thing that was preventing Andrew from knifing Nicky, and Neil was unwilling to take that chance.

Nicky blanched. “I’m interrupting _the proposal_.”

“Who’s getting married?” Kevin asked, looking over Nicky’s shoulder. “Oh. Jesus. Nicky.” And then he and Nicky vanished, and the door closed, and Andrew looked like murder.

A thought hit Neil. “Are we supposed to do this in a church?”

And then Andrew looked like he was having a heart attack. “Do you want to?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Are you sure?”

“You didn’t think this through very well,” Neil accused.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, both that I don’t want to do a whole fuckin’ thing and that you absolutely didn’t think this through.”

“I’ll go stop Nicky before he tells anyone.”

“Why?” Neil asked, tugging Andrew back into his place on the desk. “He won’t talk to anyone but the Foxes, and they may as well know.” He couldn’t stop grinning. “Saves us the trouble of telling them.”

“Do you—want to tell other people?”

“No. Why would I? Everyone else can get fucked. But the Foxes are family.”

“Allison will make it into a whole fuckin’ thing.”

Neil shrugged. “She can, if she wants. We don’t have to show up.”

That appealed to Andrew, Neil could tell—the two of them would do what they wanted, and if Allison and Nicky were unwilling to go along with it, it didn’t particularly matter.

Neil reached up, left hand, ring against Andrew’s cheek, Andrew’s hand over that hand, for a kiss. “I’m not going to wear a tux,” he whispered.

“You could,” Andrew murmured.

“Do you want me to?”

Andrew hummed.

“Where’s your ring?”

Andrew pulled away and tugged it out of his left armband.

Neil took it from him and took his left hand. “Andrew Minyard,” he said as he maneuvered the ring onto Andrew’s hand—it took some time, thanks to Neil’s bandages—“you are the light and love of my life, and I would be overjoyed to spend the rest of my life with you.”

The ring fit.

Yes.

Good.

It seemed somehow fitting that Neil would be bandaged up for this process. Like the universe knew that _damaged_ was the proper state of things, and Neil couldn’t be allowed to get something good without giving some blood and skin first.

And then Neil’s phone was ringing—Dan—and he thought he knew precisely why she was calling, and it turned out that the answer was to scream incoherently for thirty full seconds, during which Neil put the phone down on the desk—he could hear her just fine regardless—and pulled Andrew in for another kiss.

Matt refrained from screaming, but only just barely.

And then Renee and Allison called, and then Nicky reentered the room—he had a several-way Skype call going—and Neil sat there and informed everyone they were going to get married in a courthouse, thank you very much, and that no decorating or planning would be necessary.

There was silence, for a minute, and then Matt said: “Great, so are we going for speed? We can’t get up there this weekend—Dan’s got a game—but the weekend after that the game is early morning, we could leave straight from there, I’m playing North Carolina on Sunday evening anyway, how about a Sunday morning wedding?”

It was confirmed that all involved were free that Sunday.

And then Nicky had to go call Erik, and Matt had to go make travel plans, and Kevin lingered only long enough to stare at Neil, intensely, searchingly, and then to nod. And then he closed the door behind him.

Andrew tugged the ring off Neil’s finger, threaded it back onto the chain, clasped the chain around Neil’s neck, and tucked the ring under Neil’s shirt. He took his own ring off, and returned it to its place in his armband. He placed two fingers on the tiny lump under Neil’s shirt where the ring fell.

Neil wrapped a hand around Andrew’s left wrist. A knife—and a little circular irregularity. And that was enough. It was already so much, already so much more than he’d thought he’d ever have, already so much more than he’d thought he’d ever earn or deserve. He looked Andrew in the eyes, and said, simply: “I love you.”

Andrew’s eyes flicked away.

“You’ll have to get used to it,” Neil said. “We’re getting married in under a week and a half.”

Andrew tensed, and Neil thought he was going to walk away, going to leave—Neil wouldn’t be offended—but then he relaxed. Said nothing. Just looked at Neil. Neil was content to be stared at, and to stare back.

A week and a half later, surrounded by friends and family, not wearing tuxedos but wearing nice button-downs all the same, Neil and Andrew signed their marriage certificate. Matt and Aaron signed as witnesses. Katelyn was there, and Andrew hadn’t protested; he’d glanced at her, considering, and she’d frozen like a deer in headlights, but neither Neil nor Aaron felt the need to intervene. It was a glance, and it wasn’t hateful; that was progress. Dan took pictures and neither Andrew nor Neil protested, although they both flatly refused to pose for them. And then they ordered Chinese food and ate it in Neil, Andrew, and Kevin’s dorm. They didn’t have cake, but they did have ice cream.

They hadn’t said vows in the courthouse, but Kevin somehow contrived to vanish for the night—a miracle for which Neil would forever be grateful to Nicky—and Neil and Andrew said their vows in the dark, sitting cross-legged and knee-to-knee on their bed. _For your honesty. For your kindness. For your strength, and for your weaknesses._ _To have and to hold. To respect and to trust. To talk through things. To keep my word. I will stand by your side for as long as I can stand, and then I will sit by your side. I will be the pillar that holds you steady, not the anchor that holds you down. I love you. I love you_.

Neil and Andrew made a lot of promises that night, and they have not broken them, to this day. Nor will they break them after this story ends.

That isn’t what this story is about.

But that is the story.

And it’s why, today, taking full advantage of the fact that Andrew drives separately on Tuesdays for therapy, Neil stops at a flower store, and picks up a dozen red roses and a dozen flowers that are blue and a bunch of baby’s breath.

“What are those for?” Paige asks when he walks through the door.

“It’s mine and Andrew’s anniversary,” he says.

“Oh! Are you doing anything tonight?”

“Yeah, we’re ordering Chinese.”

“That’s it?” She looks disappointed.

“It’s tradition.”

“Why?”

“It’s what we ate on our wedding day,” Neil says, happily arranging the flowers.

“Why?”

Neil shrugs. “We were in college, we had to feed around fifteen other people, and also, we may have forgotten to make reservations anywhere.” Money wouldn’t have been a problem; Neil had still had enough. The reservations, though, had been a problem.

“You… aren’t weddings supposed to be bigger?”

“Sure, for people with family. And with a ton of friends.”

“How did you propose?” Paige asks.

“Andrew did.”

“ _Andrew_ proposed to _you_?” Natalie breaks in. “ _Does_ he love you?"

“Did you think he didn’t?” Neil asks, stepping back to examine his arrangement.

“He never looks like he feels much of anything about anything,” Natalie says, “except maybe anger.”

Huh. Neil had gotten so used to reading Andrew’s feelings—in the touch of a hand, the tension in his shoulders, the flare of his nose, the directness of his gaze, the blankness of his face—that he’d forgotten that other people still just saw _nothing_. “He feels lots of things.”

“Maybe he should try showing it,” Natalie says.

Neil glances at her.

“What?”

“You feel things other than anger, don’t you?”

“I’m not angry,” she says, annoyed. “Girls don’t get angry.”

“Anyone who told you that girls don’t get angry is stupid," Neil says. "What, do women somehow have a truncated range of emotions? I thought the stereotype was that women were _more_ emotional? Who are these people, that they’ve managed to spread both stereotypes? Anyway, the only thing I ever see on your face is anger, but that doesn’t mean you’re always angry. Or maybe it does. But sometimes, you feel other things, probably. Just because it doesn’t look like Andrew’s having too many feelings doesn’t mean he’s not.”

Natalie glares at him.

“Why did you get blue flowers?” Paige asks.

“Andrew’s favorite color.”

“How did Andrew propose?”

“He put the ring on my notebook, and apologized for being too broke to buy me an engagement ring.”

“On your notebook? Were you—doing homework?”

“Mm. No. Trying to read my notes. I’d been hit by a car a few days before that—ripped a bunch of the skin off my hand and broke my pinky, and my hand was still bandaged up, so I had to take notes with my _left_ hand, and they were, frankly, terrible.”

“Romantic,” Natalie says.

“It was.”

“Did he get down on one knee?” Paige asks.

“No. He sat on my desk.”

“It sounds like he really planned it out,” Natalie says sarcastically.

“He didn’t,” Neil says happily.

“You could start a new tradition,” Paige says. “Why didn’t you? Just because you did something on your wedding day doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it.”

“It was Andrew’s last year of school,” Neil says, “but not mine. Andrew signed with Oregon. Our first anniversary was a Monday—a school day for me, but not a workday for him. He flew in for a few hours. We didn’t feel like going out. So we ordered Chinese again. And now it’s a tradition.”

“He signed to a team in Oregon?” Paige says. “Where were you?”

“I was here. At Palmetto State.”

“He went _cross-country_?”

“Yeah.”

He turns around and catches Paige and Natalie in the middle of a nonverbal conversation. “Why?”

Natalie shrugs and looks back down at her phone.

Neil waits.

Paige sighs, giving in. “Who gets married and then moves _cross-country_?”

“Andrew,” Neil says. “And, I mean, it’s sports. You don’t always have control over where you go.”

“Weren’t you _worried_?”

“About what?”

“That maybe he didn’t want to be married to you?”

Neil closes his eyes.

Oh, he hates this.

He hates when people don’t know Andrew.

He has no right, though. If Andrew wanted to be known, he would be.

But is it so much to ask that people _try_?

They’re 14, he reminds himself. Kids. Kids used to god knows what. 

He opens his eyes. “I was not, no.”

“You had to think about it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“That was ten whole seconds of silence.”

“Paige.” Neil holds himself still. One wrong move, and she’ll be gone, out of reach. One angry twitch and she’ll be done. And he badly needs her to understand this. So he slides down to sit on the floor. “Paige, do you ever _want_ something? Want something so badly it hurts? If you don’t get it, you might die?”

She and Natalie glance at each other, and it’s a knowing look. “Yes.”

“So did Andrew. And every time he reached for it, it disappeared. Over and over again. So he stopped wanting things.”

Paige frowns.

Natalie’s paying attention.

“And then he wanted me—which, to be honest, was a mistake, I have a habit of getting hurt. But he gave in. And I stayed.

“So he left. He didn’t want to get hurt again. He was waiting for me to disappear.”

“But you didn’t,” Paige says.

“I didn’t. And he came back. And he’s stayed with me ever since.”

“Okay. But like.” Natalie puts her hands flat on the table. “How do you _know_?”

“Know what?”

“It’s. You’re _gross_. You’re so— _mushy_. It’s weird.”

“Thanks.”

“But he’s _nothing_. So how do you know? Or do you not care?”

“He’s not nothing.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. But you shouldn’t call people nothing.”

“Fine.”

Neil bonks his head backwards into the cabinets. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

Neil looks up at her and raises one eyebrow.

“Most of our foster parents didn’t give two shits about each other.”

“So?”

She shuts her mouth.

Neil considers the two of them.

It is, for whatever reason, desperately important to them that they know whether or not Andrew loves Neil. Or, maybe, they think he doesn’t, and it’s important to them that Neil sees that. Either way. Fine. “I pay attention. I. I didn’t have great parents.”

“Yeah,” Natalie says. “Figured that one out.”

“So I learned how to read people. I learned how to measure arms, so that I could stand _just_ inside their reach, so that if they tried to hit me I could get out of the way. I learned how to read tension, so that if they were already on edge, I knew to keep my mouth shut, no matter what. I learned how to read glances, because if we were in public they wouldn’t hurt me, but once we were behind closed doors they would, and I liked to know what was going to happen to me once we got in the car, or once guests left. I learned how to read mannerisms, and tics, and twitches, and my parents weren’t always particularly consistent about what would set them off, but there were some things that were guaranteed.”

Neil looks up at them, and sees understanding. They know this. They know how to do this. They know how to do this rapidly, on the fly; maybe noise would set off one set of foster parents, whereas another wouldn’t care about noise, but _would_ care about questions. They know this. He hates that they know this. 

“When I met Andrew, I was very good at reading people for threats. I was good at reading tension. I was good at following hands, in case they snapped out. I wasn’t great at looking for friendship. Or kindness. Or empathy. Or care. My team—my family—they taught me that, over the course of a year. And Andrew taught me how to read for love. And it’s _there_. It’s so obvious. It’s so clear. I can see it. I can feel it, like a physical thing.”

“You’re angry.”

“His own family thought he was a psychopath. They didn’t know what drugs he was on, but they assumed it was anti-psychotics. Nicky told me once that Andrew didn’t understand other people’s boundaries. That Andrew had no sense of right or wrong. They thought Andrew hated Aaron. They worried _so much_ about Andrew hurting other people. They didn’t understand. They thought there was nothing there _to_ understand, so they didn’t even try. Still don’t. No one looks. No one pays attention.”

“He doesn’t exactly invite it.”

“No. But it took me all of half a year to understand him, in _spite_ of everyone telling me he was a psychopath. And I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know any more about his past or his life than anyone else did. I was looking for threats, and for cruel people, and for people with weapons, and Andrew set off all those red flags and then some, and I could _still_ tell that something was off. I could _still_ see that the story they were all telling about him wasn’t right. All I had to do was pay attention. But no one else would.”

They stare at him.

“He loves me. If you can’t see it, maybe you should pay more attention.”

They’re not even blinking.

Well.

“You still haven’t told me what games you want Riley to bring tomorrow.”

Thirty minutes later, they’re discussing the finer points of the different versions of GTA, and Andrew walks through the door, holding a dozen roses and a dozen flowers that are grey and a bunch of baby’s breath.

Neil melts. “How’d you get the grey ones?” He stands up in time for Andrew to slip a finger through one of Neil’s belt loops and pull him closer for a kiss.

“Special order,” Andrew says.

“Why’d you get grey flowers?” Paige asks.

“Neil’s favorite color.”

Neil expects something—some reaction from Natalie to the blatant display of gross—but there’s nothing. He takes the flowers from Andrew to stick his nose in them, and he knows, he can feel it, when he looks up he’s grinning, gooey, and Andrew pulls him down for another kiss. Neil’s smiling too hard for it to last long, but Andrew holds him there for a minute, forehead to forehead, eyes open, breathing in the smell of roses.

Andrew takes the roses back, fingers grazing Neil’s, to find a vase. He arranges them, and places the vase next to the one with his flowers in it. He lifts a hand to touch the blue flowers. Turns to look at Neil.

Eventually, Andrew drags his gaze away. “How was school?” He asks the girls, both on their phones.

“Eh,” they answer in unison.

Andrew looks at Neil, who shrugs.

“Why’d you propose?” Paige asks.

“How do you know I was the one who proposed?”

“Neil told us.”

Andrew glances at Neil.

“They asked.”

“He was hit by a car," Andrew says. "Ended up in the hospital.”

“Neil told us that,” Natalie says.

“Visitation hours were 2 to 7. Only spouses and legal guardians were allowed to visit outside that time.”

“So?”

“So, I decided to make sure I would be able to visit outside that time, should he make his way once more into a hospital bed.”

“ _That’s_ why you proposed to him?”

Andrew stares at the two of them.

They stare back, looking nothing short of distraught.

Andrew tilts his head to one side. “What’s this actually about?”

They stare at him.

He waits.

Natalie groans and falls backwards in her chair, crossing her arms. “Like. Do you _love_ him, though.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Why do you care?”

Natalie shrugs, an exaggerated motion. Paige plays with her phone.

Andrew and Neil wait, perfectly still.

“It’s just,” Paige says eventually, “so many of our foster parents didn’t. Or, like, they _would_ , but who has _time_ when you’re an _adult_. Oh, wow, he got her flowers for her birthday, but she hates lilies, how does he not know that after fifteen years? But they’re married, so it’s whatever. So they’re still together, because they used to want to be together, and now they just don’t really know what else to do.”

Andrew and Neil wait. Silent.

“And they’re all just, so unhappy,” Natalie interjects. “And I get that they’re stressed, and taking care of a bunch of kids, and working really hard to pay for us, but they don’t even seem like they’re happy when they’re together. But, like.” She holds her hands out, frustration and annoyance and an unwillingness to explain all clear on her face. “The worst. The _worst_. Was always when one of them was absolutely in love with the other, and the other one didn’t care at all. It was worse than when we had guardians who fought all the time. Like. Where’s your self-respect? Why are you—falling over yourself to make sure dinner is on the table, when they don’t notice or care and get annoyed at you for laughing too loud? Oh, wow, he remembered to ask how your day was? That’s not—that’s not a thing! That’s not a thing worth being so _happy_ about but it _was_ because she’d get _nothing else_ , and, just, just _leave_ , he’s out there cheating with his coworker but once in a blue moon he remembers to _look_ at you so you’re going to be devoted to him, like a _dog_ , it’s _disgusting_. Begging for scraps instead of looking for a different fucking restaurant.”

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew is frowning.

It’s not an expression he often wears. Most expressions are expressions he doesn’t often wear.

“Why are you so concerned?” He asks. Then he holds up a finger. “I see why you don’t like it. But why are you _concerned_?”

That prompts a conversation, but not one Neil and Andrew are privy to. It’s one that Paige and Natalie have, silently, staring each other down, eyebrows twitching, noses flaring, eyes rolling. And then Paige turns to Neil and Andrew. “Do you want us?”

“What?” Neil says.

Natalie’s eyes roll. “Do you _want_ us? Like, to adopt?”

“Oh,” Neil says, and then words fail him.

Because he does.

And Jean and Jeremy adopted, so certainly the Moriyamas wouldn’t have an issue with it.

He knows Andrew isn't opposed to it.

But they’re 14. They’re old enough that they should get a choice, that they should get to decide what home they live in. And they don’t know whose home they live in.

“What difference does it make?” Andrew asks.

They don’t even know what Neil’s _face_ looks like.

“Because we wouldn’t want to have parents that are like that,” Paige says. 

Parents?

They’d be his daughters.

How can he possibly have daughters?

They’re _good_. It feels like, were he to have children, they should be terrible. Corrupt. They should be pulling the antennae off of butterflies in their spare time. But they’re not his, biologically, which feels oddly like cheating. He shouldn’t have two daughters who aren’t horrible people.

Andrew’s staring at him. So are Natalie and Paige.

“You can just say no,” Natalie says, and she’s furious.

“I didn’t say no,” Neil says.

“But you didn’t say yes,” Natalie says. “And I can see it. You don’t want us. You can just say it. You don’t have to—fucking—let us down gently.”

“I didn’t say we don’t want you,” Neil says. “I just—it’s only been a week, don’t you want to—wait and find out whether or not we’re terrible people?”

“Letting us down gently,” she says, casting an _I told you so_ look at Paige.

“I just—can’t yet.”

“Why? What do we have to do?” Paige asks.

Oh. Oh, no. “Nothing. It’s not you. It’s me. The two of you are fine. It’s me.”

“Gently,” Natalie snarls, standing.

“Do you want to go for a run?” Neil asks.

“ _No_ ,” she says, furious, storming out of the kitchen.

She stops in the doorway. “Yes.”

She continues upstairs.

Neil looks at Andrew.

He’s still frowning, but now he’s frowning at Neil. “They won’t care,” he says in Russian, referring to the Moriyamas. 

“They don’t even know what I look like,” Neil says, referring to a different _they_. “They don’t even know who I am.”

Andrew shrugs. “So tell them.”

“I can’t just _tell_ them.”

“Why not?”

“They’re kids!”

“You were how old when you ran, again?”

Neil gestures, empty, uncertain. “Drew.”

“Abram.”

Neil loses the battle.

Not, particularly, that it was a battle.

“They want us to adopt them,” Andrew says. “I have no objection. They’re scared. They don’t want to keep moving around—of course they don’t. And they haven’t yet killed us or started bringing home small dead animals, and I don’t do _temporary_ very well, so fuck it. Yes? Do you have any objections?”

Neil shakes his head. Hadn’t he just been thinking about it last night? But then—if they’re scared of moving in with a bad family, it’s all the more reason why Neil shouldn’t be tying them here. He _is_ the bad family.

“Then the only thing stopping it from happening is you,” Andrew says. “You should tell them.”

“I don’t know how.”

Andrew shrugs. “Figure it out on your run.” He pokes Neil’s shoulder. “You have to go get changed. Make sure your makeup’s set.”

Neil turns away, but Andrew snags his shirt.

“Happy anniversary,” he says.

Neil grins. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, and Neil swoops in for a kiss.

“Happy anniversary,” he says, and then it’s upstairs to get changed.

He meets Natalie at the door, which she wordlessly opens.

She says nothing as they walk down the driveway, or as they start out on the road, or when they take a different path than yesterday—Neil trying to keep things interesting.

A mile in, she stops.

It might have more to do with the fact that the sidewalk passes the woods here, and less to do with the fact that it’s halfway, because she says: “What do I have to do?”

“What?”

“Paige is fine. So what do I have to do to get you to want us? I can stop being angry.”

Neil stops moving. He’ll get cold, but that’s unimportant. He reaches out, slowly, giving her time to pull back, time to flinch, but she does not, and he takes her face in his hands. Did he ever look this young? It revises, somehow, his opinion of his father, of the Moriyamas, of the people who chased Neil, because it had always seemed to him right and proper that people should want to kill him for running away, but he’d fled when he was younger and smaller than this, and he can’t imagine for a second being angry enough to hurt Natalie, let alone shoot at her, let alone give her all the scars he had by her age. He can’t imagine taking in two boys and watching them draw numbers on each other’s cheeks and being okay with that, can’t imagine forcing them into the Nest for the whole of their childhoods, can’t imagine taking a little French boy from his family and offering him up to another person to torture, can’t imagine—can barely _think_ about—what Andrew went through. “Natalie. You are—there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing about you that isn’t _good enough_ , or—I could never ask you to be less angry. You are well within your rights to be furious, and I would never take that away from you. I can’t, in good conscience, adopt two kids who don’t want to be adopted by me, and I know—I _know_ you think you do—but you _don’t know me_. There are things that the two of you do not know, and you would need to know them in order to make any kind of choice here.”

“Then tell us,” she demands.

He shakes his head. “I can’t yet. And I’m sorry. My problems shouldn’t become yours like this. But my problems are standing in the way, and I have to figure out what to do with them before I can tell you.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

She sniffs and points her eyes at the sky. “We want to stay here.”

“We want you to stay here. But I’m not going to rope you to us permanently until—I can’t. Not yet. But it’s not your problem to solve. I’ll figure it out. Okay?”

She nods. “Can I hug you?”

Neil pulls her to him, gently, and she crushes him in a hug, and, oh boy, he’s going to have to figure this out. He’s not sure what he expected. Had he thought that he and Andrew would just—pass foster kids around for a little while? Foster a kid for a few months and pass them along? No, he hadn’t, but he also hadn’t expected to feel quite this protective one week in. Hadn’t expected to be dancing around the word _daughter_. He wasn’t supposed to be a father. He might not be capable of being a good dad. And that’s a lot of thoughts he never thought he’d have. “Don’t,” he says, “overhaul yourself for someone else, even someone who might someday be your parent. If they don’t love you, go find someone who will. Don’t beg for scraps when there are plenty of restaurants around.”

She nods, pulls away, and takes off.

Neil follows her.

When they get back, Andrew and Paige are watching an episode of House Hunters.

“Fucking open-plan houses,” Andrew is saying. “Ridiculous. Just stick a table in there, I guess, and pretend it’s a kitchen.”

“What do you have against open-plan houses?” Natalie asks, halted in her journey upstairs to the shower.

“No delineation,” he says. “No demarcation. No _rooms_. Just a weird pillar in the middle of what you’re calling the living room, because there has to be a load-bearing _some_ thing _some_ where.”

“I get it,” Paige says, turning a mischievous look on Natalie. “You can’t stomp into another room if there _is_ no other room.”

Natalie rolls her eyes, and stomps out into the hallway and up the stairs. Andrew reaches up, Neil tilts precariously over the couch to give Andrew an upside-down kiss, and then Neil heads up to get changed. And then he goes back downstairs, so he can stick his feet on Andrew’s lap and criticize the couple’s desire to live both within five minutes of the city and five minutes of a hikeable mountain range.

Natalie joins them eventually, curling up in the rocking chair.

And then they move to the kitchen. German. English. Andrew pulls out the Chinese menu and orders. Math. Chinese food arrives, and books get put away, and Andrew’s foot taps against Neil’s under the table. Andrew makes a bad pun, and Natalie chokes on her water and coughs it up, which is the closest she’s come to a laugh in a week, and Neil doesn’t want her to choke, but he’s glad she laughed. Paige smiles. She smiles at Neil, and at Andrew, and at Natalie, and Neil makes a point of pushing food containers in their direction, and Natalie and Paige take food from it like they aren’t paying attention even though they are, and Neil notices.

There are leftovers.

Natalie and Paige help clean up, closing containers and making space in the fridge while Neil and Andrew make space for the dishes in the dishwasher.

And then Natalie and Paige go upstairs, carting their science and their history homework—Neil should make Kevin help them with their history work—and Neil and Andrew have the whole first floor to themselves.

Neil and Andrew hadn’t danced at their wedding.

They hadn’t chosen a wedding song, and they didn’t dance, either to a chosen song or at all. There were no mother-son dances for a variety of reasons, the most important of which being that neither Neil nor Andrew were willing to dance in public. So they didn’t.

They’d celebrated their first anniversary over the course of a few hours, during which Neil left a class early and went to practice late. They ate Chinese food and ice cream, and they did not dance.

Their second anniversary was a wash; it was on a Wednesday that year, and neither of them could get away from work. They hadn’t seen each other for a week before that anniversary, and they didn’t see each other for a week afterwards. Eventually, though, they had games in each other’s general vicinity, and Neil drove up to Andrew’s hotel, stopping to get Chinese on the way. It was a week and a half late, but Neil and Andrew pretended not to care, and pretended that neither of them was particularly romantic, and pretended that neither of them really cared about their anniversary, and pretended that their marriage was a necessity to get each other into their hospital rooms.

On their third anniversary, they drove home from training together. Andrew, both hands on the wheel, had said: “I don’t know how to waltz.”

“Me neither. Why?”

Andrew had hummed.

“Do you want to learn?”

“If you want to.”

Neil had twisted in his seat, the better to aim the full force of his gaze at Andrew. “Oh, no, you don’t get to put this one on me. Do you want to learn how to waltz?”

Andrew had flicked Neil a _look_ , and then, grudgingly: “Yes.”

So they’d watched videos. Tutorials on YouTube. The footwork reminded Neil heavily of exy footwork, and he was an expert in the way the human body could be made to move. Andrew watched the videos, and then corrected Neil’s posture, his stance.

A week later, they waltzed around the living room of their apartment.

They would never win awards. They were also unlikely to ever dance in public, and who would ask them to? No one suspected them of knowing how to waltz, even poorly.

But waltz they could.

So when Natalie and Paige go upstairs, and their homework-room door shuts behind them, Neil puts on some music.

Andrew places one hand in Neil’s, one hand on Neil’s waist.

He lets Neil lead.

Neil circles them around the room, deftly avoiding the coffee table, the edge of a chair.

 _My mother told me be careful, don’t think with your heart_.

They try some fancy footwork. It’s okay. It’s not half bad.

 _But just like a fool, I went and followed all the lights to the sparks_.

Andrew nudges Neil’s chin up; it should be higher. Neil isn’t concerned. They’re not performing, and Neil’s here to look at Andrew.

 _It goes over and over again, ‘til we find out way back_.

Neil slides them backwards just in time to avoid crashing into the bookshelf. Andrew hadn’t even flinched as they’d closed in, his trust in Neil unshakeable.

_Did you really have to even ask?_

Neil laughs a little as Andrew tugs him down for a kiss.

_No I don’t remember us falling in love, but I’m sure that it happened._

Andrew takes the lead for a moment, long enough to spin Neil, who executes it with the grace of someone used to holding a racquet while turning.

_No I don’t remember us falling in love, this sort of thing is old fashioned. I know this, I know, I don’t know._

Neil takes the lead again, whirling them around at double time.

They pause when the song does, and then pick up again. They don’t stop when the song changes—just an instrumental waltz this time—but they slow as the song goes on. Andrew’s hand leaves Neil’s waist to cup Neil’s cheek, thumb grazing his cheekbone. And then, anxiety flashing across his face, he takes his hand back, checks it.

Neil takes Andrew’s hand and places it back on Neil’s cheek. “I’ve gotten very good at setting it,” he murmurs. “Powder shouldn’t come off.”

Andrew brushes his nose across Neil’s jaw, and Neil hums, happy, and Andrew runs his fingers through Neil’s hair, and Neil opens his eyes and stops.

Andrew twists, and sees what Neil sees: Natalie, standing in the hallway, frozen in the process of stepping backwards towards the stairs.

The violin hits a high note.

“Sorry,” she says.

Neil and Andrew shrug. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Neil says.

“I just wanted a glass of water,” she says, apologetically.

“Go for it,” Neil says.

Andrew belatedly steps away from Neil, removing his hand from Neil’s face.

Natalie zooms into the kitchen. 

Andrew makes a face that says _oh well_ , and takes the lead, pulling Neil into some fancy-ass footwork that leaves Neil grinning with that sense of joy that comes from accomplishing something difficult. Andrew spins him again, and this one is better, being Neil’s second try, and dips him, which makes Neil laugh outright, and then Neil takes the lead, twirling them around the room, moving closer and closer, the creaky stair creaks, ever closer, until three songs have passed. Neil pulls backwards, taking Andrew with him, and Andrew presses him against the wall, pinning Neil’s hands above his head—there’s an interesting phenomenon wherein Andrew touches Neil and he melts, putting his face at precisely the same height as Andrew’s. It’s convenient. 

Neil pulls back. “Upstairs,” he says. “The kids. Might walk in.”

Andrew makes a soft noise of displeasure, low in his throat, and Neil _feels_ it, tugs Andrew closer almost involuntarily with his foot. “We should move our bedroom into the basement,” Andrew mutters, one knee between Neil’s legs, “so you can be loud again.”

Neil’s hips shift involuntarily, and he briefly wonders how much it would cost to double-insulate their bedroom, and then he wraps his leg tighter around Andrew’s hips and Andrew presses closer and Neil wonders nothing at all.

“We have to lock up,” he gasps, eventually, “and go upstairs.”

Andrew’s eyes are dark, bottomless, and the hand that isn’t holding Neil’s hands above his head is running up his side, but he pulls away, and Neil can’t stand it.

“Shower,” Neil gasps.

Locking up would go much faster if they’d split up, but that would mean losing skin contact, and neither of them are willing, so they don’t, grabbing at shoulders, hips, Andrew’s hand on Neil’s stomach, lips and teeth against necks, and eventually all doors are checked and all lights are off. They step on the creaky stair on the way up. Neil shuts the bedroom door behind them. Andrew turns the shower on, pulls a makeup wipe out of the drawer, and wipes Neil’s face while Neil hits the switch to turn the fan on. His shirt disappears, and so does Andrew’s, and then Neil’s skin is pressed against Andrew’s, his back pressing against the sink, his arms around Andrew’s shoulders, closer, and Andrew makes a desperate noise under cover of the fan and the water and still Neil hears it, and it draws an answering noise out of Neil, hips shifting, pressing down onto Andrew’s leg, hunting for friction, pressure, and then Andrew’s hands are there, unzipping, pushing, and Neil kicks his pants away, and Andrew’s hand is there, rough and insistent, and Neil bucks up into it, moaning, and Andrew’s hand leaves Neil’s skin long enough to grab one of Neil’s hands and put it on Andrew’s chest.

Neil delights in this, when it’s allowed, in allowing his hand to roam across Andrew’s skin, a finger reaching out to touch a nipple, the way Andrew shivers in response, the way Andrew kisses Neil hungrily, like it’s all that’s keeping either of them alive, like it’s the only thing worth living for, and for one fractured moment Neil’s left hand curls around the back of Andrew’s neck and his ring finger hits Andrew’s pulse and his right hand finds its way to Andrew’s heart and the twin beats are all Neil knows, all he feels, and another time, _why do you go on the roof if you’re scared of heights, it makes me feel_ , Andrew’s hand curving around Neil’s ass, lifting Neil’s leg, squeezing his thigh. Neil wraps his leg around Andrew’s hips, holding Andrew against him, jeans rough under his calf, smiling against Andrew’s mouth, nipping at Andrew’s bottom lip, noses bumping, and then the unthinkable happens—Andrew pulls away, flushed, panting, burning under Neil’s hands, and Neil watches him go, but Andrew takes Neil’s hand. Pulls him forward, towards the shower.

Neil steps in, ducking his head under the hot water, and Andrew drops his hand, and then, detached, strips down. Neil holds his hand out, and Andrew takes it and joins him in the shower.

Neil keeps his hands up, Andrew’s cheek, Andrew’s hair, and Andrew presses him up against the shower wall, hands on Neil’s hips, not where Neil so desperately needs them to be, and then Andrew pulls back and slowly—lips pressing against each scar on Neil’s torso—finds his way to his knees, takes Neil into his mouth.

“ _Drew_ —” Neil gasps, pressing one hand against the wall, trying to keep himself standing.

Andrew removes his mouth with a _pop_ and looks up at Neil. “Yes?”

Neil could cry.

Instead, he tugs gently on Andrew’s hair. “I love you.”

Andrew runs a hand down Neil’s thigh, back up, cups Neil’s hip, and then puts his mouth back where Neil needs it to be, and Neil loses himself, falling to pieces under Andrew’s tongue, until he spasms and gasps and lets Andrew slow Neil’s slide down the wall to join Andrew on the floor, where Andrew already has one hand on his own dick. The knowledge that Andrew is almost as far gone as Neil is is a pleasant heat in Neil’s veins, knowledge to carry with him. “Drew,” he whispers, “Drew, I love you,” he murmurs against Andrew’s mouth, and Andrew kisses him, and Neil breaks away to murmur more nonsense into Andrew’s ear and kisses his way back to Andrew’s mouth. And that’s where he finds himself when Andrew makes a noise, tenses, and then stills, and then kisses Neil one more time for good measure before letting Neil pull Andrew to his feet.

Neil kisses Andrew again when they’re both standing, water rushing down their faces, and Andrew wraps his arms around Neil’s neck, pulling him closer.

“I love you,” Andrew says, eventually.

Neil tangles a hand in Andrew’s wet hair. “I love you, too.”

Neil falls into bed a few minutes later, still damp from the shower, and Andrew tugs him over until Neil puts his head on Andrew’s chest. Andrew wraps his arms around Neil, and Neil sighs, curls closer, warm, satisfied, cozy, and very possibly, he decides as he drifts off, actually the luckiest man in the world.

He becomes all the more certain of it when he wakes up at four in the morning, fuzzy-eyed in the dark, to find that they’ve switched positions. He runs a hand through Andrew’s hair, soft and silky, pressed against his chin, and settles his arm across Andrew’s shoulders. The weight of one of Andrew’s legs, thrown over Neil’s thigh, is comforting. He lets his eyes drift closed again.

The whole of his life seems an acceptable price to pay for this. After all, if he hadn’t been so shockingly damaged, he never would’ve made the Foxes. Never would have met Andrew. The thought looms large in his roaming brain, terrifying: life without Andrew. Life without Andrew. Neil has friends, but Andrew is his closest friend. He’s made his family, and Andrew is the most important member of that family. So much, and so many people, but Andrew is gone, and things go dark, and Neil is weightless, Andrew’s absence a gaping void into which Neil dives, searching, hands grasping, searching for something to hold onto, an ocean rushing over his head and drowning him even as he reaches out, searching for Andrew’s hands, and finds—

“Neil.”

Neil blinks up at Andrew, standing beside the bed. Neil can hear the toilet running as the tank refills, recently flushed.

Andrew puts two fingers to Neil’s throat—feeling his pulse as it beats through his skin.

Neil reaches for Andrew. “You’re here,” he says, voice rough, still half-asleep, thick with the lump in his throat.

Andrew sprawls across Neil, comfort and peace and kindness, and kisses the back of Neil’s hand. “I’m right here,” he says, eyes inscrutable in the darkness. “Right here.” Wipes wetness off Neil’s cheek, and kisses where his thumb had been. Neil wraps his arms around Andrew, eyes already closing again, gripping Andrew’s shirt, his shoulders.

“Drew,” he murmurs, letting his lips find Andrew’s face, “my Drew. Stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Andrew whispers. His nose drifts across Neil’s cheekbone, and then he shifts, lower, to tuck his head under Neil’s chin. 

Neil nuzzles Andrew’s hair, and inhales Andrew’s shampoo, and falls back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who comments on this, it's really the best possible incentive for me to see this thing through and keep posting and I love you all so much
> 
> also!! just added it to the notes for the last chapter where it belongs, but I finally went through my likes to find it, so the nap scene from last chapter was inspired by [this gorgeous art](https://babeyghost.tumblr.com/post/185438409257/so-i-gave-up-then-decided-to-continue-and-now)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riley comes to visit!
> 
> Massive amounts of drama.

“They don’t know anything,” Neil says, and maybe he’s panicking a little, but Riley doesn’t seem to be paying attention. “They don’t know _anything_. Riley.”

“Well, maybe you should tell them,” she says, turning away from him to shove a stick of deodorant up her shirt.

“Sure, but that’s _my_ problem, I can’t have you telling them.”

She caps the deodorant and turns to face him, the better to give him the full force of her eye roll. “I can keep my mouth shut, Josten.”

“I know,” Neil says. “Just.”

She sighs, puts her fingertips on his face—the better to avoid disrupting his makeup—and says “I know. Just.”

“When do I get to meet them?” Kevin asks, wandering over, a towel draped over his head, making him into an odd exy Virgin Mary.

“I don’t know. I do want you to, though. That way you can help them with history.”

“Oh, boy,” Kevin says. “Riley’s there to play video games, I’m there to be a history teacher.”

“Kevin,” Neil says, turning to grab him by the shoulders, “ _all Paige does is ask questions._ ”

“And?” He says, unimpressed.

“Just think about it. You get to say things about history, and not only will she listen to you, she’ll _ask questions about it_.”

“You’re a terrible friend,” Kevin says. “When am I coming over?”

“Once I’ve figured out how to tell them things about me,” Neil says.

“Why do I have to wait on your issues?”

“Because they’re going to see you, and ask about your tattoo, and you’re going to have to shut up _immediately_.” Going to Abby’s house is going to be a problem. It’s a deadline, Neil realizes abruptly—the kids will have to know at least the basics by then, or there will be problems. Jesus. He should've taken a harder line against fostering kids. All of this was a mistake. He's not cut out for any of this. If they do this again, they should specifically ask for the least curious kid in the system. 

Kevin rolls his eyes. “Fine. You remember how you and Andrew were, like, the third and fourth people to hold my son, right? Before my _dad_? Before Thea’s parents?”

“He was too young to know any better,” Neil says. “Natalie and Paige are not.”

Kevin rolls his eyes.

“Also, we were there mostly because John was early.”

“And?”

“Kevin,” Andrew says.

Kevin turns to him.

“Not yet.”

Kevin points at Riley.

Andrew points at Riley. “Woman who is often happy and laughing.” He points at Kevin. “Man who is often annoyed and full of dirty looks.”

“I could say the same thing about you,” Kevin says indignantly.

Andrew shrugs. “Exactly. Who wants to deal with two of us?”

Kevin sighs. “Fine.”

Neil and Andrew arrive home before Riley gets there—they’d lost her at a traffic light. They wait for her, though, so they can walk in together. Also, so that she doesn’t have to carry both the playstation and the games.

The girls are waiting in the hallway, looking vastly less concerned than they had when Aaron and Katelyn had arrived. It helps, Neil thinks, that whereas Katelyn and Aaron had entered in a mess of toys and baby, Riley arrives with an easy grin and a playstation.

“What game do you guys want to start with?” She asks.

“Aren’t you going to ask us about school or something?” Natalie asks, annoyed already.

“Sure. How’s school going?”

“School.”

“Great. What game do you guys want to start with?”

“I’m Natalie.”

“I’m Paige.”

“I’m Riley.”

“Grand Theft Auto,” Natalie decides.

Neil helps Riley plug in the playstation.

“You guys know it’s a one-player game, right?”

“Yeah. We can take turns.”

“Cool.”

Riley teaches them how to play GTA.

“This is Franklin. Say hi to Franklin.”

“Hi, Franklin,” Natalie and Paige chorus. They look a little confused, like some primal preschool instinct had overcome them. Neil snickers and gets three dirty looks for his trouble, but Andrew favors him with a look that says that Andrew would be snickering, too, were he the type.

Riley details the controls, explains the storyline, and passes the controller off to Natalie, who dies magnificently within five minutes. Neil grabs a seat; Andrew sits on the floor between Neil’s legs, back against the leg rest of Neil’s chair, putting his head precisely where it ought to be for Neil to run his fingers through Andrew’s hair. Natalie gets better pretty quickly, and succeeds in playing for a full half-hour and completing two tasks before handing over controller duties to Paige, who dies within two minutes.

“Do I have to play the story?” Paige asks. “Can I just… drive around?”

“Sure,” Riley says.

“Do I have a car? Oh. Oh, that’s ugly.”

“Steal one,” Riley says.

“I can—I can just steal a car?”

“It’s called _Grand Theft Auto_ for a reason,” Riley says cheerfully. And then she teaches Paige how to steal a car, and then Paige has a car, something cute and sporty, and is driving around, following the rules of the road.

“You guys met cause you all played on the same team?” Paige asks, eyes trained on the screen. She slows to a stop at a red light.

“Yeah—well, Neil first,” Riley says. “I met Andrew—oh—three-quarters of the way through Neil’s first year? At our yearly banquet.”

“Neil hadn’t introduced the two of you before that? Were you not friends yet?”

“I was friends with Neil, but he and Andrew were pretending they hated each other.”

“No, we weren’t,” Neil says patiently.

“Arguable.”

“We weren’t.”

Riley tilts her head backwards to give him a _look_. “Everyone thought they hated each other, and they knew that, and they didn’t try to correct anyone.”

“What?” Natalie says, fully attentive. “How?”

Riley grins. “Okay. So. They had this _thing_ going, where Andrew always said he hated Neil—”

“ _What_?” Natalie says, aghast.

“Right? Anyway, Neil never denied it, and, if asked, insisted that it was _true_ —”

“Didn’t you guys get married in college?” Natalie asks Neil.

“Yeah,” Neil says, eyes narrowed at Riley. _One step out of line_.

“Anyway, they’d tweet at each other, cursing each other out and whatnot, and the press had a _field day_ with it. And then we’d play Andrew’s team once in a while, and they’d be yelling at each other in Russian, which of course none of us understood, and we all thought they were hating on each other! And then we get to this banquet, and, of course, you put Neil and Andrew within half a mile of each other and no game to play and Neil’s a total fucking mushpot, and some dude on Andrew’s team starts making fun of him— _hey, oh my god,_ ” she says, voice dropping three octaves, “ _the—Neil Josten’s in love with you,_ ” she says, avoiding Neil’s stink eye, “and Andrew just—fucking—grabs the chain around Neil’s neck—we’d all thought it was a cross, for _months_ I’d thought he was devoutly religious—and hauls it out, and it’s got his _wedding ring on it_ , and Andrew was like _we’ve been married for two years, I would hope he does_ , and then I offered to help Neil get a divorce.”

The car on the screen is stopped in the middle of the road, and Natalie and Paige are both staring at Neil and Andrew.

“Thanks, Riley,” Neil says. They already think Andrew hates him; this isn’t particularly helpful.

“Hey, the Minyard-Josten Rivalry was huge,” Riley says, like that’s an excuse.

“It had a _name_?” Natalie asks. “What the _fuck_?”

Neil shrugs. “Everyone loves a good rivalry.”

“No, no, _what_?”

Neil sighs and settles deeper into his chair. “So, when we were in college, Andrew used to say he hated me—”

“Did you _force_ him to propose to you?” Natalie asks, horrified, and Riley seems to realize that, perhaps, she’s hit a sore spot.

“This doesn’t leave this room,” Andrew says. “I will tell you, but it doesn’t leave this room.”

Riley nods, when Andrew looks at her, and Natalie and Paige mime locking their lips.

Andrew tilts his head forward, putting it out of Neil’s reach, and stares at the opposite wall. “I was a foster kid. And I barely stayed in a house for more than a few months at a clip. I was worthless, and unwanted. No one ever stuck up for me. No one ever stayed with me." He slides a look sideways at them, tilting his head just slightly, an acknowledgement of the looks on their faces that say that they relate. “And then I went to juvie. And then I got out, and my brother promised to stay with me if I'd protect him, so I killed my mom for beating him. And then I nearly beat four men to death for trying to beat up my cousin, and I then was a drugged, violent psychopath. Not many people who will just decide to be friends with that. Renee did; her story isn’t pretty, either. So I had one friend. Which was ideal. I wasn’t looking for friends, because all of my life experiences had taught me that people would leave. You understand this, yes? You can have foster sisters and foster parents, but they're never real sisters or parents, because they _don't want you_. And even if they were _real_ family, that wouldn't matter, because your _real_ family left you, too. The people who are supposed to stay with you never do, and no one else cares enough to try.”

The naked understanding on Natalie and Paige’s faces makes Neil hurt. Makes him wish he could adopt them. Makes him wish that he and Andrew could be the ones who stay with them. He breathes. This is all terrible.

“So whenever I decided I needed someone to stay with me, I would make them promises. Protect my brother. Protect Kevin. And there was always a time limit. The things they were scared of wouldn't be around forever.

“Neil was scared. I promised to keep him safe. I failed. I failed, because someone was threatening to hurt me, and Neil took the blow for me. He said it was better to face precisely the thing he was terrified of than to lose me. He said that I was worth something.”

Neil runs a hand through his own hair. “And I’d do it again,” he says, in Russian.

“You’ve asked me, previously, whether or not I really love him,” Andrew continues, without acknowledging Neil. 

Natalie and Paige nod. Riley throws Neil a panicked glance—she hadn’t realized that this was off-limits. Hadn’t realized she’d stumbled onto such a touchy subject.

“I do. I did. And besides the fact that all of my experience told me he'd leave, he kept doing things like running into danger and almost dying. He made me release him from his promise, and I thought he was going to leave, and hated him for it. And he lied to me, and got himself kidnapped, and there was no guarantee that he _wouldn't_ leave. Or that he _wouldn't_ up and die on me. And that would hurt like a bitch, and I hated him for being able to hurt me like that, yes? Love is—it is giving someone the power to hurt you, and hoping they won't, and I had no reason to believe that he wouldn't. So I ran away and signed with Oregon, and made sure that he and everyone else knew I hated him, so when he left me it wouldn't hurt.

“And when I came back, he was still there. I gave him the chance to leave. I asked if he wanted to go. He told me to shut the fuck up.

“So I gave up and signed with South Carolina.” He waves a hand. “Riley can tell you the rest.” He tilts his head back, and Neil puts a hand on it, wishing he could do more, wrap Andrew in his arms, could absorb Andrew into his bones.

Neil glances to his right, and there are too many people staring at them, and he can’t have that. He raises an eyebrow at Riley. _Clean up your own mess._

Riley gives him a face of absolute apologetic panic, and then rallies herself. “So, anyway, Clark—our Captain—gets called into the office one day, and, now, this is secondhand from him, but essentially, Andrew had reached out to our owner and manager and asked them to make him an offer. And Andrew is, well, _Andrew_ , so they—”

“What does that mean?” Paige asks. “Did he threaten them?”

Neil whispers in Russian: “You have a home in my heart, and never left it.”

“What? No. No, it’s _Andrew Minyard_ , he’s the best goalie in the country, and even worldwide he doesn’t have much competition—”

Neil feels himself glowing a little, just a little bit of pride shining through. It’s the same pride he feels for himself any time he thinks about his father and Lola and Riko—so many people, so _many_ people have tried to make him and Andrew into nothing, and yet, here’s Riley, saying Andrew’s name with nothing short of reverence. They _lived_. Not only did they live, not only did they survive, but depending on the person, _Neil Josten_ and _Andrew Minyard_ are household names.

“Really?” Paige says.

Andrew reaches up to take Neil’s hand, brings it to the side and tilts his head to kiss Neil’s palm. And then he puts Neil’s hand back on his hair.

“Yeah—did you guys do _any_ research on them?” Riley asks, flabbergasted.

“Usually, googling foster parents isn’t particularly useful,” Natalie says.

“Well, sure, but—well. Anyway. It was _Andrew_ _Minyard_ , so of course our owner was overjoyed about it, but they knew about the rivalry, and _they_ hadn’t been at the banquet, and of course we’d all kept our mouths shut, we didn’t want to get shanked by an angry Andrew Minyard, and they wanted to know how Neil was going to take the news—idiots, they were going to sign Andrew regardless, which obviously worked out well, but.

“Clark, of course, is a _huge_ romantic, we’ve just got Mr. Hallmark Movie as a Captain, and he said that if our owner would leave it to him, he’d get them more good publicity than they’d ever imagined. So they left him to it.

“So Clark reached out to Andrew’s captain, Rita, and asked if she knew we were taking Andrew. And she broke the news that we’d traded one of our goalies, John, to Rita’s team, and Clark saw his goddamn _opportunity_ , and Rita was down for it. So maybe a week and a half later, we played them—lost; Andrew’s very good, and they’d switched their lineup, fucked us up, Neil was pissed at us for two whole weeks—and Clark grabs John and Neil, and Rita grabs Andrew, and they all met center court, made the reporters move all their stuff, and then informed _everyone_ that they were trading goalies.

“I was watching from the inner ring. You could see allllllll the reporters, just, perk up like dogs, because Neil, of course—oh, you don’t know, do you—Neil’s got a goddamn mouth on him, and he’s never been afraid to give reporters a good juicy quote—he’s his PR agent’s worst nightmare—and they all had their cameras at the ready, little vultures, and three seconds after Clark makes the announcement, Neil just goes, _really_? And Andrew was like _yup_ and Neil _leapt_ at him, full-on makeout session, middle of the court. Half the reporters practically pissed themselves. There were at least two of them who full-on _jumped_ —thought they were about to witness a brawl. Gianna Rosetti played that clip _daily_ for, like, four months. It was _great_.”

In GTA, a cop car crashes into Paige’s car.

She and Natalie jump as the sirens start wailing.

“What’s happening?” Paige asks. “Oh god. What’s the star in the corner?”

“Gogogogogo! The cop car crashed into you, so he’s going to arrest you for damaging his property,” Riley says. “Drive!”

Paige drives.

“Run the red,” Natalie says impatiently.

“I’ll get hit,” Paige says, right before a car runs into her and she spins out. “I got hit.”

“Better than being caught by the pigs,” Natalie says.

Paige gets surrounded by the pigs.

“Can I—kill them?” She asks.

“Hell yeah,” Riley says. “Run ‘em over.”

Paige backs gently into a cop.

Two minutes later, she’s rampaging, running cop cars off a bridge. Paige and Natalie laugh hysterically when a cop car explodes.

“So _that’s_ what makes her laugh,” Neil says, quietly, in Russian.

Andrew hums.

Ten minutes later, Riley introduces them to firetrucks, and then Natalie takes over, and then an hour passes in a blink.

Very little of the storyline is completed, but many cops are dead.

“Hey,” Neil says as Natalie drives off a cliff, “it’s about dinnertime, and you guys need to do homework.”

The car lands on its hood, bounces, rolls, tilts, and rights itself.

Paige cheers.

“ _Hey_ ,” Neil says, but he can’t find it in himself to put too much annoyance into it. Natalie’s grinning. It does his soul good to see it.

Riley stands, though, and that gets their attention.

“Are you leaving?” Natalie asks.

“No, she’ll stay for dinner,” Neil says. And then he glances at Riley. “Right?”

Riley grins. “Sure.”

Paige gets up. “If we do science and history while you’re cooking, will you help us with the rest after dinner?”

Neil’s whole entire heart melts. “Sure.”

They head upstairs, no further prompting needed.

Andrew and Neil stand, and Andrew pokes Neil’s cheek. “You’re looking happy.”

Neil takes Andrew’s hand. “We have to help our kids with their homework.”

“Our kids? Now, if I recall correctly, you _did_ just refuse to adopt them, like, yesterday.”

“You did _what_?” Riley says. “Sorry. Hang on. I can—go in the basement? If I shouldn’t be here for this?”

“Oh, no,” Andrew says, “you’re in. You’re in, now.”

“Hey, Andrew, I’m really, really sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize—I didn’t know that was a—subject of concern. I didn’t need to be here for that, and I’m sorry you felt like you had to say it in front of me.”

Andrew flicks a couple fingers at her. “Neil trusts you, so—so be it. Anyway, Neil decided that we can’t adopt them until they know who he is.”

“And they don’t even know what I look like yet,” Neil says.

“This seems like a non-issue,” Riley says. “You could just—tell them.”

Neil turns and heads for the kitchen. “It’s a lot.”

“Look. At some point, they’re gonna google you guys,” Riley says, “and when they do—also, hey, Andrew, did you say earlier that you killed your mom? Hang on. Because I was very caught up in the horror of what I’d done, but, but hang on, did you say you _killed_ your _mom_?”

“Yeah.”

“Did—hang on. No. Wait. What?”

“You promised not to tell,” Andrew says.

“Hey, Andrew? What the _fuck_.”

Andrew shrugs.

Riley looks at Neil.

Neil shrugs.

“I—I understand nothing. That wasn’t—that’s not on google.”

“There aren’t many people who know,” Andrew says. “The Foxes—the team we had in Neil’s first year, anyway. Not the ones who came after. Natalie. Paige. My brother’s wife. And now you.”

“I—does this make me—complicit?”

“I’m reasonably certain that that’s not what complicit means.”

Riley gestures, vaguely, and looks at Neil. “Did—did you know about this?”

“He told me six months after I met him,” Neil says.

Riley squats on the floor and sticks her head in her hands.

“It’s not that bad,” Neil says.

She laughs, and it sounds a little hysterical. “No, it’s pretty bad, Neil. Your husband killed his mom. Hey, does Aaron know?”

“Yeah. He was included in that list.”

“And he’s just—cool with that?”

Andrew shrugs.

“What did Natalie and Paige do when they found out? How are they—they’re not scared?”

Neil snorts. “What, are you kidding? They didn’t even blink an eye. _I_ lost my mind when Andrew told them, _they_ didn’t give a shit.”

Riley takes a deep breath. “I do not think that I am overreacting, here. Hey, Neil, what the fuck were you thinking?”

“ _I_ didn’t kill her,” he says indignantly, hunting for frozen vegetables.

“Yeah, but you married a dude who _killed_ his _mom_.”

“Riley, I’ve killed, ah, _many people_.”

Riley looks like she’s going to vomit.

“Hey. Ri. Riley. This is all old. Also, my murders were generally self-defense. At worst, preemptive self-defense. And, sometimes, murder is just kinda the only answer.”

She holds her hands out to him. “You realize that the thing you just said makes you sound like a sociopath?”

Neil shrugs. “Anyway, this is why I don’t want to adopt the girls just yet. It’s a lot to strap yourself to. And they _should_ know, if we’re going to adopt them. But it’s a lot to tell a couple kids, you know?”

“You’re going to tell them about the _murder you did_? That’s a lot to tell _me!_ You can’t tell them that.”

“Hey, they already know the majority of my backstory,” Andrew says, sticking chicken in a frying pan, “so actually, we probably can.”

Riley sits down at the table. “You guys know that this is all very fucked up, right?”

Neil pauses. “What’s that thing? ‘Normal is just a setting on a washing machine’? Something being _fucked up_ is, essentially, meaningless.”

“No, no, it is _very_ meaningful, Neil Josten, did either of you ever—I mean—I mean, you didn’t, huh, you never went to jail for this, and you’re just— _telling me_? Like, what’s the statute of limitations on murder? How do you—what if I walked outside and called the cops?”

“Don’t,” Neil says, shrugging. "Also, the FBI knows about the murders I did. They don't care much."

“But, like, would you kill me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Neil looks at her. “Do you— _want us to_?”

“No. But why does that matter? What’s the difference between me and Andrew’s mom?”

“For one thing,” Andrew says, “you’re not beating my brother, so you’ve already got a pretty solid leg up.”

“And you’re not chasing me with intent to kill,” Neil says, “so don’t start comparing yourself to the people I’ve killed, either.”

Riley puts her head down on the table.

“Are you good with lactose?” Neil asks.

Riley lifts her head to stare at him.

“Natalie likes mozzarella,” he says, “so we’re trying to put it in more things. Can you eat it?”

“Yes, Neil Josten, murderer of many, I am capable of digesting lactose, thank you for your concern regarding the health of my digestive system. Also, you have seen me eat many cheeseburgers.”

“No problem. And sure, but it’s been a few months, and people can develop lactose intolerance. It’s really common.”

“So do I just—like—keep being your friend? Coworker? Do I have to swear a blood oath never to tell? I guess I already did promise not to tell, huh.”

Andrew glances at her. “I just want to make it clear that the reason I extracted that promise was to prevent you from telling anyone that I have feelings.”

“God, you’re so fucked up.”

“But, to your earlier question,” Neil says, “yeah, I mean, this isn’t new. We’re still the same people we were ten minutes ago. So.” He waves a knife, realizes that that’s probably not very reassuring, and goes back to chopping peppers.

“Great,” Riley says. “Guess I’ll just forget that one of my best friends is a murderer?”

“I’m one of your best friends?”

“I’m starting to doubt my taste, to be honest.”

“If I’d known, I’d have told you your taste was shit years ago.”

“So how often do you just _tell_ people this?”

“Just about never,” Neil says. “Most people don’t really need to know. And, honestly, I’d think people would figure it out, if they thought about it hard enough. I mean, does everyone think I just—never fought back? I’m not good at ending fights, but I _am_ good at starting them and then running away. I’m not exactly a pacifist.”

“Oh, whoops, can’t believe I never connected the dots between _runaway_ and _multiple murderer_.”

A thought hits Neil, and he turns to look at Riley. “Are you angry at me?”

She holds her hands out. “I mean. That’s a feeling. I’m having lots of feelings right now. I don’t think _anger_ is one of them, but it could be. Why? Would that bother you?”

He shrugs. “I don’t particularly want you to be angry at me. You’re my friend.”

“Not one of your best friends?” She says sarcastically.

“Well, my best friends know full well I’ve got a past, and up until now, I don’t think you’ve really understood the full implications of that. Hard to be best friends with someone who doesn’t know who you are.”

“Good thing I finally know the real Neil Josten.”

Neil stays silent. That’s a statement she can make. Whether it’s true or not is a question for another day.

“How do you just—”

Neil tries to stay patient. He tries to remember that, for many people, killing in self-defense is not a fact of life.

“Like,” Riley continues, “you’re making food for your foster kids, making sure it’s something they like, and also, you’ve killed many people.”

Neil puts the knife down and turns to face her. “You’re thinking about this wrong.”

She waits.

“It’s not about _what kind of person commits homicide._ It’s about: _under what circumstances could a person be convinced to commit homicide_. Which is worse: Killing your mom so she can never hurt your brother again, or letting her beat him daily? Which is worse: Killing someone who’s trying his level best to kill you, or letting him kill you? If you’ve never been pushed into that corner—I’m glad. If you were pushed into that corner and decided against homicide anyway—great. We can’t all do that. I’d be dead. Aaron might be dead, too—shit wasn’t great. So, yes, I am going to use the life that I bought with blood to make sure that a couple kids get to eat some mozzarella and apples, and to make sure that they understand algebra, and to make sure that the food my husband and I are making doesn’t hurt my friend.”

Riley sighs. Drops her head. Lifts it back up. “Fine. Okay. I know things I didn’t before. Okay. You guys are such fucking _downers_.”

Neil snorts. He adds the vegetables to the frying pan.

A few minutes later, they call Natalie and Paige downstairs, and Natalie looks nothing short of suspicious when she sees the mozzarella.

Neil decides against addressing it.

Natalie spends most of dinner railing against history and how boring it is, and how their professor was a philosophy major and is very boring, and, yeah, Kevin needs to come help them with this shit. Neil can’t make it interesting or fun.

Neil can see it looming in his future: He’s going to have to talk to his kids about the fucking mafia, which isn’t a sentence anyone should ever have to think.

He tries to remember what his parents told him when he was a kid, but he’s reasonably certain that if they ever spoke to him about it, it was when he was too young to remember. It’s not that he grew up thinking it was normal; he’d known full well it wasn’t. He’d known the other kids on his little league team didn’t have to drive up from an hour away. He’d known the kids on TV didn’t chop up rabbits with knives. He’d known full well he was growing up in a family that was very different from everyone else’s. He tries to remember precisely when he first heard the words _gang_ , and _gangster_ , and _crime syndicate_ , and he can’t; they were just there, always. There had been plenty that had been kept from him—the fact that he hadn’t known about the Moriyamas until college was proof of that. But he’s reasonably certain that he never had a talk with his parents that would give him any clues for how to handle this one.

But, well, Jesus, he can’t keep dangling adoption in front of two kids forever. That’s—cruel. And they’re just kids. And, sure, when he was 14, he’d been shot at multiple times, hit once, had been scarred repeatedly. And _hope_ doesn’t have much on that, in terms of physical harm caused. But he can see, vividly, flashing in front of his eyes in in high definition, Andrew’s scars, the little lines that told Neil all he needed to know about just how much hope could hurt. He knows. He can’t do that to Natalie and Paige. 

Neil cleans up, while Natalie and Paige talk to Riley about GTA, and about multiplayer games.

“Right? Neil?”

Neil looks up. He’d missed something—focusing on washing the dishes without rolling up his sleeves. He’s not wearing his armbands. It’s fall. It’s long-sleeve time. He wants so badly to roll up his sleeves. “Hmm?”

“Riley can come back, right?”

“Oh! Yeah. Yeah, of course—Drew?”

“I already agreed to it,” Andrew says.

“Oh. Cool. Yeah, I’m glad you guys have a toy you like now.”

“I mean, I’m taking the playstation with me,” Riley says.

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about the playstation, I was talking about you,” Neil says with a grin.

“Thanks,” Riley says drily.

“Why don’t you have a playstation?” Paige asks, looking at Neil.

“We used to, but it broke. And we had an earlier model than Riley’s, so the games we have won’t work in hers. We can get one, though. Probably should.”

“Did you use it much?”

“We used to.”

“Then why didn’t you replace it?”

“It broke when we were busy trying to bring the house up to code so we could foster a kid. And then we were busy doing paperwork. And then it seemed like way too much work to go out and buy a new console, and decide what games we wanted, and so on and so forth. But we’ll get one. Will you two help us pick out games?”

Paige and Natalie nod. 

“Cool. We also have to go grocery shopping soon. We’re running out of food.”

“Okay.”

Neil turns back to the endlessly frustrating dishes.

Riley hipchecks him sideways. “If you’re not going to roll up your sleeves, I’ll wash them.”

“Why won’t you roll up your sleeves?” Natalie asks.

“I’ll tell you later,” Neil says.

“Is Riley not allowed to know?”

“Riley already knows.”

“Oh. _We_ aren’t allowed to know.”

“Sorry.”

Natalie and Paige exchange a glance. “Is it more—” And then Natalie kicks Paige under the table, and Paige goes silent.

“Foot, meet mouth,” Riley says after a couple seconds. “And you thought I’d be better than Kevin, _why_?”

“Yeah,” Andrew says, “ _He_ managed to keep his mouth shut for _years_.”

Neil shrugs. “Different questions.”

“Why does Kevin have to keep his mouth shut?” Paige asks. “What does he know?”

Andrew is laughing at Neil. Neil can tell. “Both of you can start chewing on your own feet," Neil says. "Kevin knows everything. He was there."

Natalie groans. “Y’know, I wouldn’t have cared about any of this, at all, if you wouldn’t keep _saying things_? I’m so fucking curious I could _die_.”

“I mean, I’d have cared,” Paige volunteers. “I would like to know.”

“I think I’m just going to leave,” Riley says, “before you tell me more things no one’s supposed to know.” She finishes washing the pan and sets it aside to dry. “Thanks for having me.”

“No problem,” Neil says, following her into the living room to collect the games and the playstation.

He walks her out.

They put everything in the back seat of her car, and Riley shuts the door. “You and Andrew are batshit.”

“Not these days,” Neil says.

“If I didn’t know you so well, I’d call CPS on your asses.”

“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t.”

She puts her hands on his face. “You’re very happy, for an ex-murderer.”

He shrugs.

They hug goodbye, and Neil watches her pull out of the driveway.

He goes inside.

Natalie and Paige have their homework spread across the kitchen table, and Neil joins them for a discussion of verb conjugation, and holds Andrew’s hand under the table, and explains pre-algebra to his two kids, and then his heart belatedly kicks into overdrive as he realizes he just told someone he’s killed people.

Andrew glances at him, and he waves it off. He trusts Riley.

The kids go to bed, and so do Andrew and Neil.

Andrew sits on the bed and turns to Neil, arms out. Neil slides his armbands off, their weight familiar in his hands, and sits there for a second, staring at Andrew’s open hands as Andrew waits for Neil to give them back.

“Hey. Drew?” Neil says.

“Hmm?”

“You’ve never been worthless.” Neil places the bands and the knives inside them in Andrew’s hands.

Andrew meets his gaze.

“You have always, _always_ been worth so much, _so_ much.”

“You say the stupidest shit.”

Neil shrugs. “Saying that two plus two equals four is stupid, too, but it’s still true.”

“I’m not a math problem.”

Neil grins. “And you don’t need to be solved.”

Neil can hear it—the unsaid _I hate you_.

But instead, Andrew threads a hand through Neil’s hair.

Neil waits. Maybe it’ll be _I can’t stand you_.

Andrew pulls Neil’s forehead to his own.

A percentage? It’s been a while since he’d gotten one of those; he’s up to, what, 300% these days?

“I love you,” Andrew says.

Neil never thought this much joy was possible. The human body shouldn’t be able to hold it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did more research to figure out when Andrew told Neil about killing Tilda than I did for literally anything else in this fic
> 
> Neil: I don't want kids. :) yes I do. :) no I don't :) <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natalie gets into a fight!
> 
> This one's a lot. Considered breaking into two chapters, but I think a lot of you have been waiting for this one. :D

And then it’s morning again, and CPS hasn’t knocked down their door, and neither have the cops.

Riley fistbumps him when she gets to the stadium, and, yeah, he has good friends.

“So what was it like?” Kevin asks. 

“Jealous, much?” Riley says with a grin. And then she drops her voice, looks for listeners, and says “Andrew told me he killed his mom, and then, to make me feel better about it, Neil told me he’s killed many people.”

Kevin puts his face in his hands.

“Kevin, is this normal?”

“I mean,” he says through his hands, “Neil’s never been able to shut his goddamn mouth.”

“I’m very good at shutting my mouth, thanks,” Neil says. “Remember when you didn’t even know who I was until Riko told you?”

“Remember when Riko only figured it out _because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut_?”

“You’re welcome for that, by the way.”

“Thanks. It’s a miracle we’re all alive.”

“Miracles aren’t real,” Andrew says, joining them.

“Thanks,” Kevin says. “If you’ve got a better explanation for why we’re still here, I’d love to hear it.”

“Usually, the answer is Neil,” Andrew says.

“I mean.”

“Not really,” Neil says, jumping in before things get any farther. “I’m just pushy.”

Kevin rolls his eyes.

"Do I want to know what you're talking about?" Riley asks. "No, you know what, I don't. I have no questions and I want no answers. Ignorance is bliss."

Kevin gives Neil a look that says: _See?_ Neil shoots him the same look, and opens his mouth to apologize, but—

“Let’s go,” Clark says, and they head out to warm up.

A couple hours later, the secretary bangs on the court wall.

Practice halts.

“Call for Andrew Minyard,” he says, cracking the door. “From George W. Prep?”

Andrew and Neil exchange a glance, and Andrew goes to take the phone. “Andrew Minyard speaking.”

His eyes snap up to Neil’s.

He makes an affirmative noise, and then another one. “I’ll be right there,” he says, and then he hangs up.

Neil heads for him, incapable of waiting.

“Natalie got in a fight,” Andrew says. “Broke a kid’s nose. I’ll handle it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve got it. Keep playing.”

“Okay,” Neil says.

Andrew walks out.

Neil goes back to practice, for all of five minutes.

“Neil,” Kevin says, holding a hand up to pause everyone, “do you think it’s a good idea to let Andrew go talk to people alone? About Natalie getting into a fight?”

“Not at all.”

Clark glances between them. “Neil, do you need to go?”

Neil lets himself consider the concept of cops interrogating his kid, and the concept of Andrew being there, and, “yes.”

“Bye.”

Neil breaks, and runs. Checks his makeup as he calls an Uber. Hauls off the bigger parts of his uniform, but doesn’t bother showering. Fuck.

The Uber can’t arrive fast enough, and can’t get to the school fast enough, but the driver tries, and Neil tosses him a 50% cash tip as he gets out.

He can practically see Andrew in handcuffs. Natalie isn’t technically their kid; what happens if she gets in trouble? Can the agency take her away? What would make her start a fight? Neil hears Andrew saying _you have no self-protection instinct_. “I’m here to see the principal,” he tells the lady at the front desk. “Neil Josten. Natalie Gray’s guardian.”

She points him in the right direction, and he goes. 

_Broke some kid’s nose_. Must have punched him.

Neil hopes she didn’t hurt her fist.

He pops into the principal’s office.

Andrew stands, unimpressed, arms crossed—a good sign; it’s hard to fight with arms crossed. Natalie sits in a chair behind him, hunched over, small, distressed, anger and terror rolling off her in waves.

There’s also other people there. A boy, a man, a woman. The man is smiling and waving things off, and the boy looks smug about it, even around the bandage on his nose.

There’s no cops. Neil isn’t sure why he’d thought there would be—now that he thinks about it, there's no real reason for cops to get involved, except that, wherever he goes, things seem to happen wherein cops need to get involved.

“Oh, good,” the man says, holding out a hand to Neil. Neil shakes it. “I’m Henry Warren. You must be Neil Josten, the other dad.”

“Sure,” Neil says.

“This is my wife, Marianna, and our son, Justin Warren-Pagano.”

“Nice to meet you,” Neil says, like he has manners. He turns to Natalie. “Let me see your hand.”

She holds it up.

“I’m going to touch it,” he says, and waits for her to nod before doing so. He feels the bones in her thumb, her red knuckles, and—“nothing’s broken,” he says, surprised, pleased. “You know how to throw a punch, huh.”

“Yeah,” she snaps.

“That’s what’s important,” Neil says cheerfully.

“What’s _important_ ,” Henry says, meaningfully, “is that my son’s _nose_ is broken. I’m sure you realize that that’s unacceptable behavior from a young lady.”

Neil glances at him. “Sure. What was your son doing?”

“Nothing!”

“Sure. Hey, Justin, what were you doing?”

Justin looks appalled at being spoken to.

Henry waves a hand. “Why are you asking my son? He’s not the one who made this violent!”

Neil looks back at Natalie. “What happened?”

She glares at him.

“She won’t say,” the principal says, pointedly.

Neil stares at her.

She glares back.

Neil counts to ten and makes it to seven before he loses patience. “We can Favorite Foods Game this, or you can just tell me.”

Her hands are shaking, he realizes.

And then she breaks, hunching over and curling around her hands, yelling in the general direction of her knees. “I know, I know I wasn’t supposed to punch him, I know I should’ve just pulled her away, but I was so _angry_ , he was so _mean_ to Paige because her clothes didn’t fit and because she didn’t have a backpack and he and his friends were calling me fat and they keep saying we look nothing alike and probably have different dads and our mom’s a whore and they keep making fun of us for having no parents and everyone here knows each other and no one knows us and we don’t know them and I was walking to Paige’s locker to meet her there before class and I could see _him,”_ she screeches, flinging a finger out in Justin’s direction, “so close to her and she wasn’t happy and he kept touching her hair and her arm and her hip and he touched her _boob_ and I _broke his fucking nose and I’d do it again if I could_ and I know, I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she says, teary eyed, looking up at Neil, “I know I’m just supposed to stand between them, but I couldn’t do it, I was so _angry_ , and I just—I’m not sorry! I’m not!”

There’s three seconds before anyone can speak, the only noise the harsh breath of Natalie’s fear.

“Natalie,” Neil says softly. _We will keep you safe_. _Here, you don’t have to be afraid. We will not hurt you. We will keep you safe_. How can he protect them when they’re not with him? How can he keep them safe when they’re at school? “Natalie, you did exactly the right thing.”

She blinks up at him. “I did?”

“Yes,” Neil says. Soft. Quiet. He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to keep himself from turning around and stabbing Justin in the eye. “I’m proud of you.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Henry says. “My son has a broken nose and—”

“Maybe,” Neil says, and then he’s facing Henry, “your son should learn to keep his hands to himself.”

Henry rolls his eyes and waves a hand. “Why do you even trust her? She’s just a foster kid, she’s probably a liar.”

“She is not.”

“It was probably just a misunderstanding, anyway.”

Neil hears the half-second of silence like a slammed door, like the moment after a thunderclap, drawn out for moments, years of his life, and he knows what’s going to happen, and he does not stop it.

Andrew punches Henry.

Henry goes down, and Andrew is there, twisting him as he falls, putting him facedown on the floor, putting his knee on Henry’s back, twisting Henry’s arm until it looks like it’s going to pop out of the socket. Natalie is holding Neil’s hand, tightly, and he can feel her shaking. He holds onto her. _All is well. We’re here. You’re safe_. Andrew flicks out a knife, pointing it at an advancing Marianna. “You will come no closer.”

“Mr. Minyard,” the principal says, shocked.

“I don’t like that word,” Andrew says, supremely unconcerned. “ _Misunderstanding_. It was not. She does not lie. Here’s what’s going to happen,” he continues, as Henry tries to speak. “We’re going to leave. Natalie and Paige are coming with us. Natalie will receive no punishment, and Justin will receive detention for as long as it takes him to learn not to sexually assault other people.”

“I’ll call the cops,” Marianna says.

“If you can find a pig in the state who’ll arrest me, I’ll give you a thousand dollars,” Andrew says. “You will back up, now, or I’ll slice your husband’s throat.”

Marianna backs up, narrowed eyes on Andrew, putting Justin behind her.

“Mr. Josten,” the principal says. “ _Please_ control your husband.”

Neil decides against answering. He could—he _should_ answer. The principal might have a panic button, and while cops can be paid off, there’s no reason to bring them in in the first place. He should be concerned about Andrew murdering a man with witnesses. He should be concerned about Andrew physically assaulting a man with witnesses. But Natalie’s breathing like she’s run a marathon, and Neil can’t bring himself to be unhappy with Andrew.

“Did you hear me?” Andrew asks, flicking a glance at the principal. “Recite back to me what’s going to happen.”

“I—this is—”

“Yes?” Andrew says, and the principal appears to lose his nerve.

“You’re going to take your wards and leave. Natalie will receive no punishment, and Justin will receive detention until he knows not to touch other people.”

"I said sexually assault," Andrew says, "but I suppose that's good enough." He stands, using Henry’s head to push himself up. “Let’s go.”

He turns and swings the door open, and Natalie and Neil are right behind him.

“I have lawyers!” Henry yells. “I _know_ people! And you’re not exempt from this, Josten. We will _break you_.”

Neil goes still.

A middle-aged man is threatening him, and there is a beaten child inside him, waiting to see what will happen next—if he stays still enough, maybe he won’t be hurt, maybe he will be overlooked, maybe he will be too pitiful and stupid to warrant more than a kick to the ribs. His head swivels, slowly, to look, to look at Henry, who has found his way to his feet, to look around Natalie at Henry—Natalie, still holding his hand, and shaking, no stranger herself to threats, clinging to Neil. _We will keep you safe. We will keep you safe_.

Neil doesn’t know how.

He doesn’t know how to protect someone else, not when he can’t place himself bodily in the path of the threat. And he doesn’t know what to say. What to say to keep Henry away from his kids. What to say to ever, ever make Natalie feel safe again.

There is a beaten child inside of him, rising to the surface, clawing its way up his throat, and Neil can’t hold him down, and Nathaniel laughs.

Nathaniel laughs, the laugh of the Butcher, Baltimore’s Angel of Death, that wielder of cleavers and of dull axes, the laugh of a man who has looked death in the eye and become its emissary. Nathaniel laughs, and the world rights itself. “You will break me? _You_?” Nathaniel smiles, a ruthless, cruel baring of teeth. “ _You wish you knew how_.”

Andrew grabs his wrist, and Nathaniel goes, willingly, still laughing. The beaten child _lived_. The beaten child watched his father die. Watched his husbands’ tormenters die. The beaten child survived them all. The beaten child stands, shining, gleaming like the edge of a well-sharpened knife, and smiles. Another child clings to his hand. Nathaniel hangs on. He won’t let her go.

“Where’s Paige’s classroom?” Nathaniel asks.

“This way,” Natalie says. She pulls him down the hall, purposefully, and turns down a side corridor. She drops his hand and smashes the door open, eyes finding Paige immediately. “Let’s go.”

“Excuse me,” the teacher says, “Ms. Gray, that is not—”

Nathaniel steps past Natalie. “Paige is leaving for the day,” he says, and he’s still smiling, rendering it a threat.

Paige dumps books and a notebook into her bag, swings it unzippered onto her shoulder, and heads in his direction.

“I received no notice of her—”

“Mrs. Tanning,” says a voice over the loudspeaker, “Paige and Natalie Gray have been signed out for the day, and their guardians will be there in a moment to pick up Paige.”

Nathaniel ushers Paige out into the hallway, towards Andrew.

Mrs. Tanning presses a button. “Understood,” she says.

Nathaniel lets the door slam shut behind him, following Andrew and the girls back out of the building and to the car.

The twins get in the backseat and shut the door, and there’s no one else in the parking lot, and no one coming out the front door, and Andrew starts the car and looks out the window at Nathaniel, and they’re safe, they’re all safe, and Nathaniel sighs.

Neil gets into the car. He leans back into the comfortable, familiar seat, and puts his hand on the center console. After Andrew backs out of the spot, he sticks his hand in Neil’s, and Neil can feel fury in every muscle, every bone. It’s a comfort, a reassurance.

“Paige,” Neil says, when they get on the road and Neil feels like he can move again. “Are you all right?”

“How do you do it?” She asks.

Neil looks in the rearview mirror, but she’s not looking at him. She’s looking down—at his and Andrew’s hands, he realizes. “Do what?”

“Touch anyone?”

The car screeches into the shoulder and pulls to a stop.

Neil puts the car in park and turns on their flashers.

Andrew is shaking, hand so tight in Neil’s he’s beginning to lose feeling in his fingers. “I’ll kill him for you,” he says, “if you’d like.”

“But how do you _do_ it? You were raped, too, right?” She says. “So how do you do it? There are some days—” her words are uneven, her breath is choking— “even Natalie is too much, I want to peel off my skin, I’m trying to be normal about it, but I can’t imagine—I can’t even—I can’t _breathe_ ,” she says, and Andrew twists in his seat, hauling himself back to unbuckle her seatbelt. His hands twitch, and then he realizes he can’t, he can’t do it. “Unbuckle her seatbelt and put her head between her knees,” he tells Natalie, and Natalie shakes her head, gripping her own seatbelt so tightly her knuckles are white.

“Paige,” Andrew says, “no one is going to touch you. Put your head between your knees. Paige.”

She does, gasping for breath.

“You’re safe,” Andrew says, and his voice is terrible. “You’re safe.”

“Paige,” Neil says, and he doesn’t know what his voice sounds like, he can’t hear it over the roaring in his ears, “Paige, it’s over. He’s not here. You never have to see any of them again. You are safe.”

He keeps talking, reminding her to breathe, to count out her breaths, so utterly helpless, until she calms, wipes her eyes, and sits up. She stares at the ceiling, boneless, head rocking as cars fly past and the Maserati shakes. “How did you do it?” She asks again. “How did you get away?”

Andrew leans sideways against his seat. “I didn’t. You saw, the first day or two I was here. I couldn’t touch Neil at all. I couldn’t handle it. The plane was unbearable.

“Some days are better than others,” he continues, voice gaining control as he shoves everything down. “Some days I don’t think about it at all. But some days it’s all I think about, and I can’t get away from it.

“What matters is this: Neil doesn’t touch me without my permission. He doesn’t say a word if I go to bed with my goddamn shoes on. If I’m having a bad night, he stays on his side of the bed, and if I have to sleep on the couch, he doesn’t take offense. If I say stop, he stops. If I say no, he doesn’t even start. If he puts his hand out and I ignore it, he takes it back. So I can stand it. Because the second I can’t, it’ll stop.”

“What if I never want to have—” she gags and digs her nails into her hands.

“Don’t,” Andrew says. “If you don’t, then don’t.”

“It fucked Natalie up, too. She—he—” she chokes, turns red, waves a hand insistently at Natalie.

“We were in separate rooms,” Natalie whispers. “And something was wrong, I _knew_ something was wrong, but I didn’t realize—and then he asked me to stay with Paige, that night, and I knew something was _wrong_ , and I—for five minutes, everyone was in the basement. I grabbed a knife and stashed it under her bed. He told me to watch. And then I stabbed him.”

Neil’s going to vomit. He can’t—well, he supposes he can handle it. Paige and Natalie are living with it; he can live with the knowledge that it happened. He swallows back his nausea.

“What was his name?” Andrew asks.

Paige shakes her head.

“When you’re ready, tell me. We'll deal with it.”

Paige looks at him, and then looks out the window. Andrew turns around, turns off the flashers, and pulls back onto the road.

“Where are we going?” Paige asks.

“Home,” Neil says.

“I don’t want to go.”

“You could come to the stadium with us,” Neil says. “We’re supposed to be training.”

“Okay.”

Andrew makes a u-turn, and they head to the stadium.

They let themselves into the stadium, direct Natalie and Paige up into the stands, and get dressed in silence.

Neil pauses with his hand on the door to the inner ring. “I hate this,” he says.

“It could be worse,” Andrew says. “We could _not_ have them.”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

Andrew stares at Neil. Neil waits.

“No,” Andrew says eventually, “but in a different way than usual. Are you going to open that door?”

Neil opens the door, bangs on the wall, waits for the scrimmage to pause, and walks onto the court.

“Hey, do you know why there are two teens in the stands?” Clark yells across the court.

“We put them there,” Neil answers.

Kevin points at Andrew. “You look like shit.”

“Keep your eyes to yourself,” Andrew says, making his way into the goal.

Riley clacks sticks with Neil. “So what’s up with the kids? Did they get kicked out?”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are they in trouble?”

“No.”

Neil watches Riley decide against saying anything else, and finds himself remarkably grateful for it.

Nathaniel abandons himself to training.

“These are your own teammates, Neil,” Clark yells the second time Nathaniel bodychecks one of them.

Neil waves his racquet in acknowledgement, but he’s not the only one working things out; Andrew keeps smashing the ball all the way down the court, prompting a volley of angry French from Kevin that Neil decides not to translate. Then again, he might not need to—Neil gets the feeling, sometimes, that Andrew knows more French than he lets on.

Andrew punts the ball directly at Kevin instead, until Kevin goes over to him, grabs his helmet, and tells him off. Kevin has a kid, these days. Kevin isn’t trying to get himself murdered via Andrew.

Andrew settles down after that. Mostly. Any time he wants Neil to get the ball, he bangs it across the court.

“Are you _fighting_?” Kevin asks, after the umpteenth time Neil’s hauled himself across the floor, blood pounding, muscles straining, dumping his fury. Can’t bring it home with him.

Neil shakes his head.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“No, really though,” Riley says from ten feet away. “ _Are_ you? You know, we’ve all been on the same team for five years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two fight. Is this what that looks like?”

“We’re fine,” Neil says.

Andrew bashes his racquet into the wall— _are we going to keep going?_

Neil gets moving.

Eventually, the end of the day rolls around.

Natalie and Paige are waiting by the door when Neil goes looking for them.

“Are you guys okay?” He asks. He can’t imagine the answer will be yes. He can’t figure out what else he could say.

They stare at him.

That’s fair.

He ushers them out through the locker rooms—or tries, anyway.

“Are you Kevin Day?” Paige asks, eyes trained on Kevin’s tattoo.

Kevin freezes. Glances, apologetically, at Neil. “Yeah. Are you one of Neil’s wards?”

“Paige,” she says. “And this is Natalie. Are you really the best striker in exy?”

“Yes,” Kevin says.

Half the team rolls their eyes.

“Is Neil better?” Paige asks.

“Yes,” Riley shouts from the other end of the room.

“He tries,” Kevin allows.

“It seemed like he was better,” Paige says.

Kevin glances at Neil. It says: _what’s up with her?_

Neil gives him nothing back.

“He ran a lot more, it seemed like he was working harder,” Paige says.

Kevin stares at her.

“You’re pretty cool though, I guess,” she concludes, looking like perhaps she’d overestimated Kevin.

“Thanks,” Kevin says.

Clark coughs, a sound suspiciously similar to a laugh.

“Why don’t you talk?” Kevin asks Natalie.

Natalie gives him a look that should have burned him to the bone.

“Is this what John is going to be like when he’s 14?” Kevin asks.

Neil shrugs.

“Oh, Jesus,” Clark says. “It’s a whole family of people who never speak. What’s dinner like for you guys?”

“Pretty good,” Andrew says. “Speaking of, we’re gonna go make that now.”

Riley waves from the other end of the locker room. Paige raises a hand in silent greeting. Natalie does not. Neil gives Riley an apologetic shrug, which she returns, and then he and Andrew bundle the twins out the door and into the car.

“Are you okay with going home now?” Andrew asks.

“Where else would we go?” Natalie counters.

Andrew shrugs. “We could check into a hotel. We could drive around. We could go see a movie, or go out to dinner, or go buy a new house.”

“We can go home,” Paige decides. 

Andrew glances at Natalie.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

Andrew pulls out of the parking spot and drives them home.

Seeing the house is almost a relief when they pull up to it; Neil feels like he’s been gone for years, like it should have deteriorated in their absence. But there it is. His home. Standing. Safe.

Andrew unlocks the door, and Neil brings up the rear. He doesn’t feel safe until the door is locked behind him and the chain’s been pulled. It’s a false sense of security, and largely meaningless, but once Paige and Natalie are inside and the rest of the world is locked out, Nathaniel feels better anyway.

“How do you _know_?” Natalie says angrily.

Neil turns, trying to figure out what he missed, and realizes she’s staring at him, Paige and Andrew frozen halfway to the living room, matching looks of confusion on their faces.

Okay. So he hadn't missed anything. Natalie’s starting a conversation in the middle instead of at the beginning. Neil can work with that. “How do I know what?”

“How do you _know_ they can’t break you?”

Oh. Neil shrugs. “They can’t.”

“They have lawyers. I know you have a lot of money, but you don’t have _Warren_ level money, no one does.”

“Money’s not particularly a concern. They can’t take it all—at best they can sue for hospital bills and emotional damage, and the hospital bills won’t get too high, considering he got a couple bruises at worst,” he says, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“What if Andrew goes to jail! That was physical assault!”

“We’ll post his bail.”

Natalie waves both her hands, frustrated. “What about _pain_?”

“Pain?”

“Pain! Like, physical pain! What if he decides to _break_ you! Justin talks all the time about how his parents _know_ people, _bad_ people, he struts around the school like he’s untouchable, he talks about how his dad can walk around the city at midnight waving hundred dollar bills and not get _touched_ because people _know_ that he knows _people_. What if he sends them after you?”

“People who are actually involved with bad shit don’t generally run their mouths about it,” Neil says.

Natalie smacks the wall. “Justin’s stupid! He’s a loudmouth! He likes having power and he likes scaring people and his dad has _so much money_ and it’s probably true. So what if they hurt you?”

“Why are you scared of them hurting _me_? They’re much more likely to go after Andrew. Well, unless they think I’m an easy target,” Neil muses. Nathaniel worries.

“Because—you’re so fucking _happy_! You don’t even _know_ —what if they hurt you until you become like _him_!” She yells, pointing at Andrew, who looks lightly surprised at being dragged into this.

“I think Andrew’s doing just fine,” Neil says, offended on Andrew’s behalf.

“I’ve never seen him smile! You walk around doing things like—like naming your cats _King Fluffikins_ and _Sir Fat Cat McCatterson_ —”

“Andrew named Sir,” Neil says. She glares at him. He shuts up.

“What if you become like _us_! What if they _hurt_ you and you stop _laughing_ all the goddamn time and being _happy_!”

“Are you… worried about me?” Neil asks.

Natalie throws her hands in the air. “ _Now_ he gets it!”

“Because I’m happy?”

Natalie points at Paige. “She’s trying _so hard_ to be like you! She wants to be happy one day! _I_ want to be happy one day! What if they _make you stop_!”

Neil crosses his arms over his chest, and then uncrosses them and puts them on his hips, and then sticks them in his pockets. “Why do you care if some dude who doesn’t know anything is happy?”

“Because we can’t all be fucked up!”

“I ran away,” Neil says. “I was on the run for years. I’m happy anyway. What makes you think I’m _not_ fucked up?”

“You can’t have been on the run for _years_ ,” she says scathingly, “not as a _kid_. Kids can’t _do_ that. Someone calls the cops and sticks you in a foster home. Just because you didn’t get to live at home doesn’t mean you didn’t live with _someone_. But that’s not a _bad_ thing. I’m glad you got to have a better childhood than the rest of us! But you don’t know what people can _do_! You should’ve just left me! We’ll go back to school tomorrow and Justin will beat me up and he’ll feel better and his dad will feel better and they’ll leave you and Andrew alone and no one will get hurt.”

“Natalie,” Neil says as she turns to walk away.

“What?”

She looks so calm, now that she’s decided on a plan of action. Now that she’s decided to take a beating to protect Neil. Where the hell did she learn to do that? Who taught her that that was acceptable? Who taught her that her pain was so irrelevant it didn’t count as someone getting hurt? Nathaniel understands, though. He’s taken beatings to protect his mother. And Neil can’t pretend he’s never gotten hurt to protect someone else. 

“What?” She repeats.

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to say _don’t_. He doesn’t know how to make it clear that _he_ will take the hit for _her_ , and that that is as it should be. He doesn’t know how to make sense of the guilt on Paige’s face. His gaze slides over to Andrew’s, and they discuss for a minute:

_This is terrible._

_This is life. You know that._

_This is_ not _life. Not for everyone. You know that._

_But it is life for us. For them._

_I can’t let it stay like that._

_No. But you're the one standing in the way of adoption.  
_

Natalie turns away.

“Natalie. Wait.”

She turns back, eyebrows raised. “Yes? Are you going to actually say something? Or are you just gonna stare at Andrew?”

Neil tilts his head. “I’m going to take my shirt off.”

“Ew,” she says, recoiling. “Why?”

“It’s the easiest answer. If it’s not okay, tell me, and I won’t do it. Paige, you don’t have to be here for this.”

Natalie looks torn, but curiosity wins out, and she crosses her arms and aims her gaze somewhere to the right of Neil’s face. “Fine.”

“Paige?”

Paige nods, curling towards the wall.

Well. Like a bandaid, and all that. Nathaniel doesn’t want to do it. Neil pulls his shirt over his head.

“What the _fuck_!” Natalie screeches, jumping backwards into Paige. “What is on your _stomach_! What’s on your— _shoulder_ , is that a _brand_?”

Neil pulls off his armbands, so she can get a good look at his arms, too.

Paige grabs Natalie’s shoulder.

“In the drawer,” Andrew says, with no other explanation.

Neil pulls open the drawer of the little table next to the door and finds makeup wipes. He glances at Andrew, who looks unapologetic, and wipes his face, carefully, much more concerned about uncovering all his scars than about entirely cleaning his face.

“What _happened_!”

“I told you,” Neil said. “I was on the run.”

“And got _branded_?”

“No, that was from before I went on the run. It’s not a brand. It’s just a hot iron.”

Paige gags.

“Is that a _gunshot wound_?”

“Yeah.”

“Who was shooting at you!”

“I told you,” Neil repeats, “I was—”

“No, you didn’t! _Running away_ is when the foster system separates you from your sister so you climb out the window and hitchhike to wherever she is and hide in their garage for two weeks and she sneaks food out the window for you at night. Running away isn’t—” she gestures at him—“ _that_.”

“What _happened_?” Paige asks.

Neil hums. What to tell them? How _much_ to tell them? He hauls out his Russian and looks at Andrew. “Should I tell them about the Moriyamas?”

“I thought you decided it was rude to talk in a different language around children,” Natalie snaps.

“You said Justin was a loudmouth,” Andrew says in English. “Are you?”

Paige and Natalie look deeply offended.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Neil says. “Some of it is public knowledge—all you had to do was google me, you know. But some of it isn’t. And if you tell, you won’t be strutting around school like you own the place, you’ll be six feet under. This isn’t me threatening you. This is a warning. And it won’t be me killing you for saying it—it’ll be people with more power than I’ve ever had killing all of us. I can tell you a partial story, and you’ll know what you need to know, and you can go to school and talk shit about your foster dad. Or I can tell you the full story, and you won’t be able to tell anyone.”

“We didn’t google you because you didn’t want us to,” Paige says. “Tell us. “We won’t talk.”

Neil leans back against the door—the autumn chill seeps through, into his back, a grounding force. He needs it. He closes his eyes, because it’s easier to tell this story when he’s not looking at two children. “Once upon a time, there was a man called the Butcher of Baltimore. He was a gangster. The head of a crime syndicate that extended down to D.C., and all the way up the Eastern Seaboard. He liked knives. He also liked meat cleavers. And if he wanted to hurt someone, _badly_ , he liked his old, dull axe.

“He was married to a woman named Mary Hatford. She was the daughter of a British gang, so it worked out. And, nearly 30 years ago, they had a son.

“But the Butcher of Baltimore wasn’t the worst. Not by far. His son _thought_ he was. _Thought_ that Nathan Wesninski was the worst a person could get, was the biggest bad in the whole world. Nathaniel Wesninski thought that until he was seventeen years old. But what he didn’t know was this: The Butcher served a family named the Moriyamas. Yakuza—the Japanese mafia. The Moriyamas, in America, were split into two branches. The main branch was for first sons; the side branch was for everyone else.

“The main branch was headed by Kengo Moriyama. He had a son, named Ichirou. He also had a brother, who headed the side branch, named Tetsuji. And Kengo had a second son, Riko, who was in Tetsuji’s custody. Tetsuji was free to do whatever he wanted, which was to meet a woman named Kayleigh Day and make up a sport called exy and coach the best NCAA team and make Riko the best striker on that team. And then Kayleigh died. And Tetsuji got custody of her son, Kevin Day. And then his dream involved making Kevin the second-best striker on that team.”

“Who’s Riko?” Paige says. “I’ve heard Tetsuji’s name, and I know who Kevin is, but I’ve never heard of Riko. Was he really bad at exy?”

Neil smiles. Riko, forgotten, is a balm to his soul. “He was very good. He just wasn’t the _best_. But we’ll get to him later.

“Here’s a fun fact about the Moriyamas: they don’t like families. Let’s say I grow up and take over my dad’s territory. And then I have a son, whom I’m grooming to take over when I die. Now, instead of being loyal to the Moriyamas, I’m loyal to _my territory_ , which I’m keeping _for my son_. And my son, instead of being loyal to the Moriyamas, is loyal to _me_ , and to our _family_. And my people are loyal to _my_ bloodline, instead of to the Moriyama bloodline. So there are no families allowed. And yet, I existed, and I knew too much to _not_ be involved. So the solution was this: I would play exy for Tetsuji. Kevin 2.0. Or I’d have to die.

“I played little league. I liked it. I was good at it. And when I was 10, I went to Evermore Stadium, and Kevin and Riko and I skirmished, and then we went upstairs and watched my dad carve a screaming man into 100 little pieces. I was supposed to play again the next day. If I was good, if I showed that I could follow Tetsuji’s directions and improve, I would be his. If I was bad, my dad would kill me.

“I didn’t know that, though. That night, my mom took me and five million dollars and ran. And I thought it was because my dad was shitty—remember, I’d just watched him shred a man, it didn’t occur to me that there might be a different reason why we were running. And she never told me about the Moriyamas, or about anything, and we ran, and my dad chased us, and whenever he was in jail his people chased us, and she _never told me_ it was because we were a risk to the fucking Moriyama empire, and then she died, and I took up exy again. I wasn’t supposed to play it, because that would make it easier for the Moriyamas to find me—but, again, Mom didn’t tell me that. I didn’t know why she hated it so much. I just knew I liked it. I only picked it up again because she wasn’t there to tell me otherwise. 

“Meanwhile, the ERC had started asking if Riko was really better than Kevin was. The ERC pitted them against each other. Kevin let Riko win, and then Riko broke Kevin’s hand, and then Kevin left. He went to the Foxes. Coach Wymack was his dad—Wymack didn’t know at the time—and Andrew was the only person scary enough to keep Riko at bay. And then they both turned up at my high school to sign me to the Foxes. I didn’t want to sign with them; Kevin might have recognized me. But Wymack always knows what to say. I signed. I was going to run, once things got too dangerous. Except that I ended up—not running.”

Neil waves a hand and opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. “I did lots of dumb shit that year. I found out that the Moriyamas were yakuza, and then I told Riko to fuck off on live TV, and Andrew told me he’d keep me safe if I stayed. I found out that the Moriyamas technically owned me, and I made friends with the Foxes, and then Riko threatened to hurt Andrew if I didn’t go to Evermore—where the Ravens played—so I punched Riko in the face and went to Evermore. Riko tried to force me to sign with them and tortured me a bunch—this one,” Neil says, pointing at a scar without looking down, ignoring Nathaniel in the back of his head telling him to shut up, “and this one, and this one, and a whole bunch more that didn’t scar. Also, there was one here, but it’s on top of another old scar. And then I got into a relationship, and then my dad got out of jail and had me kidnapped and tortured me a bunch—my face, and arms, and this one—and my uncle—my mom’s brother—popped over from England to shoot my dad in the chest—with _impeccable_ timing, really—and then he left me there, the FBI took me, and then Andrew took me back. And then Kengo died, and Ichirou came to see me and ask what was up, and I apologized profusely and told him his brother was a piece of shit, and he told me that Kevin Day, Jean Moreau—Kevin Day 2.0—and I owed him 80% of our exy earnings for the rest of our careers, and if we couldn’t make enough money, he’d kill us and everyone we knew. And then we beat the Ravens, and Ichirou let me watch him shoot Riko, and then a couple months later Andrew agreed that we were in a relationship.

“Anyway, I made pro and Court, and 80% of every paycheck I get goes to Ichirou via a variety of charities and business holdings, and once a year I do my taxes with a Moriyama accountant to make sure I’m upholding my end of the bargain. Every once in a while I have to talk to them about something else—I had to ask them for you, to make sure that you wouldn’t be beholden to them by virtue of being my ward, and, incidentally, to make sure that the certifications and whatnot went through. Andrew and I aren’t exactly ideal candidates. It’s probably also why I was able to _just get_ Paige,” Neil says, glancing down at Natalie. Her mouth is hanging open. “I haven’t seen Ichirou in ten years, though. He’s not really interested in me, as long as I pay my dues and keep my mouth shut. Which I do.

“So, in conclusion: No one Henry Warren knows is scarier than the people I know, and his lawyers are nowhere _near_ as good as the Moriyama lawyers, who are _heavily_ invested in keeping us out of jail so we can keep giving them the maximum amount of money. Now, to be fair, I don’t know that they’d bother keeping _Andrew_ out of jail, or lending us their lawyers for him, but I could probably argue that it’s in their best interests. And if Henry fucking Warren wants someone to beat me up, he’s going to have to find someone who doesn’t know who the Moriyamas are or who I am or who Andrew is, and that person is unlikely to be capable of causing me any particular harm. And if they do—” he lowers his gaze to look at them, and he drops Neil Josten. He doesn’t pull Nathaniel Wesninski to the surface, either. He remembers being a runaway. He remembers putting on a mask every day. And he remembers the nothingness behind the mask—that transient creature he’d been for so long, answering to a different name every six months, seeing a different face in the mirror, lying so much he’d forgotten how to tell the truth. He lets that deadness live on his face for a moment, long enough for Natalie to recognize it. “If they do, I’ll live.”

“That’s—” Natalie tries. “That’s—that’s a lot. What the fuck? That’s _a lot_. What the _fuck_.” She keeps glancing at his scars and then glancing away, like she wants to know but can’t bring herself to look.

“What parts do other people know?” Paige asks quietly.

“They know who my dad was. They know I was on the run. They don’t know about my scars—well, they know _something._ I’m not in the habit of wearing makeup. Or armbands. I was for a while, and then it got annoying and I stopped, but I didn’t want—I didn’t want to scare you. So I started again. But no one really knows how I _got_ the scars. They speculate. They come close. But they don’t know. And they have no idea what’s going on under my shirt.

“So. Thoughts?”

“I didn’t think—” Natalie waves at him, indicating his whole situation, and visibly searches for a way to change the topic. “How is Andrew tied up with the Moriyamas? Is that a whole thing, too?”

“I’m not,” Andrew says. “Except that I don’t think it was any particular secret that Riko was scared of me. Also, I _did_ break Riko’s arm before he died.”

“So—” Natalie looks at Paige, one hand waving of its own accord, and then looks back at Neil. “So your face—that wasn’t from Andrew?”

Neil’s brain grinds to a halt. “What?”

“Your—” she motions at his face. “We thought— _I_ thought,” she says, at a noise from Paige, “they were from Andrew. And Paige did too, for a little while, but she changed her mind.”

“No,” Neil says. “No, they’re not from Andrew. Andrew doesn’t—he won’t hurt me. Ever. He doesn’t hurt me. Even when we train, even if he’s taking potshots at everyone else, never me. What? How—what made you think that? How long have you thought that?” Neil flips back in his brain, remembering Natalie’s worry that Andrew didn’t love Neil, the odd logical leap from _going to Oregon for work_ to _doesn’t want to be married to Neil_. Remembers Natalie’s terror, when Andrew had punched Henry Warren, just a few hours ago. He glances at Andrew, and sees an unidentifiable emotion spreading across his face—Andrew knows the answer to this, but Natalie beats him to the punch.

“The night you caught me with the knife,” Natalie says, and Neil understands. He was so stupid. “You came out of the bedroom. And we realized you must’ve been wearing makeup, every time we’d seen you before that—you had—oh, hang on, is that—that _weird_ patch a scar, too?”

“A burn scar,” Neil says absentmindedly. Oh my god. They’ve known for days.

“Well, we thought _that_ was a weird birthmark, but I mean—those are knife scars. And two seconds later Andrew pulled out a knife. It—” Natalie heaves in a deep, shaking breath. She hasn’t felt safe here. She hasn’t felt at all safe here. Jesus. “And then Paige said it didn’t make sense, because abusers don’t usually leave permanent marks in visible places, and she said you weren’t—she said she didn’t get that vibe. And she insisted that she could stay here with Andrew, alone, and it would be fine, and that I could go for runs with you and it would be fine, and I did, and I—I—”

Paige reaches out and takes her hand, and Natalie doesn’t cry.

“I thought—I’m glad he isn’t hurting you,” Natalie finishes.

“He wouldn’t,” Neil says softly. “I’m safe with him. _You_ are safe with him, both of you. None of this—” Neil waves at his scars—“None of it is from Andrew, or because of Andrew. He’d kill a man to keep the three of us safe, but he won’t hurt us. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Natalie says. She glances at Andrew, almost apologetic, and then back at Neil. “How are you so _happy_?”

Neil shivers—the cold from the door is seeping into his bones. He pulls his shirt back on, and uses it as a moment to think.

This, somehow, strikes him as much more important than his life story. They want to be happy. They want to know that happiness is possible. Nathaniel has no answers. Neil is reasonably certain that he doesn’t have a cheat code for it. “Way back when, I thought my future was: run with abusive mother until I die, nameless and alone. And then I found a bunch of people who stood by me, no matter what, and became my family. People who found out what kind of baggage I was hauling around, and who held onto me even more tightly than before. I found Andrew. I do what I love to do, and I spend time with people I love, and then I come home with the man I love, and, possibly, I’m going to live long enough to retire from exy and then die of old age. I don’t really have any reason to be _un_ happy.”

“Then why isn’t Andrew happy?”

“Andrew has more shit to work through. And he _is_ happy. Sometimes.”

“You don’t _seem_ very happy,” Natalie accuses.

Andrew shrugs. “I’m just not very expressive."

“Also, how on earth can Andrew have more stuff to work through than—” Natalie gestures at Neil's torso.

Neil puts a hand on his stomach, and he would swear he can feel his scars, even through his thick shirt. “Different circumstances. No one ever told me I should be happy with my life. No one ever said it was good, or right, or that I was wrong about what was happening. Someone shot at me, and hit me, and I almost entirely refused to take my bulletproof vest off for months, except for when my mom forced me to—I had to shower—but she never said, _no, you weren’t shot._ Whenever my dad caught up to me, he didn’t say _no, I’m not trying to kill you._ I never questioned what was happening, or doubted myself, and no one ever—gaslit me. My mind was always my own. So most of my trauma was—I used to sleep with a gun under my pillow, and for a while, when I woke up, I’d go looking for it. If I was _woken_ up, I’d grab for it, and it not being there would give me an adrenaline rush—but that wasn’t something _wrong_ , that was just a habit to overwrite. Or my refusal to show people my scars—for a while, it was because that would make people pay attention to me, and ask questions, and it would make me stand out, which was a threat to my life. These days, I just don’t feel like dealing with it. Most of my problems came from overriding things that other people would never think about that, for me, were necessities for survival—until they weren’t. Whereas for Andrew—I mean. Paige, how many people did you tell? When—” His throat gets stuck. He can’t even say it.

“Our foster mom,” she says, quietly, letting go of Natalie’s hand. “She didn’t believe me.”

Neil waves a hand. "It's harder to get over the shit in your own head than it is to get over pain that you've experienced."

Paige nods. She looks at Andrew, and nods.

Andrew sighs.

He pulls off his armbands.

Neil feels the strange urge to go stand in front of him, to block him from their view. To put the armbands back on.

Andrew turns his arms to show them the inside of his wrists. “These are from a time when I tried to be happy,” he says, voice flat, detached, apathetic, trying ever so hard to be dead. “Cass was going to adopt me, if I wanted it. Be my mom. Send me to college. Her son was raping me regularly, but—I wanted her to be my mom. And then we all found out I had a brother. And Drake wanted Aaron to come visit. So I told Aaron to fuck off and never contact me again, and then put myself in juvie.” He pulls the armbands back on, fingers twitching.

“What happened to him? To Drake?” Paige asks.

“He’s dead.”

“At least—at least he’s gone, then, right? Is that—does it help? To know he’s gone? And you’re safe?”

Andrew looks at her. “It helps. But he wasn’t the only one.”

Paige opens her mouth, and a minute later, says: “Trent. Trent Franklin.”

Andrew tilts his head. An acknowledgement. One trauma for another: a trade. “Any others?”

She shakes her head.

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil holds his gaze, keeping his own face blank. No horror. No pity. A surface for Andrew to cling to. “I don’t think there’s much I can do,” he says. “Unless you’re looking to press charges?” He asks, looking to Paige.

She shakes her head. “I can’t—talk.”

“You know that pressing charges for rape isn’t snitching, right?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she says, frustrated. “I can’t—any time I think about—I just—” she flaps a hand.

“Okay,” Neil says. “That’s okay. Whatever you need. We’ll figure something out. I'll figure something out.”

She pulls in a deep breath, one that looks actively painful. “I need to do homework.”

Neil snorts.

She looks at him, quizzical.

“Oh. You’re serious?” Neil asks.

She and Natalie exchange a confused glance. “Yes?”

“You—you don’t ever have to go back. I wasn’t kidding when I said you never have to see that boy again. We’ll pull you. We can put you in public school, or in another private school, or if you want we can homeschool you. I don’t know how good we’ll be at that; we’re not teachers. But you’re smart, we could make it work. We could hire personal tutors, if that would be better. You don’t ever have to go back there.”

Natalie and Paige look mortally offended. “He doesn’t get to—to _win_ ,” Natalie says, furious. “We aren’t just going to just— _leave_ because—because fucking jackass Justin decided to try his fucking hand.”

“You—” Neil glances at Andrew, searching for help. “You said that people there are mean. You don’t have to stay someplace where people can’t get their shit together long enough to stop being douchebags.”

“Also, you don’t have to put yourself through hell just to prove you can,” Andrew says. “We know. We know you can handle it. We’re saying that there’s no reason to, and you do not have to.”

Natalie and Paige draw themselves up to their full heights. “We’re not going to _run_ ,” Paige says scathingly. “We’re going to _win_.”

“Win _what_?” Neil asks. “ _School_?”

“Yes,” Natalie says, like it’s obvious. “Are you going to help us with our homework or not?”

Neil scrubs at his eyes. “Of course we will. _Please_ tell me that if you want to leave, you’ll tell us. We’ll pull you out of that shithouse faster than you can finish the fucking sentence.”

“We’ll tell you,” Paige says. “But we’re not leaving.”

“If that boy tries to lay a hand on you, or goes anywhere near either of you, break his nose again,” Neil says. “Don’t worry about the consequences. I’ll deal with them.”

Paige grins. “Okay.”

“Thumb outside your fist.”

“Yup.”

“Aim for soft places—if you hit someplace hard, you’re likely as not to break your own knuckles.”

“Noses aren’t soft.”

“No, but they’re easily broken, and very bloody, and noses don’t heal right.”

“You know a lot about this.”

“My friend taught me how to box.”

“Useful,” Natalie says sarcastically.

Neil shrugs. “I already knew how to use a gun, and I didn’t want to learn how to use a knife. A little too close to home.” Maybe he should rethink that, though. A knife can be useful.

But, god, he can see his dad holding knives, see how—

He sees Andrew’s hand, wrapped around the handle of a knife; Andrew’s fingers, twirling a knife.

“Homework,” he says, and the four of them head into the kitchen. “God, I can’t believe I’ve been going to all the trouble of putting on makeup for a whole _week_ —”

“That, by the way, is absolutely hilarious,” Andrew says, deadpan.

“It’s _not_ , it’s been such a waste of time—I’ve been so _worried_ about it—”

“Well, _that’s_ not funny,” Andrew allows, taking Neil’s hand, “but it is _hysterical_. The _irony_. Jesus.”

“It’ll be funny in a couple days,” Neil decides. “But, fuck—you guys could’ve _said_ something,” he says plaintively.

“We thought— _I_ thought,” Natalie corrects herself as Paige gives her a raised eyebrow, “I mean, I thought they were from Andrew, I was worried that if I said we knew about them Andrew would hurt you or hurt us or you’d freak out and send us away and—and you didn’t seem to _want_ us to know about them, so we just—kept it to ourselves.”

Neil has done such a terrible job of keeping his kids safe. “He won’t. He wouldn’t.” Neil won’t ask why Natalie would be so desperate to stay here, if she was so scared of Andrew. Andrew had been willing to risk Drake to stay with Cass. And if Paige was so insistent on taking the risk of staying home with Andrew—Neil hadn’t even noticed Natalie was scared, underneath all that anger. He’d done such a bad job of being a parent. Of taking care of his kids.

The kids dig out their homework.

Knives aren’t Neil’s _thing_. They’re Nathaniel’s thing, and even then, not really. They’re Nathan’s thing, really.

Andrew’s thing, too, though.

Neil glances at Andrew’s armbands, and knows the familiar weight of them, can feel how heavy they are whenever Neil pulls them off Andrew’s arms.

He helps Natalie and Paige with German.

He can’t deal with knives.

He should, possibly, relearn how to deal with knives.

But that’s not who he is. It just isn’t. It’s fine for Andrew and Renee. They never knew Nathan. But Nathaniel knew Nathan, and Neil knows Nathaniel, and Neil can’t ever be that person again. Nathaniel Wesninski is dead. 

But—

But.

But he sees Andrew, holding Henry Warren down with one knee and holding Marianna Pagano back with a knife, and there’s Neil, with nothing.

He helps the kids with math.

Andrew helps them with English.

They make dinner while Natalie and Paige deal with history, and they eat dinner, and then they help the kids with science, and then they watch a movie that Neil is too keyed up to watch, and then they put on Property Brothers until it’s time for bed, and then they all go upstairs.

Neil puts his makeup into a drawer. He doesn’t have to wear it anymore. A _week_. He’s been putting this shit on unnecessarily for a _week_. Christ.

He slides into bed, but he can’t lie down. He’s too—

It’s been a long day.

There are two kids maybe fifty feet away from him, and he wants— _needs_ —to protect them.

He thinks of Andrew, capable of taking down grown men. Neil isn’t quite there. He can box, and he’s fast, and certainly he’s powerful, but Andrew has the stature required to stand in one place and not be moved. The best Nathaniel can do is let himself get hit, and stay conscious for as long as possible.

Maybe he should get a gun license.

He doesn’t really want to get a gun license.

Guns are just—very dangerous. And getting a gun license means letting dangerous people know he has a gun—the Moriyamas and the FBI, to be specific. And guns aren't particularly useful, once any kind of safety precautions are taken. He contemplates Natalie and Paige sleeping with loaded guns under their pillows, and he can’t believe his mother let him do it. Loaded guns! Right next to their heads! Absolutely not. _Absolutely_ not.

Knives are very practical.

Not against a gun—but then, even guns aren’t particularly useful against guns. But Neil knew how to use a knife, once, and even now, in a pinch, he could probably go kill, skin, and carve a rabbit. Dinner. Done. But not very useful against a threat, unless that threat is vegetarian.

He turns to Andrew.

Andrew looks worried, a crease between his eyebrows, and Neil hopes that that worry isn’t for him. Andrew hesitates, but holds out his arms.

Neil will never get used to this trust. He slides Andrew’s armbands off.

He knows the weight of the bands, and the weight of the knives, and after three years of handling the knives in-band can very nearly tell the difference between the knives by weight. He slides one out of the sheath. It slips comfortably into Neil’s hand—muscle memory, even years later. Holding a knife for throwing isn’t the same as holding a knife for slicing or for cutting vegetables, but—he knows how to hold it. He’s sitting down, which is awkward, but still, he knows how to hold it. His hand, nowadays, is interchangeable with his father’s—

He turns his arm upwards, and sees his scars, and no, no it’s not.

He clenches his jaw. Hasn’t it been long enough? Isn’t ten years long enough? How long does Nathan get to hang around, sitting in Neil’s brain, taking up space? How long does Nathan get to make Neil’s decisions for him?

Neil looks at the dartboard, and throws the knife.

It’s a shitty throw.

Neil takes the knife out of the other armband and throws it.

This one, too, is shitty.

Andrew replaces the now-empty armbands with a third knife, and that throw, too, is terrible.

Neil growls, out of bed, tugging the knives out of the dartboard. He can’t throw from his bed. It’s not an ideal position.

 _Focus on where you want it to land_.

Lola’s voice is in his head, a spark of fear, but Nathaniel doesn’t know, doesn’t care. She’s right.

Nathaniel throws a knife, and it’s off-center. _Oh, child, that’s not good enough. Nowhere close!_ Another knife. Off-center. No, he’s not a child anymore—throws another. Getting closer. Lola approves. Another. Closer. She’s laughing at him—why can’t he hit center? _Still not good enough, Junior._ Another. He shakes his head. Remembers being locked in a trunk, Lola rocking her hips against him, and wants to vomit, wants to elbow her in the face. Another. His forearms are on fire—no, they’re not, it just feels like they are. No, they don’t. He just remembers them being on fire. Another. She’s dead. Another. But there she is, correcting his form. Nathaniel hates her, but she’s right, and he corrects his form, and throws another, and she’s not laughing anymore.

He throws a ninth knife.

It hits, dead center, surrounded by failures, and Nathaniel smiles.

He reaches for another, and gets nothing. Nothing? Only nine knives? Who has nine knives?

No one. It used to be ten, but Natalie has the tenth.

Andrew takes his hand, and Nathaniel turns to look at him.

Andrew is worried. Down to his bones, he’s worried.

Nathaniel doesn’t like Andrew to be worried, and his smile falls off.

Andrew cups Neil’s cheek.

“Renee told me a story, once,” Neil says. “About a man who broke into her dorm and stole her knives. If she _really_ wasn’t ashamed, he told her, she wouldn’t hide them.”

“I thought you wanted Nathaniel to die?”

Neil hums, and looks at the dartboard.

Nathaniel doesn’t exist.

Nathaniel is alive and well, and the fact that he goes by a different name these days doesn’t particularly change that.

“I think it doesn’t matter,” Neil says. He thinks of an axe, chopping into a snake. When the two halves separate, do they become two different creatures? “I am myself.”

“Then stop being someone else.”

Neil wants, badly, to argue—he _isn’t_ being someone else, isn’t that what he just said? But then again—maybe he is. Most people, he’s reasonably certain, don’t switch names in their heads. He lowers his forehead to Andrew’s. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be Neil.”

“Neil Josten can’t live if Nathaniel Wesninski is dead.”

“I thought it was the other way around?”

“I’m thinking maybe I was full of shit.”

Andrew grabs a fistful of Neil’s hair and tugs his head up so that Andrew can look him in the eye. “Don’t go where I can’t follow,” he says, voice rough.

Neil curves his hands around Andrew’s face. There is safety there. “Never.”

“I’m serious. I promised to stand by you, didn’t I? Don’t go where I can’t follow. I can’t keep breaking promises.”

Neil can see it in the tension of Andrew’s jaw, hear it in the sandpaper of his voice. “I won’t. I promise.” He presses a kiss to Andrew’s forehead. “I’m right here. I’m yours.” He presses his forehead to Andrew’s.

Then—well, how? What does it mean to be Nathaniel _and_ Neil? How does he bring Nathaniel back _and_ relegate him to the past, where he belongs? Flipping it on its side, can Neil use Nathaniel like a tool—but that’s reductive, how can he make his whole past into a tool? Lessons learned can be tools to use and reuse, but he himself isn’t a tool. That’s the whole point. He breathes in, and Nathaniel is there, and Nathaniel is there, and Nathaniel is all fear and blank deadness, and that’s fine. Neil steps away from that. Andrew’s hand is in Neil’s hair, Andrew’s other hand is on Neil’s hand, and Nathaniel is safe, allowed to breathe. Neil moves to put his lips on Andrew’s cheek, and steps back—keeps hold of Andrew’s hand, though. Pulls Andrew across the room with him, to pull a knife out of the dartboard, and then backwards to the middle of the room. He’s holding Andrew’s hand, and Lola’s voice in his head is jarring; they’re from two different places in his life, two utterly separate places. Her advice is good—of course it is; Nathan couldn’t have chosen a better teacher for his son—Neil can’t stand it, hates her, shakes his head, trying to dislodge the memory of her mouth on his burns, the memory of her voice in his ear. “Correct me,” Neil says.

“I’m not a teacher.”

“I don’t need to be taught. Correct me.”

Andrew drags Neil’s face around, staring him in the eye. “What do you need? There’s nothing to correct.”

“Then I’ll do it wrong.”

“What do you need?” Andrew repeats.

Neil flips the knife around in his fingers, remembering the feel. “Cigarette smoke used to smell like my mom burning; nowadays, it reminds me of you. Whiskey used to be the smell of me getting stitched up, and now it just smells like you. Holding knives—I can hear her. And she’s right. She was a good teacher. She knew what she was doing, and how to do it—”

“Who?”

“Lola.”

Andrew’s hand twitches against Neil’s face. “She was a good teacher,” he says flatly.

“Well, she wasn’t _nice_ , but she was always right. I don’t need you to teach me. I already know what I’m doing.”

“You do.” He doesn’t sound happy about it. “I thought you didn’t like knives.”

Neil shrugs. “There was a reason for that. But I was the Butcher’s son—” Nathaniel was the Butcher’s son, they have something in common—“I didn’t run away before I learned how to _use_ them. But they’re not his anymore. He doesn’t get to keep them. _You_ do. They’re your knives. I’ve watched you with them for a decade now. Looking at them is easy. Holding them is easy. I just—”

A horrible thought hits him.

“What?” Andrew asks. Blank. Panic, oh-so-close to the surface.

Neil breathes. “Would you ever be able to love Nathaniel?” Who _is_ Nathaniel? _What_ is Nathaniel? Neil can't keep stepping back, can't keep running from himself. Isn't that the point? Neil will have to _be_ Nathaniel, or else Neil will never be free. 

Andrew is frozen.

“I don’t think I can _not_ be him,” Neil says, panic oh-so-close to the surface. “I spent years trying to lose him, and it didn’t work, he’s _here_ , he’s here _now_ , he’s been here all day, and I don’t think I can put him back in the box. And Nathaniel is someone I’ve tried very hard not to be.” And he’s trying, he’s trying so hard, to figure out who Nathaniel is, but Neil can’t—he can’t let Nathaniel come back, not if it’ll drive Andrew away, but he can’t keep Nathaniel _out_ , either, and Neil doesn’t even know who Nathaniel _is_. What differentiates Neil from Nathaniel?

Andrew digs his fingers into the back of Neil’s neck. “Be who you are,” he says, “and I’ll love you.”

Neil breathes, and clings to Andrew, and counts out the rapid fluttering of Andrew’s pulse. _Be who you are_. Who is he? Who is Nathaniel? Scared—but everyone he’s scared of is dead, Neil reminds himself, Lola and Nathan and Mary are all dead, and the FBI is a friend, of sorts, these days, and Nathaniel knows that and doesn’t have to be scared anymore, because Neil isn’t scared. Small—but Neil knows how to be big, knows how to wear clothes that fit, knows how to look people in the eye and stand up straight, and there’s no reason why Nathaniel can’t do the same, because didn’t Neil have to fight Nathaniel for every inch of spine he’d grown? Why should Nathaniel insist on holding onto that terror? And Nathaniel is in pain—but Neil isn’t, anymore, and Neil has removed so many of the people and things that caused Nathaniel pain. Nathaniel is a runaway. But Neil hasn’t been that in a very long time. And Nathaniel is coming back—he’s not running away anymore, either.

And if Nathaniel doesn’t have to be any of those things anymore, what’s to stop him from being Neil?

Neil blinks, and there _is_ no difference between Nathaniel and Neil. There’s the same difference that exists between Neil today and Neil five years ago—one person, all one person, on one path. And there’s no reason for him to be scared of himself, or of the person who sits in the back of his head. And there’s no reason for him to pretend like that person is someone else altogether. Why should he be scared of himself as a child? 

Neil's panic vanishes. It seems so simple, suddenly. How could he have ever tried to kill himself? His survival instincts should've been too strong for that, should've overridden the urge to see Nathaniel dead. Of course, he hadn't thought of Nathaniel as himself, not really. That had been rude of him. But now he understands. He understands, and has no more problem with himself.

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek, flips the knife in his hand, turns to face the dartboard, and throws the knife, and he’s still holding Andrew’s hand, and it lands, dead center.

He glances at Andrew, but Andrew is staring at the knife.

“How much did you practice?” Andrew asks.

“It was most of my childhood.” Neil thinks about it, faces it, faces it with all the strength of two decades’ distance and of perfect safety. It’s not some separate thing. Not thinking about it won’t make it have happened to someone else. It all happened to _him_ —and that doesn’t matter, because he’s already done the work of getting away from it, of building a life without it. There’s nothing to be scared of there. 

“I hate that,” Andrew says. But he walks with Neil back to the dartboard, pulling out all the knives, carrying them back with some difficulty—they’re still holding hands.

Andrew takes the knives from Neil, arranging them between the fingers of his free hand. He offers them up.

Neil takes one.

Lola isn’t a quiet person.

Well, but she’s dead, and Neil isn’t. So she can be correct. Correct, and dead.

Neil hits dead center.

One on top, one on the bottom, one on the left, one on the right. He’s grinning, but that’s okay. Neil didn't get to be happy, much, as a child. Neil considers for a second, and then repeats—cardinal directions, the second ring in.

Andrew pulls—but not to the dartboard. He pulls Neil to Andrew’s desk, opens the drawer, and pulls out stickers—gold stars. Looking at them, Neil vaguely remembers buying them as a joke, but he doesn’t remember what that joke was, anymore. One star is missing, and he _does_ remember putting that star on Andrew’s nose.

He goes with Andrew to the dartboard, and Andrew drops his hand, tugging the knives out and handing them to Neil one at a time. And then he puts nine little gold stickers on the board, scattered about.

He and Neil turn and walk back across the room.

Andrew stops in the middle, where they’d been standing.

Neil goes farther.

If Andrew’s looking to test him, Neil can show off a little.

Neil’s grinning.

One heel against the far wall, Neil glances at Andrew, and then he throws the knives.

 _Fast_ is an odd concept in fighting.

A fighter doesn’t need to be _fast_ , they just need to be _on time_. Anticipating your opponent’s rhythm, and beating it, is vastly more important than being _fast_.

But Neil has always liked being fast.

Accurate, first and foremost. Of course. Throwing knives at top speed isn’t impressive unless they hit their mark. And fluid; jerky motion is always too slow, by definition.

But: _fast_.

It takes seconds.

Andrew stares at the dartboard.

Neil walks to him, the better to see the results.

Every star. Dead center.

Andrew glances at Neil. “You’re looking pretty proud of yourself.”

Neil shrugs. He’s feeling very self-satisfied. “Wasn’t sure if I still had it.”

Andrew hums.

Neil glances at him.

Nudges him, an elbow to the side.

Nudges him again.

Andrew looks at Neil.

“Pretty impressive, though, right?” Neil isn’t sure what look is on his face. It’s not Nathaniel’s smile; it’s not, however, _not_ Nathaniel’s smile.

Regardless, it’s comfortable there.

“Can you hit moving targets?” Andrew asks.

Neil shrugs. “Probably. It’s been a while. I don’t know how willing I’d be to test it, honestly.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not up for killing squirrels.”

“I didn’t say _living_. I said _moving_.”

“Like I said. Probably. I used to be able to, anyway, but even then I wasn’t very _good_ at it. When it came to moving targets, I was better with a gun. More practice.”

“Are you going to start having fun killing things?”

“Unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Never did.”

Andrew hooks a finger into Neil’s collar. “What else can I expect from New Neil?”

“Fewer personality crises,” Neil says.

Andrew gives him a _look_.

“Not much, probably,” Neil says, slightly surprised to find that that's the truth. “Everything I hated the most was what my dad gave me, and there’s not a whole lot of that. My smile. My laugh. I’ve grown out of the need to run away. If I’m taking back knives, there’s not much left. Paranoia?” Neil feels no need to ditch his paranoia. It served him well as a child, and as a teenager, and in college, and as an adult—he’s keeping that.

“And what prompted this?”

Neil waves a hand. “I can’t have my dad in my head forever. I can’t—I can’t risk chunks of me jumping out at the wrong time. And he doesn’t get to—didn’t I run for long enough? Why do I have to run from myself?”

Andrew smiles.

Andrew smiles, sometimes. It used to be cold, and hard, a tight thing that received very little time on his face. Over the past several years, it changed—bit by bit, often in the dark, until it had warmed up half a degree and softened from frozen earth to concrete. A year ago, it warmed up even more, began showing itself more often. Neil hasn’t seen it in two months, but before that, he’d made a joke that had made soda come out of Andrew’s nose once, in one of the proudest moments of Neil’s life.

The smile on Andrew’s face now is fierce. “Good.”

Neil gasps a laugh. “Good.”

Andrew pulls Neil in for a kiss.

When Neil pulls away, Andrew’s smile is gone, but he still looks—satisfied.

They pull the knives out of the dartboard. Andrew offers one to Neil, but Neil shakes his head.

“Not to throw. We’re done for the night. To have.”

Neil shakes his head again.

“It’s not particularly useful to have the _ability_ to throw knives if you don’t _have_ any,” Andrew says.

Neil shrugs. “If you’re with me all the time anyway, I don’t need to carry them, do I.”

Andrew seems to have no argument with that.

He puts the knives into his bedside table, and rolls over to pull Neil into an all-consuming kiss.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shopping. More shopping. An exy. More fun emotional discussions. Enjoy!
> 
> Use of the word "queer," so if that's a thing for you, keep an eye out. Not used as a slur.
> 
> also just saw the word count on this one and, ah, sorry

“I’ve been running the numbers,” Neil announces the next morning over breakfast, once the girls have looked at him, done double-takes, done triple-takes, and then gotten used to his face. Once he’s rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands and they’ve done their double- and triple-takes and gotten used to his arms. “If we go straight from work to George W., we can pick you guys up. It’ll be ten minutes after you’d normally leave, but it’ll still be fifteen minutes faster than it would be if we grabbed you at home.”

“Why are you picking us up?” Paige asks.

“Grocery shopping. Also, playstation shopping.”

“Okay,” Natalie agrees.

“And, listen, if you need us before then? Call us.”

“We’re not allowed to use our phones.”

“Hide in the bathroom and call us.”

Natalie gives him a look that tells him that he’s being ridiculous, but nods.

“Thanks.”

The girls head out, and Neil considers walking them to the bus stop, but stops himself. He hasn’t done that since day two. There’s no reason to loom over them. He just—very badly wants to loom over them. He wants anyone who looks at them to think twice about it. Is that so much to ask?

He glances at Andrew, and Andrew understands.

“There’s only so much we can do,” Andrew says.

“Yeah.”

“Was it a good idea to tell them everything?”

“Drew, you can’t ask me that. The only reason I could do it was because I thought you’d thought it through.”

“I did,” Andrew says. “It’s just a lot.”

“ _Drew_.”

“They’ll be fine,” he says.

“Andrew Minyard, are you lying to me?”

“I don’t think so.” He ghosts his fingers across Neil’s back as he walks towards the door. “Ready to go?”

Neil follows him out the door and into the car.

A little while later, when Neil is in his gear, he wanders over to Kevin. “ _Elles savent_ ,” he says. _They know_.

Kevin stares at him, wide-eyed. “How much?” He asks in French.

“Everything.”

Kevin grabs Neil’s arm. “ _Everything_?”

“Yeah.”

Kevin puts his forehead against his locker. He fidgets with his wedding ring. “You’re an idiot.”

Neil shrugs.

“You haven’t even adopted them yet. What if they go to a different foster home? What if they tell someone? What if—”

“They won’t,” Neil says.

“Why did you _tell them_?”

Neil shrugs. “They needed to know.”

“Neil. My _wife_ still doesn’t know everything.”

“They wanted us to adopt them. I’m not going to tie them to me, knowing full well that _they_ own my ass, without telling the kids what they’re getting into.”

“They didn’t need to know that! You could have adopted them and told them what’s public and they could have lived and died without ever knowing the rest. They’re not part of the arrangement. They don’t need to know.”

“What are you going to tell John?”

Kevin looks a little green. “I have no idea. Nothing?”

“Kevin.”

“I don’t know. He’s too young. He doesn’t need to know anything yet, and with any luck, maybe he never will.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. There’s the public stuff; everyone knows it. When he gets old enough, I’ll tell him that. Other than that, what does he care who does my taxes? What does he care who I donate to?”

“He’s your _kid_.”

“Yes. And he should have a better childhood than I did.”

“And he will. He shouldn’t grow up blind, though.”

“And then where does it stop? Does he tell his kids? Do his kids tell their kids? A few generations down, will they still be warning each other about great-great-grandpa Kevin and the amount of money he handed over to the mafia?”

Neil shrugs. “I’d be more hopeful that they’d tell each other the family secret about great-great-grandpa Kevin who grabbed onto whatever he could reach until he was strong enough to pull himself bodily out of hell, and the sacrifices he was willing to make in order to make sure he got some kind of freedom.”

“Not to interrupt,” Clark says, “but I’m going to interrupt now. We have work to do.”

Kevin pushes back from his locker.

Neil follows him onto the court. “So you’re coming to Abby’s on Sunday, right?”

Kevin rolls his eyes. “Yes.”

“Cool.”

They train.

“No makeup?” Maria asks, afterwards, when she heads for the mirror and Neil doesn’t.

Neil shakes his head.

“They’ve seen?” She asks.

“Yeah.”

She holds up a hand, and Neil high-fives it. “So they got into a fight, left school early, and then went home and got to see you makeup-free for the first time?”

“Wait—they know?” Riley says, joining them.

“Yes. And yes.”

“Big day,” Maria says. “Is that what you and Kevin were yelling about this morning? Do they know enough that they can be trusted to meet the world’s greatest exy player?”

“They already know Andrew,” Neil says.

Maria laughs, delighted. “Can I just say? I love Paige. I _love_ her. She’s great.”

“I’ll let her know.”

Riley rests a forearm on Neil’s shoulder. Sometimes, she remembers that she’s got eight inches on him, and every time she does, she remembers that he’s a great armrest. “And what’d they say?”

“There was screeching,” Neil says drily. “And cursing.”

“And?”

“And then they got over it.”

“How many questions did they ask?”

“I told them the full story.”

“Have they started calling you Butcher Boy yet?”

“No.”

“They’re good kids,” Riley says. “Are you taking them to get a playstation?”

“As soon as we head out.”

Andrew wanders over to lean against the wall. “And to go grocery shopping,” he adds.

“Hauling them out for every errand, huh,” Maria says delightedly.

“We don’t know what they like to eat,” Neil says. “Or what games they want to play.”

“They eat like someone’s going to take it away from them,” Riley says.

“We’re trying to prove to them that we’re not going to do that,” Neil says. He almost tells them what Natalie said—what Neil had let pass in the moment—about Paige passing her food out the window when they were split up. He keeps his mouth shut.

“Best to go get them, then,” Riley says, removing her arm from Neil’s shoulder.

“We’re trying,” Andrew says.

They head out.

It’s a quiet ride; Neil puts his hand out and Andrew takes it, and Neil is content with that. He turns up the music and watches Andrew, and watches the trees pass outside the window, and watches Andrew, and looks at the houses they pass.

“We have to get smartphones, too,” Andrew says as they pull into the parking lot.

“Fuck, really? Park over there,” Neil says, pointing. There’s more cars in that area than Andrew normally prefers, but it’s right by a numbered streetlight, and it’ll be easier to tell the kids where they are.

“If I’m going over the cliff, I’m taking you with me,” Andrew says as he parks.

Neil laughs. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, already leaning over the center console. Neil puts a hand on Andrew’s cheek, holding him in place for a moment, before pulling away—he should probably let Natalie and Paige know that he and Andrew are here.

Andrew freezes.

Neil glances at him; he’s staring out Neil’s window. Neil looks out his window, and finds out that they managed to park next to Henry Warren, and that Henry is staring them down.

Neil smiles at him.

It’s not a kind smile.

Neil looks down to text the girls, and lets them know that they should both get in on Andrew’s side. It’s not that he thinks Warren is going to shoot them in the middle of the school parking lot. It’s that Neil doesn’t trust the man as far as he can throw him.

A moment later, the front door of the school opens, and Natalie and Paige come out, heading towards them.

Neil gets out of the car, rests his elbows on the door, and stands there.

Natalie gives him an odd look, and Neil realizes he’s turned his smile on them; _not_ the desired recipient. He turns, instead, to look at Henry, and finds that Henry is watching the girls.

Neil puts a little more weight behind his gaze, and Henry must feel it, because he looks at Neil. Stares at him. Tries to stare him down.

It’s unfortunate for Henry that Neil has ample experience in withstanding being stared at; it seems that Henry does not have quite the same experience.

“Neil,” Andrew says.

Neil gets back in the car and shuts the door, and Andrew is backing out before Neil’s even got his seatbelt on.

“He was watching them,” Neil says.

“Who?” Paige asks.

“Henry Warren.”

“Oh. Were you staring him down?”

“Maybe. Yes.”

“Neil,” Natalie says urgently, “you’re not wearing your makeup.”

“Whoops,” Neil says.

Natalie falls silent.

Andrew pulls onto the highway.

“Justin has to stay late for detention,” Natalie says.

“Good.”

“We don’t.”

“Good.”

“His dad came into the school to try and get him out of it, and the front desk lady threatened to call security on him if he wouldn’t leave.”

“Good for her.”

“We have German with Justin. And he tried to come up to us, and he looked so angry, and then this girl named Sandy stood up and said that he’d better sit back down, or else she’d tell the teacher. And he did.”

“Sandy sounds nice,” Neil says.

“She is,” Natalie says, sounding a little surprised about it.

“And then he left you alone?”

“Well, no, but this girl from our English class named Tracy offered to walk Paige from English to math. And this guy named Dave—he’s, like, eight feet tall, he’s huge—just kinda stared Justin down any time he tried to say anything to me.”

Neil rapidly revises his opinion of the school—or, at least, of the kids in it. “Good.”

“Tracy says Justin’s an asshole,” Paige says. “And I’m not the first girl he’s harassed. And Natalie isn’t the first person to hit him—she’s just the first one to actually do any kind of damage. And the first one not to get in trouble for it. You and Natalie are school legends.”

“Dave’s mom is the school secretary,” Natalie says, “and she told him—she heard, when Andrew opened the door to the principal’s office, she heard Henry threatening you, and she heard you laughing your head off about it, and she told him, and he asked me about it and I told him that I couldn’t say anything, because I’m not a fucking snitch.”

“So, now, everyone knows it’s true,” Paige says excitedly. “And then Sandy asked if it was scary to live with you, because her mom is a _huge_ exy fan and says that the two of you are known for being really violent? And we were like, no, of course not, the scariest part of living with you is how much House Hunters you watch.”

Neil and Andrew exchange a glance. Does that mean Natalie’s not scared anymore? “Is that good?”

“It’s _great_ ,” Natalie says. “People are talking to us. Sandy and Tracy sat with us at lunch.”

It occurs to Neil that they might have been sitting _alone_ at lunch, before this. “So things are looking up?”

“I guess,” Natalie says, swinging back to annoyed.

“Good,” Neil says happily.

He jumps a little at a third voice from the back seat—Clark’s, over a phone speaker. “No,” he’s saying, “but we’re swapping goalies.”

He looks at Andrew, and Andrew knows, too, of course he does, and Neil cringes a little bit as he hears his own voice—“Really?”—and understands that either Natalie or Paige has managed to find the video of the moment when Neil was publicly informed that Andrew would be signing with South.

“Oh, jesus,” Natalie says. “Really?”

“You could _not_ watch it,” Neil suggests.

“Oh, no, we’ve been looking up Minyard-Josten Rivalry stuff for the past fifteen minutes,” Natalie says. “We wanted _full_ backstory before we watched this. And now I’m thinking maybe we should have waited a little longer—that was a full ten-second-long kiss. I mean, was that _necessary_? You couldn’t have—high fived?”

“You really, sincerely, don’t have to watch that,” Neil says. “Also, it absolutely was _not_ ten seconds long.”

“Anyway, do people really call you the Butcher’s Son?” Paige asks, over the tinny roar of the crowd coming through Natalie’s phone.

“Not much,” Neil says. “Anymore.”

“You know, I’m really glad we didn’t look you up before we moved in,” Natalie says. “Some of these articles make Andrew sound _terrifying_.”

“That’s why I don’t read them,” Neil says. “ _Coffee with Rosetti_ is the only show worth watching, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you watch it at all. Do they not talk about Andrew?”

“They say nice things about Andrew. And we haven’t watched it since you moved in—they like to put up pictures of my face, and I don’t wear makeup often. Which, apparently, was a useless exercise.”

“Oh. Hey, have you ever killed anyone?” Paige asks.

“Why do you ask?” Neil asks, doing his level best to maintain his poker face.

“Well, you told Natalie she was holding the knife wrong,” Paige reasons, “so you must know how to hold a knife. And I’d think, if people were shooting at you and giving you—all those scars, then, probably, you’d have defended yourself. But all these stories talk about you like you were just a kid on the run, and then popped up and played some exy. They make Andrew into the villain, beat up bunches of people, super violent, here’s all these articles about how scary and violent and psychopathic he is, and then there’s you, and you’re their favorite mouthy college kid who survived something really scary and had a shitty dad. So, I mean, are they wrong?”

Telling Riley had been so easy.

“I have killed many people,” Neil says, “in self-defense. There aren’t many people who have seen my scars; they know about the face and the arms, and they know, essentially, when and why I got them, and the assumption is that those are the only ones I have. They know I was on the run; they don’t know how far, or what that entailed. They don’t realize that it wasn’t just one man from Baltimore who was after me, so they don’t think it was nearly as bad as it was. And, of course, they don’t know much about Nathan, anyway. _The Butcher_ was a gangster, and that’s scary, but they don’t realize what kind of reach he had. They don’t know about the Moriyamas, or about how that extended my dad’s reach, or about how even when we were probably out of Nathan’s reach, we were never out of Kengo’s—I mean, _I_ didn’t realize, and I was the one running. So yes, I have, but no one’s picked up on it, because they don’t think that murder is something I could do. Most people don’t suspect other people of being capable of murder.”

“They think Andrew is.”

“Well, because they’ve seen him be violent.”

“Did you really take down four grown men?” Paige asks.

“They tried to beat up my cousin,” Andrew says.

“We read the article,” Natalie says.

“Then why’d you ask?”

“It just seems like—a lot. You’re short.”

Andrew gives the rearview mirror a raised eyebrow. “So are you.”

“I couldn’t beat up a bunch of people,” Paige says. “And I’m taller than you are.”

“It’s not about height, it’s about training and anger.”

“What changed? You’re not that violent anymore, right?” Paige asks, meaningfully, and Neil glances back in time to see Natalie roll her eyes.

“I don’t generally need to be.”

“Oh,” Natalie says, gleeful, “didn’t I tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Paige asks.

Neil glances in the rearview mirror, and watches as the joy of spilling a secret spreads across Natalie’s face.

“Andrew punched Henry Warren,” she says, savoring each and every word.

“You did _what_?” Paige shrieks.

“He put him on the _ground_. Face down. Arm behind his back. And then pulled out a knife and threatened to slit his throat!”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Paige says. “Oh my _god_! What—what did he _do_ after that?”

“Nothing,” Natalie says joyfully. “He couldn’t say _anything_. Andrew was like, _ok, here’s what’s gonna happen. Justin is going to get detention, and Natalie isn’t._ And the principal was like, _Justin is going to get detention, and Natalie isn’t._ And then Andrew was like, cool, let’s go, and _used Henry’s head to push himself up!_ And then Henry was like, _fuck you, fuck you all, you too Josten, I’ll break you_ , and Neil went, just, _full_ psychopath, all crazy eyes, you saw him, and started laughing his ass off.” She takes a deep breath, her first one since starting her speech, and then says, more calmly, “it was pretty cool.”

“Holy _shit_!” Paige whisper-yells. 

Well, Natalie wasn't faking that joy. That must mean she's all right with Andrew now, right? And Paige doesn't appear particularly upset. If anything, Neil realizes, glancing at her in the mirror, she looks overjoyed. And then Neil figures it out—and figures out why Paige looked so guilty last night, too. Natalie's spent a long time protecting Paige, and taking the hits for her, and Neil remembers how timid she was when they picked her up at the airport. Neil can practically construct their relationship in his head—Natalie being violent, hating it, doing it for Paige's sake, getting in the way of anyone who ever wanted to hurt Paige, and Paige herself never lifting a hand against anyone. And she feels guilty about that, for letting Natalie get hurt, for never managing to protect Natalie, and she's happy someone else is. Someone else is doing for Natalie what Natalie always did for Paige.

“Why don’t you like the word _misunderstanding_?” Natalie asks.

Neil lets go of Andrew’s hand.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand back, before it can get too far away.

“I think,” he says, pulling into the shopping center containing the GameStop and an AT&T, “that this is one question I’m not going to answer.”

“Are there other words you don’t like? Is that why we’re not allowed to say _please_?”

Andrew pulls into a parking spot and sits there, idling. He’d have to let go of Neil’s hand to put the car in park, so he doesn’t. “How’d you figure that out?”

“Neither of you ever say it. And you didn’t get annoyed at us for not saying it. And Aaron and Katelyn came over, and neither of them ever said it.”

“What are yours?” Andrew asks.

“My what?”

“Triggers. What upsets you?”

“I—I don’t want to talk about it.”

Andrew shrugs. “Okay.” He puts the car in park and turns it off. “Tell me when I trip one. Who wants to go get a playstation?”

“Will you adopt us?” Natalie asks.

Neil twists in his seat. “You remember when I told you that the Japanese mafia owns me, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And my dad was a gangster?”

“Yup.”

“You just called me a psychopath all of two seconds ago.”

“Longer than that, but yeah.”

“And you’re okay with Andrew now?”

“Well, you said he’s never hurt you, and you aren’t a liar, and he’s never hurt us, so yeah, we are.”

Neil waves a hand, having nothing better to do with it, the words _you aren’t a liar_ reverberating around his skull, and Natalie loses patience.

“I mean, that’s what you needed to tell us, right? That was the thing? Or is there something else? Are you a robot that’s going to kill the world if we say the wrong word?”

Andrew looks at Neil, amused. “Yeah, Neil, that’s what you needed to tell them, right?”

“I just—I mean—”

“He’s very sensitive about his past,” Andrew says over his shoulder.

“You’re—are you sure?” Neil asks. “I mean. Are you _sure_? Have you thought this through?”

Natalie and Paige look at each other, and nod decisively.

“Yeah,” Natalie says. “I mean, sure, all the stuff you just said, and all the stuff we found about Andrew, but, also, no one’s ever stood up for us before. I’ve gotten in fights before. And it’s always me sitting in the principal’s office with the kid and the kid’s parents, and the kid’s parents defend the kid, and I get the blame. I’m always the one who’s lying. I’m always the one who’s in the wrong. Because I’m a foster kid, so no one believes me anyway, and there’s no one there to yell at the principal for me. And usually, when our parents are violent, it’s towards us, and—I mean, I can’t imagine—like—”

“I can’t imagine either of you hitting us,” Paige says, taking over. “And we want to stay.”

Neil looks at Andrew, and after a minute, Andrew looks at him.

“Yes?”

Neil gestures.

Andrew shrugs. “You already know how I feel.”

Neil looks back at the girls. “The fact that we won’t hit you isn’t the be-all, end-all of good parenting. Neither of us know what we’re doing. We’re carting around decades of trauma. I mean, is that what you really _want_?”

Natalie performs an impressive eye roll. “Sure. We’ll go get some parents who tell us to sleep in our own rooms, because we’re not babies anymore. Some parents who say that they _have_ to have keys to our room, because we’re not allowed to lock ourselves in. Some parents who don’t understand shit about shit and will punish us for fighting. Sure. Sure, Neil. Sounds great to me.”

“I mean—”

“Why make us wait until you told us your whole life story if you were just going to say no?” Natalie asks.

He gives in and looks at her. “I didn’t say no. I was asking if you were sure. It’s been—not even two weeks. I’m just—”

“ _Yes_!” Natalie says, loudly.

Neil shuts up.

He could keep asking.

He could make them wait.

He sighs. “Well, shit, what do we have to do? What kind of paperwork are we looking at? Are we supposed to talk to Harmony?”

“Is that a yes?” Paige asks.

“Yeah,” Neil says.

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Natalie snaps.

“I really didn’t think you’d want to stay,” Neil says honestly. “I’d prepared a whole lot more for the end of the year coming around and you guys heading out.”

“Sorry,” Natalie says. “Here to stay. Fuck you.”

Neil grins at her. “Good.”

She stares at him.

“Bigger problem,” Paige says. “Are we supposed to call you _both_ dad? That’ll be confusing. But, like, _father_ and _papa_ don’t really fit, you know?”

“We could go German,” Andrew says casually.

“Sure, Darth Vader,” Paige says.

Andrew nods. “Good. Neil can be dad, I’ll be Darth Vader.” He opens the door and gets out of the car.

Paige looks at Neil. “Was he serious?”

Neil shrugs. _Neil can be dad_. Can he?

“Neil. _Was he serious_? I can’t call him Darth Vader.”

“Call him mom,” Neil suggests. “But he’s waiting. Ready?”

“Neil!” Paige says, but Natalie opens the door, and Paige follows her out, and Neil joins Andrew outside the car.

They walk into Gamestop.

Twenty minutes later, they walk out with ten games and a playstation.

They dump it into the car, and then head into the AT&T.

Andrew buys them the most expensive iPhones available. He doesn’t even look at the specs. He doesn’t seem to care much.

Neil accepts his, feeling precisely the same way he had when Kevin had handed over his baby—like he’s doomed to drop and break this irreparably within five seconds.

If Andrew had gotten him this ten years ago instead of a flip phone, he probably wouldn’t have even blinked. It’s nothing like the burner phones he and Mary had used. It’s a computer. He’s holding a computer.

He feels aged.

It jingles, a little tune, and Paige jumps. Neil finds the little switch on the side of the phone, turns the ringer off, and discovers that Natalie has texted him: _whats it like to join us in this century, old man?_

Neil sighs at the keyboard. He’d barely gotten used to his qwerty, and now the screen is a whole different size, and it’s a whole fuckin’ thing. He types back: _I’m not even 30. Is this what it’s like to have daughters?_

She glances at her phone a moment later, prompted, maybe, by him putting his own phone in his pocket? He didn’t hear anything, certainly. He’ll have to figure out how to put his phone on vibrate.

Natalie stares at his text for so long the screen turns off on her.

Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil.

Neil shrugs.

Andrew shrugs back.

And then they all pile into the car, and it occurs to Neil that he’s just some paperwork away from having daughters, and that those daughters are going to be Natalie and Paige, and he doesn’t understand his father at all. What had Nathan felt, when Mary had told him she was pregnant? Neil had never thought much about whether or not he was an accident—cosmically speaking, the answer had always seemed to be a yes, and he didn’t care much past that—but maybe he hadn’t been. Maybe Nathan had been proud, happy, and then Neil had been born, and he’d been a disappointment.

He’d been a baby. How disappointing can a baby be? Neil thinks about Kevin’s son John, and Freddie, and can’t imagine being disappointed in them. It feels like an entirely separate emotion from the emotions he feels when he looks at them, those emotions largely being _fear_ and _intense anxiety_. Maybe Neil had only started being a disappointment when he’d gotten older. But Mary had grabbed him when he was 10, and even projecting into the future, Neil can’t imagine being disappointed in Freddie and John before they turn 10—at younger ages, at the age of seven when his father branded him, younger than that, however old he was the first time his father hit him. He can’t imagine what Natalie and Paige would have to do to earn the title _disappointment_. Kill people? He’s one to talk. Steal some kid’s lunch money? That might be disappointing, but there’s still time to course-correct, right? If they ended up being racist, that would probably do it, but Neil feels that that outcome is as much on the parents as it is on the children. He’s reasonably certain, at least, that he doesn’t have to worry about them being homophobic, which is a comfort.

God, what if he and Andrew had managed to pick up a couple homophobic kids? That would’ve sucked.

The car falls silent—he’s missed a whole conversation. “Nat, Paige,” he says, and they look at him in the rearview mirror. “On Sunday, do you two want to come have dinner with us and a few of our college friends?”

“Is this the Abby’s thing you were talking about?” Natalie asks.

“Yeah.”

“What if we say no?”

Neil shrugs. “You can stay home. Or we can all stay home. Renee will be there, and she can teach you knife stuff, or we can ask her and Allison to come over before dinner, to teach you. Or not. Whatever you want.”

There’s silence for a minute, while Paige and Natalie converse, and then they nod. “We’ll come.”

“Cool.”

And then they go grocery shopping.

Twice.

They walk all the aisles once, Neil pushing the cart, asking Paige and Natalie what they want, and the answer is shrugs.

They make it to the freezer aisle with nothing but apples and mozzarella cheese in the cart—and that’s only because Neil and Andrew already know about those.

“Let’s try this again,” Neil says. “We can Favorite Foods game this, if you’d like.”

Natalie rolls her eyes, and Paige grimaces.

Neil points at the first thing he sees—spinach. “Do you like that?”

“I guess,” Paige says.

Neil stands there, hand out.

“With garlic,” Natalie says.

“Great, we’ve got garlic. What about those?” He points at the next thing—Brussels sprouts.

“I thought you said you don’t like those,” Paige says.

“I don’t. Do you?”

“You don’t have to get food you don’t want.”

“No, I don’t,” Neil says patiently, “but it’s not an allergy. I can get them, and make them, and eat something else.”

“Eh,” Natalie says, “I don’t like them.”

They go through the whole store like that.

It speeds up a little, when they get into the inner aisles; Neil makes a better tomato sauce than any of the jarred sauces, and it’s easy enough to declare penne the ideal pasta and knock out half an aisle.

Natalie and Paige legitimately don’t know what foods they do and don’t like, is the problem.

There are some foods—beans, corn—they stare at for five minutes, hemming and hawing, saying “well, I’d eat it, sure,” before deciding that, well, maybe they don’t _enjoy_ it. Paige likes green beans; Natalie prefers peas. Determining that is another several minutes.

Neil pauses in front of the Feminine Hygiene aisle—a stupid name for it, but whatever. “Do you guys need pads? Tampons? I don’t want you to get caught without.”

He intercepts a glance.

“Yeah,” Natalie says. So they head down the aisle.

Neil gestures at the options.

Natalie and Paige scan—

“Are you looking at the _price tags_?” Neil asks.

“Yeah, we’ll just get whatever’s cheapest,” Natalie says.

“That’s not how this works.”

“What do you know? You don’t have periods. Do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Neil agrees. “But I’ve been sent out to get emergency stuff more than once, and never once have my instructions been _get whatever’s cheapest_.”

"Well, that's because you only know rich people," Paige argues.

Neil makes a face. " _Now_ I do, but when we were in college we were all broke. And anyway, now _you two_ are rich people, so. Pads or tampons? What brand? What size? We’ve got money."

Deliberation ensues.

Neil glances at Andrew: _this is horrible_. Andrew agrees.

They repeat the process with shampoo and conditioner. 

Eventually, they make it back into the car.

"We're supposed to meet with a case worker once a month," Andrew says. "Theoretically, that's when we'd discuss adoption. But I don't remember setting anything up with Harmony, and also, I don't think she'd fly over from Colorado once a month. Have you heard anything from anyone?"

Neil shakes his head.

"Yeah, why _did_ you get us?" Natalie asks. "We've never been moved out of state before."

Neil shrugs. "Probably, Moriyama bullshit. We'll call Harmony and find out what's what."

"What if they try to make us go back to Colorado?"

"We'll tell them to fuck off."

"That's kidnapping, I think," Andrew says.

Neil grimaces. "Well, shit, we'll figure something out. We won't let them take you two away, anyway," he tells Natalie and Paige.

"Okay," Paige says, grinning.

When they get home, Natalie looks at Neil and says: “Can we go for a run?”

And they do.

Neil is going to have two daughters.

When they get back home, Paige spins around in her chair, King in her lap. “Nat,” she calls.

Natalie stops on the first step, swivels, and follows Neil into the living room. “What?”

Neil sits next to Andrew and scratches Sir’s ears.

“What are we doing with our last name?”

Neil feels Andrew go still.

“I mean, are we going to keep Gray?”

Natalie grimaces.

“Ours are both on the table,” Andrew says nonchalantly.

“And you don’t have to choose,” Neil says, equally nonchalant. “You could go alphabetical order?”

Natalie laughs, a peel of laughter that stops almost as soon as it starts—Neil gets the feeling it surprised her. “You can call us—” she pauses for the drama—“the Minyard-Josten rivalry.”

Neil and Paige laugh so loudly King flees the room, and Andrew nudges Neil.

“I’m first,” Andrew says.

Neil considers.

He shrugs. “That’s okay. You’re first to me, too.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Natalie says.

Andrew says nothing at all, but when Natalie goes to take a shower and Paige hits play on the latest episode of Mythbusters, he brings Neil’s palm to his mouth and kisses it.

When the episode ends and Natalie returns, Neil mutes the TV. “Andrew and I have a game tomorrow,” he says. “What do you two want to do?”

“I want to go,” Natalie says.

“Me too,” Paige agrees.

“Really?”

Natalie raises her eyebrows. “What, are we not allowed?”

“I didn’t think you guys were into exy.”

“I mean, sure, but still. Hey,” Natalie says, “what were you going to do if we’d looked you up _before_ you told us about your mafia stuff? I mean, you were wearing makeup, but the first thing that comes up when I type your name into google is a picture of your fucked-up face.”

“Yeah, Neil,” Andrew says. “What _were_ you going to do?”

Neil jabs an elbow into Andrew’s side, lightly. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. I’d have had to do a bunch of apologizing. We’re leaving at noon.”

“Okay,” Natalie agrees.

That night, Andrew takes out his knives, all nine of them, and Neil throws them, standing as far away from the dartboard as he can get. He hits the center, a ring around the center, and the cardinal points.

They pull the knives out, and then Andrew pushes Neil into a corner, and makes Neil throw from the corner—at an angle, instead of head-on.

Neil hits the same places.

He can feel the knives, like an extension of himself, cold metal against warm fingers. The arm movements, all as familiar as the movement of swinging an exy racquet. He’d had a learning curve, when he’d relearned exy—it had been a whole new position, and it had been years. There’s no learning curve, here. There are knives in his hands and a target on the wall, and Lola’s voice is quieter than it was before, Andrew’s presence stronger than ever, and Neil’s whole being is focused on throwing the knife, and it’s thoughtless, easy. Muscle memory. Nearly two decades later. Still.

Andrew puts the knives away, and pushes Neil into the mattress, hot hands on Neil’s skin and a knee between Neil’s legs, fingers tracing the scars knives have cut into Neil’s body, and it’s okay. 

The next day, the four of them pile into the car.

“Who are you up against?”

“Mississippi.”

“Are they good?”

“Very.”

“Are you better?”

Neil shrugs. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

Neil and Andrew relinquish Natalie and Paige to a security guard, who brings them to the Family and Friends section—“Thea’s mom is in there, with John, you don’t have to interact with them, but if you need to interact with anyone, they’re probably safest,” Neil says.

They wave him off, and disappear around the corner.

Neil looks at Andrew. “Is it weird that I’m _nervous_? More nervous than usual.”

Andrew shrugs, links their pinkies, and heads for the locker room.

“How are the kids?” Riley asks, once they’re all dressed.

“Here,” Neil says.

“They’re _here_?” Maria asks, heading their way at double time. “Are they—happy about it?”

“They asked to come,” Neil says.

“Is that why you look like you’re gonna vom?”

“I do not.”

Maria pokes his arm. “You do.”

“You _do_ ,” Riley agrees, exchanging a delighted glance with Maria.

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go,” Kevin snaps. “We have a game to play.”

“It’s about the _kids_ , Kevin,” Riley says, but Neil lets it go. Kevin’s right, first of all, and second of all, Neil fully remembers saying precisely the same thing to Kevin before every single game for over a year—for the eight months between finding out that Thea was pregnant and Thea giving birth, and then for a full four months after Kevin came back from parental leave. It’s what they do.

A thought occurs to Neil, but he sets it aside for later examination. They have a game to play, after all.

They do warmups, running gentle laps, taking shots on the goal, easy stuff, until it’s time to go back and line up.

Neil’s on first quarter with Maria, and as he takes his place in the lineup, he pulls in a breath. The blood in his veins, the roar of the crowd, the air in his lungs—

They set up on the court, Neil eyeing his backliner mark, glancing at the goalie. He exchanges a glance with Maria. _Ready?_

The whistle blows, Maria flashes him a dark grin, and Alfie serves, launching the ball forward, and Neil’s already on his way, dashing across the court, one eye on Maria, one eye on the ball, his mark looming in his awareness, and Neil breathes and his feet move, and then he has the ball. He passes it to the wall, and then to Maria, who dodges her mark and passes back to Neil, whose feet do a quick three-step and then he passes to Maria, who slams it into the goal, which lights up red.

And so the game goes.

He passes the ball to Maria; she bounces it back to him, just in time for her backliner to slam into her, and Neil looks at the goalie, measures his arms, and aims for where the goalie can’t reach. The goal lights up red.

Neil dashes to Maria, three seconds away from a fight. He considers joining in, but—his kids are in the crowd. He pulls Maria back, and she gives him a knowing glance. It's fine. She can make fun of him for developing scruples later.

Someone bangs on the wall—Andrew—and Neil waves a hand in the air.

“Dick,” Maria yells, and then Mississippi’s dealer throws the ball, and on the game goes.

“Are you _waltzing_?” Neil’s mark yells, frustrated, the third time Neil dances around him to put the ball in Maria's racquet.

Neil grins at him.

Thirty seconds later, tired of not being nimble enough, his mark rushes him, and Neil drops, rolls sideways, out of the way of his mark’s arms and legs, and jumps to his feet, with a two second window with a clear shot on the goal. Maria passes to him, and he takes it, and all is well.

And then the first quarter is over, and Neil and Maria swap with Kevin and Riley, and Maria pauses for a second to talk to Riley—Riley, already grinning, excited, acknowledges her warning and takes her place on the court.

Neil steps back into the locker room and Andrew is there, waiting.

“Did he hit you?”

Neil shakes his head. “Tried, but I’m faster.” Ghosts his fingers against Andrew’s hand as he heads for his water bottle.

Maria enters, furious as she always is, and then Neil hears her footsteps stop. He turns around, and she’s standing there, staring at Andrew.

After a minute, she says, “Yeah, I’m good.”

Andrew nods, and Maria continues in.

Neil paces, watching the game. Charlie adapts to a new striker’s style quickly enough; he’s not Andrew, but he’s good, he’s very good. Riley’s mark—Maria’s mark—is clearly more intimidated by Riley than he was by Maria. Kevin’s mark is frustrated, annoyed, furious—first Neil, and then Kevin, and that’s a lot for anyone.

Andrew watches, calm, composed. Not excited, certainly; he doesn’t have quite the same love for the game that Neil and Kevin have.

But it would be a lie to say that Andrew doesn’t like it. A lie to say that Andrew isn’t interested. A lie to say that Andrew doesn’t want this, the same as Neil and Kevin do.

And he watches. The eye of the storm. Watches as Clark takes down one of Mississippi’s strikers, and as the game pauses to swap strikers. Watches the new striker. Watches, and remembers.

“We’re doing all right,” Clark says at halftime. “Not _great_ , but all right.”

“We’re winning,” Maria says.

“But not by much,” Clark says. “8-5 could be better. It’s Mississippi. No one thought they’d even be able to scrape together a team.”

And then it’s third quarter, and Riley and Maria are on together, Andrew at their backs. They’re a tough team to face: Moving from Riley’s laughter to Maria’s annoyance is enough to give anyone whiplash. Followed up with a solid dose of Andrew, the mood on the court rockets from one extreme to another.

“Neil,” Kevin says, and Neil pauses next to him.

Kevin points, and Neil watches.

Two minutes later, he nods. “Got it.”

The goalie is afraid to use his hands.

It _looks_ very impressive—he’s catching the ball, saving it, protecting the goal, all with his racquet, but more than once, he just _barely_ makes a save, more concerned with getting his racquet there in time than with actually guarding the goal.

There’s a reason why goalies have racquets; a good shot on the goal could break a finger. But there aren’t many who can put that kind of power behind a ball, and the angle would have to be just right, the ball would have to hit the finger just right—Andrew and Charlie, certainly, wouldn’t risk a goal just to prevent the possibility of an injury. This goalie, though, _will_. Neil can’t see well enough to tell if there’s anything wrong with his hands, but whatever the cause, he’s not using his hands. That was not the case in the matches the Jaguars watched in preparation, though, so—probably a broken finger.

The game pauses, eventually, and Neil and Kevin head on for the fourth quarter, heralded by cheers. Neil glances up at the crowd and sees signs—an orange paw with three toes: three Foxes, on the court together, and nigh unstoppable. There’s a reason why they’re all on, fourth quarter. The other team can barely score, and Neil and Kevin can barely miss.

Neil grins at Andrew and turns to face the rest of the court, catching Kevin’s eye on the way—fierce, ready, up for a challenge.

And a challenge is what they get.

Neil recognizes it, the furious energy of a losing team trying desperately to catch up, making a last-ditch effort to win, running out of time. The problem is this: Neil, fast, fast, faster, his whole body buzzing, the joy of outsmarting his mark, the joy of aiming too close to the goalie for him to use his racquet, the joy of knowing where he’s going to put the ball and putting it there. The problem is this: Kevin, cold, analytical, more concerned with besting himself than with besting Mississippi, enraging his backliner mark by being almost entirely unconcerned with him, vastly more interested in whether or not he’s still _the_ _best_. The problem is this: Andrew, there, and there, and there, racquet and hands, calm, watching the ball go by and miss the goal by a half-inch, and then there, there, wherever the ball is. The problem is Neil, with Kevin at his side and Andrew at his back.

And Neil runs.

He scores, two seconds before the final buzzer, bringing the score to 14-5, and his mark bends over, gasping for breath, and pulls off her helmet. “Jesus,” she says.

Neil grins at her. “We’ll see you again at championships.”

She grins back. “Generous.”

“I don’t think so,” Neil says, holding out one gloved fist.

She bumps it.

And then Neil makes his way to the goal.

Kevin meets him halfway across the court. “They’re going to be good.”

“Yup,” Neil says cheerfully, grinning, grinning at Frank, grinning at Joe, grinning at Andrew, Andrew, Andrew stripping off his gloves, staring at Neil.

Kevin grabs Andrew’s racquet, fierce and proud, and Andrew transfers his attention to Kevin. “30 shots on goal this half, Andrew.”

“30 _failed_ shots,” Andrew corrects.

The rest of the team joins them, Riley bringing a joyful energy with her, wrapping an arm around Neil. Neil wraps an arm around Maria, who wraps an arm around Neil’s waist, smug, grinning.

“Fucking killed it, kids,” Maria says cheerfully, holding out a fist, which Andrew bumps.

They line up to shake hands and then head into the locker room. Neither Neil nor Andrew are on press duty, which makes life easier, but Neil rushes through his shower anyway. He’d had a thought earlier, and he wants to capitalize on it.

So he dresses at top speed and heads over to Kevin’s locker, where Kevin is pulling a shirt on.

Kevin glances at him.

In French, Neil asks: “How did you feel when you found out Thea was pregnant?”

Kevin shuts his locker. “Terrified. You know that, you were there. Why?”

Neil drums his fingers against his leg. “I keep feeling like—given my childhood, I’ll be a shitty dad. And like if the kids are near me, they’ll get fucked up. And like—I keep thinking—”

Kevin waits as Neil searches for words, and the look on his face is naked understanding, an empathy so deep Neil almost wants to turn it away.

“Just, how did Nathan do it? How did—any of the people who—how? I can’t see it, at all. I can’t imagine hurting a kid. But people do, all the time. My mom loved me, and even _then_ she couldn’t keep herself from hitting me. So how do I have kids, and not hit them? Like, was I just a shitty kid? Or am I going to—just—one day, get frustrated and smack them, because that’s what my parents did to me, and because I’ve forgotten that it was wrong?”

Kevin looks at his hands. “Jean told me he hit his son, once.”

Neil’s eyebrows shoot up. This is news to him.

“Alan was crying, and Jean was busy, and stressed, and he told me he thought, _if I hit him, he’ll shut up_ , and Jean hit Alan, and Alan shut up. And Jean kept doing what he was doing, paying bills or something, for two minutes, until he realized what he’d just done, and then he called Jeremy. They had a whole entire family meeting. Jean went back to therapy for three months. He spent a lot longer than that apologizing to Alan.

“And around a week and a half after that, Thea told me she was pregnant, and—” He waves a hand.

Neil knows; Kevin had relapsed, and relapsed _badly_. It hadn’t been pretty.

“So I don’t know. Riko never beat me, the way he beat Jean, so I thought maybe I wouldn’t be at risk for hitting my kid, and then I thought that maybe it just meant I’d end up worse—I wouldn’t be thinking about it at all, so I wouldn’t take steps to prevent it. And then I thought—what if I do what Riko did to me, and I end up cruel, emotionally abusive? What if my kids grow up and become alcoholics because of what their dad did to them? I don’t know. I’d tell you to go to therapy, but.”

“But,” Neil agrees. Although, maybe he should. If only to deal with this. He doesn’t want to go. But if going to therapy prevents him from fucking his kids up too badly, maybe he should.

“Every time John cries over something, I check on myself to make sure I’m not going to hit him, or grab him too hard, or raise my voice, or say something I can’t take back, even if he might not really understand it yet, and might not remember it. Every time I get frustrated with him I take a minute to remember that he’s my kid, and I love him, I love him so much, and I can’t hurt him. I keep hoping that one day it’ll be second nature, and I won’t have to think about it, and I won’t have to constantly remember not to hurt my kid, but maybe that’ll never happen. I already spend most of my life fighting not to drink; this is more important, you know? I’ll put in the effort. I’ll make it work.

“But for what it’s worth, I think your parents were probably just shitheads,” Kevin says. “I can’t imagine you were particularly a terrible kid. Terrible adult, maybe, but you couldn’t have been a terrible kid.”

“Thanks,” Neil says. And he means it. “The kids are coming to Abby’s tomorrow.”

Kevin looks at him. “I’ll teach them history if you’ll teach John math.”

“Deal.”

“Tell them to bring their homework.”

“Will do.”

Andrew meets them there, hair damp, and Neil runs a hand through it. “Ready?”

Andrew nods. Looks at Kevin. “See you tomorrow.”

Kevin nods.

Neil and Andrew collect Natalie and Paige, waiting by the door, Paige practically bouncing with excess energy.

“That was _so cool_!” She exclaims. “When you fucking _dropped_? I thought you’d been hit, and then you just—popped back up! Holy _shit_!”

“Thanks,” Neil says. “Did you see Andrew?”

“ _Yeah_! I was so worried when that one dude came running up, in the last five minutes? I mean, you guys were _winning_ , but it was so _cool_ watching Andrew just, save, zoom, save, zoom, and when he just _stood_ there? I was like, the ball is _coming at the goal_ , Andrew, _move_ , and he didn’t even _look_ at it as it just _bounced off the wall_ —but like that guy at the end! And whatever her name was had been doing such a good job at blocking him, just, whooshwhooshwhoosh,” she says, hands zooming back and forth, “and then he _got past_ her and he was _so fast_ —” she pauses as they climb into the car—“but then! Andrew was like, boom, I got this, here I am, let me just _smash_ my racquet into the ground—those racquets are really sturdy, huh?”

“He broke one once, in college,” Neil says. “Against the Terrapins. Smashed it into the ground, along with himself, and then I walked over there in time to see him peel a fucking chunk off the racquet.”

“Jesus, how hard did you hit the ground?”

“Very,” Andrew says.

“ _And_ he’d just played a full game. _While_ going through withdrawal.”

“I thought he went to rehab for that?” Paige asks.

“He came off his drugs for his games. Don’t tell. It was illegal.”

“Did you— _like_ going through withdrawal?”

“Hated it,” Andrew says. “But the drugs were worse. Usually.”

“Oh.”

She goes silent. Neil sticks his hand on the center console, and Andrew takes it.

“You were really fast, Neil,” Natalie says. It sounds accusatory.

“Thanks,” Neil says.

“You’re not that fast when we run.”

It sounds accusatory.

Neil considers, very carefully, his response. “I don’t need to be fast, for a run around the neighborhood.”

“I can run faster than we run.”

"You knew how fast I could run," Neil says thoughtfully. "You've watched us practice before."

"No, I haven't," Natalie says, annoyed. "I was _there_ , but I wasn't _watching_. I had other stuff to do. You kept that speed up the whole game. I think you're going way slower than you need to, when we run, even considering it's just a run around the neighborhood. Why don't you ever let me run that fast? I'm not weak. I can go faster than that."

Andrew rubs his thumb against Neil’s hand as Neil’s brain shoots into overdrive. He can’t make this about her health, and the meals she’s missed, and the fact that she’s 14, and the fact that he’s reasonably certain that she’ll never tell him if they’re doing too much, and the fact that he’s going slow because he’s not sure where the line is between too slow and too fast.

Well, and why can’t he?

Is it cruel to take the pressure off himself and to put it on her?

Well, even if he does, that doesn’t mean he has to stop paying attention.

He looks at her in the rearview mirror. “You’re a kid, and I get the feeling you haven’t exactly gotten three square meals per day your whole life. We took you grocery shopping and it took two hours because you don’t know what foods you like; can you honestly say that if I was running too fast, you’d tell me? Or would you make yourself run ‘til you puked?”

She glares at him, and he knows he’s right.

“I’d rather go too slow until you’re comfortable telling me what you can and can’t do than go too fast and end up hurting you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she snaps. “And anyway, did _you_ have three square meals a day, growing up on the run from the mafia?”

“First of all,” Neil says, “no, I don’t have to worry about you. But I’m going to do it anyway, so you’ll have to deal with that. Second of all, no, I didn’t. But. Here’s the thing. I had a very shitty childhood, and also teenager-hood. I don’t need to replicate it with you. Being forced to do something you can’t maintain, just because you technically _can_ do it, is bad for you, and there’s no reason for me to do that to you. I’m sure you can run faster than we run; I’m sure you can run farther than we run. I’m still not going to make you do that, because I’m not sure if you’ll tell me when we’re running too fast or when you want to stop, and I’m not going to hurt you just because someone once hurt me.”

“ _You_ turned out fine,” she shoots back.

“Yes, I did, as evidenced by the fact that I am unwilling to do to you what was done to me.”

“I’m not _weak_.”

Neil twists to look at her. “No,” he says. “You’re not. But it’s not a sign of strength to hurt yourself in order to prove that you can.”

“You get on the court and hurt yourself,” she shoots back. 

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew glances at him.

“Natalie,” Neil says, “why do you think I play exy?”

She shrugs. It’s dramatic. It expresses a deep apathy, for this question, and also in general. Neil is impressed.

“I play exy because I love it, down to my bones. I risked my life for it. More than once. It’s what I’ve wanted to do, my whole life, and as long as I can play it, I will.

“In my freshman year of college, I got hurt. Pretty badly. Multiple times. And Kevin told me that I had to be honest, when I was hurt, because sitting out for a week was shitty, but if I refused to sit out, I'd hurt myself _worse_ , cost us a game because I was hurt too bad to play properly and wouldn’t tell anyone, and then would have to sit out for _two_ weeks to repair the damage I’d done. I would be useless. It took me a couple months to learn that lesson; for a while, I disagreed with it wholeheartedly. And then my dad kidnapped me and fucked up my hands, and I realized I probably couldn’t hold a racquet. I would hold my team back, if I got on the court like that. So my choices were: Argue with them, waste their time and mine fighting, and sit out anyway; or step back, and trust them. I stepped back. They won the game I missed, and I got to play exy again once I got better.

“I can handle a few bruises—not because I’ve dealt with worse, but because I can. It’s a bruise. I can handle being bodychecked, generally. Most things I can’t handle are yellow- or red-card offenses. I’m not getting on the court to prove that I can handle a bruise. I’m handling bruises because I can handle them. I know the difference between things that are bad and things that are just not good.

“So my question for you is this: Do you want to run more because you can handle it, or because it’ll hurt, and you want to prove that you can take the pain? And if you realize you’ve hit your limit, will you say so and slow down? Or will you keep going and insist that you don’t have limits?”

“I can take care of myself!”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t make any fucking sense.”

Neil shrugs.

She looks out the window.

Neil turns forward, eyes hitting the rearview mirror in time to see a look of flat terror on Paige’s face go blank.

He doesn’t like that, at all. 

What’s she scared of? Natalie? It can’t be Natalie; that’s ridiculous. Could it be Natalie? Neil glances at Andrew, and Andrew looks back, understanding.

“Do you guys want to be there when we call Harmony?” Andrew says. “We'll call her Monday, after school.”

“Yeah," Paige says. "Oh. How did you guys pass background checks?"

Neil snorts. “I helped put away a _large_ number of people, and then went and lived an _impeccably_ lawful life. Excepting my large donations to the mafia, which they don’t know about. No one can really _check_ any of my Moriyama background, largely because they go out of their way to make sure it's hard to check. And Andrew—Andrew got a note from Bee calling him the best patient she’s ever had, and as no one knows he killed his mom, that was honestly enough. And when they came to do the home inspection, I kicked Andrew out and wore makeup.”

“Why’d you kick Andrew out?”

Andrew, without dropping Neil’s hand, gestures to his face. “I’m not exactly a reassuring presence.”

Natalie snorts, loudly. “Aren’t you?”

“Not to someone looking to certify a couple foster parents.”

Natalie makes another disdainful noise.

“What does that mean?” Andrew asks.

She repeats the noise, more emphatically.

“Yes, I heard it the first time.”

“It’s just, people like fucking Trent get through, and our foster mom who wouldn’t fucking let us eat more than once a day or else we’d get fat, and they’ll give five kids to Sherry Hiller who consistently failed to buy enough food for five kids, but, like, hey, let’s kick Andrew out of the house, because he looks scary. Sure. Cool.”

Andrew shrugs. “It worked."

Neil, belatedly, puts it together—Paige wasn’t terrified of Natalie. She was terrified that Neil and Andrew would change their minds about adopting Paige and Natalie.

He squeezes Andrew’s hand in thanks as they pull into the driveway. He’s not sure what to say to reassure the kids that he and Andrew won’t change their minds. Maybe there’s nothing. Maybe he and Andrew just have to keep going. Keep being here.

They pull into the driveway and wander into the house, the whole evening in front of them. Neil and Andrew make dinner, while Natalie and Paige sit at the table, looking up shitty riddles and reading them out loud for everyone’s benefit, laughing hysterically at the worst ones, and Neil is proud of that. Natalie and Paige eat until they’re full, and there are leftovers, and Neil is unimaginably proud of that.

And then they sit there for another half hour, reading the worst riddles imaginable.

“What do you want to watch?” Andrew asks as they clean up.

“ _The Office_?” Paige says tentatively.

“I hate that show,” Natalie says, less tentatively.

Paige turns enormous puppy eyes on her, but Natalie refuses to look.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew tilts his head to one side.

“Natalie, do you want to go for a run?” Neil says. “They can watch an episode while we’re out.”

“What if I want to run too fast?” She asks snidely.

Neil shrugs.

She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

“Well, wait,” Neil says. “Are you saying yes because I asked? Or because you want to?”

“Who cares? I said yes.”

“I care,” Neil says.

“I don’t _want_ anything.”

Neil shrugs. “Then we won’t go.”

“Why? Just because I don’t want to?” Her face pauses halfway to rage, as she digests what she just said.

“Correct,” Neil says.

“What if I do want to?”

“Then we’ll go run.”

She stands there for a minute, tension and annoyance visibly building as Paige shrinks.

“I know,” Neil says slowly, considering, trying to foresee how his words will be interpreted, “what it’s like to not matter. What it’s like to not have your wants and needs taken into consideration. And I know what it’s like to have that offered to you, and then pulled away at the last minute. We both do,” he says, indicating himself and Andrew. “We both know what it’s like to have no agency. And we both understand, Natalie, why you’re angry, and Paige, why you’re scared, and I’m going to tell you right now that we’re not going to do that to you. We want to adopt you. We want you to be our kids, and we’re going to do what has to be done to make that happen, as long as you’re okay with that.

“My goal isn’t to make you feel—” Neil waves a hand, searching.

“Little,” Andrew says. “Naïve. Stupid. Trusting. I can go on, if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” Neil says. “What he said. I’m not trying to make you say, _yes, I want to go running_ , just so that I can tell you that you can’t, or hold it over your head. I’m not handing you things just to take it away. I’m not asking your opinion just so I can ignore it.” He channels his inner Fox—Abby, Wymack, Dan, Renee, hell, even Bee. “I know you’re not going to be able to drop all your baggage at the door, but we’d like to help you carry it until you can. If you want to go running, we’ll go; if that makes it easy for Paige to watch the show she likes, perfect. If you don’t want to go running, we won’t, and we’ll figure something else out. Maybe we can watch a show Natalie likes that Paige hates, to balance it out,” he suggests, watching them both make a face. “Or something.”

Natalie fidgets.

Paige fidgets.

Neil waits.

Natalie and Paige look at each other. Wordlessly, they apologize—for what, Neil isn’t certain, but he knows an apology when he sees it.

“I want to go for a run,” Natalie announces.

Neil should double-check.

He doesn’t know how to do that without accidentally dissuading her. Or without making it sound like he doesn’t trust her to know what she wants, and isn’t that half the problem? “All right. Meet you at the door in five?”

She nods, and brushes past him to go get changed.

“Go ahead,” Andrew says, nodding at Paige. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

Paige heads into the living room, and Andrew loops a finger through Neil’s belt loop. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, letting Andrew tug him close for a kiss.

“I love you,” Andrew murmurs in Russian, one hand on the back of Neil’s neck.

“I love you, too,” Neil says.

“Where the fuck did you come from?”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Two gangs.”

“Exactly,” Andrew says. “You should’ve turned out a lot worse.”

“Thanks.”

“And instead, you’re you. How the fuck did that happen?”

“Mostly,” Neil says, “you, I think.”

Andrew huffs something like a laugh, or close enough. “Not possible.”

“Isn’t it?” Neil muses, fitting one hand to Andrew’s face. “Who else could have taught me how to be a human being?”

Andrew pulls him down for another kiss.

And then Andrew breaks away. “Go get changed, so our daughter doesn’t have to wait for you.”

“You _know_ that throws me,” Neil says. _Daughter_. Jesus.

“I think the full phrase is _throws me for a loop_ ,” Andrew suggests.

Neil waves it off. “Eh. You knew what I was getting at.”

But he heads upstairs, changes in record time, and meets Natalie at the door. They head out to the tune of the opening song of _The Office_.

Neil lets Natalie set the pace, and it’s a punishing one.

Neil reigns in the desire to say something.

Maybe he should say something.

He holds out, though, and after a mile, she slows. Not much. Just a little. Neil slows, too, without comment.

A quarter mile later in, she slows to their usual pace, and after another quarter mile, she slows to a jog.

Three minutes later, she slows to a walk.

Neil slows, too, without comment.

“Fuck,” Natalie says a couple minutes later, when she gets her breath back. “Fine. You were right.”

“That wasn’t the point I was trying to make,” Neil says. “I wasn’t saying you couldn’t do it. I was saying I didn’t want to hurt you by trying to force you to do it.”

She waves a hand. “Whatever.”

“They won’t be done yet,” Neil says. “Are you okay to walk the rest?”

“Yeah,” she says.

They walk.

“This girl at school says homosexuality is bad,” Natalie says abruptly.

Neil isn’t sure what to say to that. It’s not a question. And how is he supposed to respond to a statement like that? “It sounds like she’s got lots of thoughts on the topic,” he says diplomatically.

“She told me because she found out you and Andrew are married. She says we should all try to avoid homosexuals.”

“Why, does she think it’s catching?”

“She says she knew a gay kid once, and then half the kid’s friends turned gay.”

“She doesn’t seem to know very much about queer people.”

“How do you know?”

He glances at her, and she’s watching him. “Well, first off, I’m not a homosexual. I’m grey-ace and grey-aro. Her worldview doesn’t leave much room for me, or for people like me. Second of all, you can’t _turn_ gay. What happens is that people think they’re straight, because the world says that that’s what everyone should be. And then they find out that there are other options, and that they might not be straight—which, maybe, they learn because a friend is gay—and then they come out.

“Third of all,” he continues, “it’s not particularly _possible_ to avoid all queer people. I mean, sure, it’s easy enough to avoid _some_ people. Andrew’s cousin Nicky is pretty blatantly gay, and there are queer people out there who do their best to be visibly queer, and, sure, you could give them a wide berth, probably. But—would you _know_ Andrew was gay, just by looking at him? Or even talking to him?”

“No,” Natalie says.

“Exactly. Probably some of her friends are queer, even if she doesn’t realize it, and even if they don’t realize it.”

“Isn’t queer a bad word?”

Neil shrugs. “Isn’t _gay_? Isn’t _homosexual_? Homosexual used to be the medical diagnosis. People have used gay as an insult for years. And gay isn’t what I am, but calling me grey doesn’t particularly work, either, and it takes a bunch of explaining, but if I say I’m queer, you get the important part immediately. And there are plenty of people who just identify as queer altogether, maybe because they haven’t figured it out yet but they know they’re not straight or cis—do you know what that is? Cool—or because they aren’t particularly looking to label every part of their existence, or just because it would take too long to explain which labels fit. So, I mean, don’t call someone queer if they don’t want to be called queer, but it's not the worst word in the world.”

They walk a few more minutes in silence.

“If she says this shit to me next week, am I allowed to hit her?”

A laugh bursts out of Neil’s chest. He smothers it. “No.”

“Then why did you laugh?”

“Because it was funny. But no. Hitting is generally considered bad.”

“Half your _job_ is hitting people. Also, _last_ time I punched someone you said it was fine.”

“Well, sure, but that was a different situation.”

“I thought I was allowed to do whatever I wanted?”

“I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that being a parent means teaching kids when and how to do things they don’t like, including when and how to refrain from punching a shithead.”

“Where’s the cutoff?”

“If they get physical, you can get physical,” Neil decides. “If they aren’t getting physical, you shouldn’t, either.” One day, she’s going to find out what he did in college, and this rule is going to fly out the window.

“Okay, but, like, if someone’s saying something racist, can’t I punch them? It’ll shut them up.”

Neil hums. It’s difficult to argue when he agrees so thoroughly. “Don’t get caught. But no, you shouldn’t.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“It means, absolutely, I’ve punched first more than once, and for sure people say things that deserve a punch. But you have to _think_ about it. If you get caught, there will be consequences, and if the person you punch is a fan of authority, there’ll be _bad_ consequences. If you didn’t start it, I can defend you, but it’s hard to get you out of detention for punching someone who hasn’t touched you. There are plenty of ways to fight back verbally; I can get you out of most punishments, there. Unless you’ve earned the punishment. I’m not going to get you out of detention if you start verbally abusing people.”

“That’s fair,” she says.

“So: If you’re going to punch someone, and they didn’t swing first, don’t get caught.”

“That’s not helpful, during school hours.”

Neil shrugs. “Is it common to have your dad drive you to an after-school fight? Andrew would probably do it without a second thought.”

“Would you?”

“I’d probably do it, but I’d have second thoughts about it.”

“Did you ever get in fights?”

“Um.”

“That’s a yes.”

“It’s a yes.”

“Did you ever get caught?”

“Not by anyone who was, generally, willing to do much about it. I mean, other college students weren’t going to report me, and the people I was fighting tended to have an… aversion to authority.”

“Then how can you say that _I_ can’t fight?”

Neil laughs. “See, I told Andrew this would be a problem. We can’t be dads. We have no authority. I’ll have to tell you not to do drugs, because that’s the only thing I haven’t done, and Andrew can’t say it because he did—”

“Those were prescribed, though.”

“Oh, no, he did other stuff on top of that. He’ll probably tell you, I think. Maybe he shouldn’t, actually. But, um, neither of us can tell you not to _drink_ underage, and meanwhile, I can’t even tell you not to join the mafia. Here’s what I’ll say: We did bad and dumb shit when we were younger because we didn’t have much choice. You have a choice, now. If someone says some bad shit to you, we’ll tell the school. We’ll go to PTA meetings if we have to. Well, maybe not. Well, maybe. I don’t know. But you don’t have to rely on your ability to throw a solid punch, okay? We’re here. We’ll help.”

“Even if you can’t be dads?”

They reach the house, and Neil pauses at the bottom of the driveway. “Like Andrew said. We’ll never be model dads. And maybe we won’t be very good at it, at all. But we’re going to try our level best to get you guys to adulthood alive, and hopefully not with _more_ trauma, and we’ll do just about anything to get you there.”

She sighs. “I won’t beat people up.”

“Thanks.”

She leads the way into the house, where the outro is playing for _The Office_ , but instead of heading upstairs, she walks straight into the living room. “What drugs did you do?”

Hmm.

Maybe Neil should just—go upstairs. Now.

The TV goes silent.

Neil dawdles.

“What?” Andrew says.

Neil slinks into the living room. “This one’s on me,” he says. 

Andrew skewers him with a look. “I thought you went running?”

“We also did some walking,” Neil says. “Trying to fill out the time for an episode.”

“How on _earth_ you manage to keep _anything_ a secret is absolutely beyond me,” Andrew says.

“Sorry.”

“You told me I could ask,” Natalie says.

“I did,” Neil agrees. “I did _not_ think it through, though.”

“It was called cracker dust,” Andrew says. “It helped get Aaron off the shit he was on, which was a lot harder. And I liked to go off my meds, but I didn’t like to go through withdrawal, and the cracker dust helped.”

“I’ve never even heard of that.”

“Sorry. Do you want me to tell you I did crack?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

“How long did you do it?”

“A couple years.”

“How did you stop?”

“Neil told me to.”

“So you just… did?”

“He made me bargain for it.”

“What was his end of the bargain?”

“He’d buy me a new car.”

“What? Wait. What car did he get you?”

“Oh, I didn’t let him pick it out, he’d have gotten me a Toyota. I bought a Maserati.”

“The… the one you have now?”

“No, this one’s only two years old. I bought _that_ one myself. But I bought it because I really liked the Maserati he paid for.”

“Hang on. Hang on. So he—paid for—when was this?”

“My second year of college, his first.”

“How—” Natalie turns to face Neil. “How did you have that much _money_?”

“When mom and I ran, we took five mil,” Neil says. “I still had $750,000 left when I went to college. I was kind of hoarding it, because a new ID isn’t cheap, and I’d pissed off Riko, and the Moriyamas knew I existed, and escaping that was going to be expensive, and then Andrew—made me safe. Made it so that I wouldn’t have to run. So, suddenly, I had a _lot_ more money than I needed. So I offered it to him—technically, it was his, as I saw it, but he refused to take it. He didn’t want my _charity_. So he made me make a deal with him. I asked him to give up cracker dust.”

“So, let me—okay,” Paige says. “Okay. So Andrew made you bargain with him for the ability to give him your money?"

Neil shrugs. “Deals and promises were Andrew’s currency.”

“Are they still?” Natalie asks.

“If he makes one,” Neil says, “he won’t break it.”

“Make me a deal,” Natalie says, turning to Andrew, arms crossed.

“No,” Andrew says.

It takes Natalie a minute to react—that wasn’t the answer she expected. “Why?”

“When I make a deal, I stick to it. And, therefore, the other person has to stick to it, too.”

“I can uphold my end of the bargain.”

“No.”

“I _can_.”

Andrew twists, dislodging Sir, to look Natalie in the eye. “That’s not the problem. The answer is no.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a kid. I don’t make bargains with kids.”

“Promise me something.”

“What do you want?”

“Really?”

“I didn’t say yes, I asked what you want.”

“Yeah, but—you’ll get something out of a deal.”

“You’re a child.”

“I’m not a _baby_.”

“That’s not what I said.” Andrew points at the other end of the couch and raises an eyebrow at her.

She stomps and rolls her eyes, but she sits, pulling her feet up onto the couch so she can face Andrew.

“First of all,” Andrew says, voice gentle, “if someone says _no_ , then the answer is _no._ ”

“I’m not asking for _sex_ ,” she spits.

“No, you’re not. But consent doesn’t start and end with sex. It’s an attitude, and it should inform every interaction you have with other people. Is someone consenting to a hug, or is it just what’s expected of them? Is someone consenting to letting you copy their homework, or are they just trying not to offend you? Do you have any respect for what they need, or do you not?”

“I didn’t want a lecture,” she grumbles.

“It sounds like you didn’t consent to it.”

“I—yeah. I didn’t!”

“Next time, I’ll type it up. Regardless. I’m not making a deal with you.”

“What’s the most recent deal you made?”

“When I promised Paige to take care of the two of you for a year.”

“Hey! Why would you make a deal with her, and not me?”

“First off, I was having a shitty night, and I wasn’t thinking very clearly. Second of all, Paige called it a deal before I realized what I’d done. Today, I _am_ thinking clearly, and the answer is no.”

“Promise you’ll adopt us.”

Andrew tilts his head. “Of course.”

Natalie looks confused. She’d expected a different answer. “Neil said the two of you can’t be dads.”

“It sounds like Neil was running his mouth more than his feet.”

Natalie keeps her mouth shut.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not going to _try_ ,” Neil says. “It just means we’ll probably have absolutely no authority.”

“I’m really angry,” Natalie says. “And I’m probably going to punch more people. And get in trouble.”

“I thought you just agreed _not_ to punch people?” Neil asks. And at least she's admitting to her anger now.

Andrew just shrugs. “Are you trying to talk me into breaking my promise?”

“You just—agreed really quickly,” Natalie says.

“You asked for something I’ve already given you. Should I have taken it back just so I could give it to you again?”

“I don’t—I just—I’m a bad kid.”

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil laughs. “I’m remembering: The FBI picking me up on my dad’s doorstep, asking me if I was going to be a problem. I said: _I’ve been a problem for 19 years. I’m too tired to be one tonight._ I mean, Andrew got himself put in juvie. _Being bad_ doesn’t exactly disqualify you from being in this family.”

“But you promise,” Paige breaks in. “No matter what.”

“Yes,” Andrew says. “We promise.”

Paige slumps over in relief, dramatically sliding all the way out of her chair and onto the floor. “Okay.”

“Did you’d think we’d—change our minds?” Neil asks, half offended.

“I’m a bad kid,” Natalie repeats.

“So you think we’ll, what, go hunt for a _kid with no problems_? That kid doesn’t exist,” Neil says. “You two can be bad kids all you’d like, you’ll still be _our_ kids.”

“Do you even want two kids?” Paige asks anxiously, sitting up. “You didn’t. You only wanted Natalie.”

Andrew shrugs. “We didn’t, when we didn’t know you existed. Now, we want both of you. We promise to adopt both of you.”

Paige flops back down. “Okay.”

Andrew pokes Natalie. “Go shower.”

“Okay,” Natalie says. She goes upstairs without another word.

Neil takes her spot on the couch, stepping over Paige, still lying on the floor.

Andrew pokes him. “So what else did you talk about, on this very productive run?”

“Homosexuality?”

Andrew’s eyebrows go up.

“She has a classmate who thinks it’s bad.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Natalie requested permission to punch her.”

Paige groans. “I’ll try to stop her, but she might just wait until I’m not there.”

“She told me she wouldn’t.”

Paige waves a vague hand. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean much.”

“Where’d she learn how to throw a punch?” Neil asks.

“She broke her thumb three years ago. She learned pretty quickly. Sorry.”

“I don’t know why you’re apologizing,” Neil says lightly. “And honestly, I’m glad she’s got such a steep learning curve.”

Paige goes silent. Andrew takes Neil’s hand, and traces the lines across his palm. A few minutes later, Natalie comes downstairs, and then Andrew puts on Jeopardy. He’s showing off, but Natalie and Paige have fun trying desperately to beat each other, screaming out the answers they know, and Neil laughs, heart light, Andrew’s hand warm in his.

When Neil and Andrew get in bed that night, Andrew holds out his arms. Neil removes his armbands.

"I've been thinking about Trent," Andrew says.

"Me too," Neil agrees. "I'm trying to figure out how to look up the price of an assassin without alerting the FBI."

"What? Why do we need an assassin? I'll just do it."

"No," Neil says. "No, you won't."

"Why not? You'd rather risk a paper trail leading to some dark web assassin we've never met than let your husband commit one quick murder?"

"Yes."

"It's not like it would bother me."

Neil scoots around to face Andrew. "First of all, subtlety is not your hallmark. Second of all, we have no way of getting rid of the body or making him disappear, so we'd have to make it look like suicide, and that takes more planning than either of us is used to. Third of all, no, I am not letting you get on a plane to Colorado to murder a man and then fly home. That sounds like a bad idea."

Andrew makes a face. "We could go on a family trip to the Rockies."

"Drew."

"Abram."

"That won't work. Not this time."

"I could learn subtlety."

"Drew."

Andrew sighs. "We can't hire an assassin. Maybe we could do it without the FBI finding out, but not without the Moriyamas finding out."

"And I'm not willing to ask the Moriyamas," Neil says. "I don't particularly want to interact with them more than necessary, and I don't want to be in their debt."

Andrew scrubs at his face. "So he lives," he says in a flat voice.

"We're not professionals. Is there any way of getting him out of the foster system?"

"If Paige would talk, we'd have something, but I'm not going to make her. He's probably got child porn on his computer, but I'm not a hacker."

"We should've taken more computer classes in college," Neil agrees. His technological illiteracy is, suddenly, a problem. "And anyway, I don't know if information we get from hacking could be used in court."

"Also, if they find child porn on his computer, they'll go asking the kids in his care questions, and Paige might not want that. You really won't let me kill him?"

"Remember how we're trying to behave long enough to adopt a couple kids?"

Andrew fidgets. Neil passes him a knife to fidget with. "I don't know if there's any way to tell the agency that he shouldn't have anymore kids in his house without them asking why."

Neil's heart breaks at the helplessness in Andrew's voice. They're trapped—no witnesses willing to speak, that he knows of, and nothing they can do. Neil wraps a hand around the back of Andrew's neck. "Hey. We've got them. We can't save everyone. We can only do our best." Neil can feel all the tension in Andrew's neck, his shoulders, every muscle pulled taut, can see how tightly he's clenching his jaw. "I know our best feels inadequate. I know even if we try to get the kids he's got right now, it'll just free him up to take more kids on. I know it's not enough, and I know we don't have the time to sit around chatting about it. But, Drew, we're not—we just don't have that kind of power. We don't have that kind of money. The best we can do is help make Paige and Natalie feel safe enough that they can report him, and maybe that'll help his other victims, too. And we can't—right now, that's all we can do, and Drew, it has to be enough."

Andrew is vibrating with fury. Neil can practically hear the argument running in his head—it's not enough, Andrew should just go and beat Trent to death with his bare hands and damn the consequences, better for Andrew to end up in jail than for another kid to get raped. Neil can hear the voice in Andrew's head that calls him a coward for choosing not to risk himself, can hear it clear as day, because it's Neil's own voice, from after Drake died and Neil asked Andrew why he hadn't reported Drake to Higgins.

"You can't save the world, Drew. But we can start with Natalie and Paige, and you can't do that if you're in jail, and I can't follow you into jail if I've got them, and I can't take care of them properly if you're in jail. Can't do it."

"Are you using them as _leverage_?"

"Yep," Neil says unabashedly. "It's true, though. I can't raise two teenagers without you. I'm not prepared to do that. We didn't discuss that."

"They might be happier that way. They're scared of me, anyway."

"Paige isn't," Neil says. "Not even a little bit. She adores you. Did you see her face when she found out you punched Henry? She loves you for that. And Natalie's getting there, too. Didn't seem to have any problem asking you about your drug addiction."

"Oh, yeah," Andrew says, startled into relaxing a little bit. "Thanks for telling her that, right after we decided we wouldn't."

"Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"It turned out fine."

"Am I forgiven?"

"Of course. I won't fly to Colorado to murder a man."

"I appreciate it."

"A little intimidation, though, maybe."

"Drew."

"Tell me again. Tell me we're doing what we can."

"We're doing what we can, Drew, and we're doing it well. We've got two kids who are laughing, and eating, and talking, and standing up straight, and who feel safe enough to argue with each other. You can do more good, here, with them, than you can running off to sacrifice yourself."

Andrew leans forward to rest his forehead against Neil's, and Neil closes his eyes.

They'd had this discussion, months ago. They'd had many discussions, when Andrew had first brought up the idea of fostering children. One of Neil's objections had been exactly this—that they had to put a limit on things, somehow. That they'd have to remember that both of them worked, and that while the bulk of their workweek was kid-friendly they still had to work on weekends, and often had to spend Saturday nights in other states. Andrew had agreed that they could only handle one kid at a time, maybe two—and even then, the assumption had been that one would be 16 or 17, old enough to be trusted at home alone for a weekend, not two 14 year olds. Neil had very dramatically stared down into an empty bowl, and then looked up at Andrew and said "I foresee... you trying to foster and save every single child you see." Andrew had responded: "What's wrong with that?" Neil had looked at him. Had taken Andrew's face in his hands. "We're two people, Drew, we can't."

Neil feels Andrew relax, one muscle at a time.

"Say it again."

"Natalie said earlier that you are a reassuring presence. Paige feels safe enough with you that she made Natalie go on runs with me. We're doing plenty, right here, and if we want to keep doing that work, we have to devote ourselves to it. We're saving two girls, and that's a lot, and it's enough."

Neil repeats it, over and over again, for half an hour, until Andrew pushes Neil down and curls up on top of him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky calls! And then they all go to Abby's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter's gonna be on the shorter side, because it used to be part of THIS chapter, until I realized that this chapter was 23k. fuckin mess
> 
> also I can't believe the most controversial thing I've written about so far was pasta. I do love all of you so very much

Neil wakes up lazy on Sunday, with Andrew wrapped around him like a taco shell.

His mind wanders, slowly winding through college years, which the two of them spent squashed into a twin bed. Remembers how fast they had gotten used to touching each other when every night was nothing but. Remembers the bad nights, when Neil had to sleep in his own bed, had to listen to Andrew’s silence, knowing full well Andrew was out of Neil’s reach both physically and mentally. Remembers the good nights, when he’d wake up at two in the morning to find that Andrew had slung a leg across Neil’s thigh.

Still. Neil might be used to this; this might be his life, now. But he’ll never take it for granted. Andrew’s willingness to sleep with someone else in the room—with someone else in his _bed_ —is extended almost uniquely to Neil. Even in college, having someone else in the room had been cause for endless nights of terrible sleep. Neil hadn’t noticed until they’d taken to commandeering Nicky’s house on weekends in the summer, just the two of them, eating oranges and watching movies and talking. Those days, when it had been no one but Andrew and Neil, when all doors and windows had been locked, Andrew had slept like a rock. Neil would wake up holding Andrew’s hand, or wrapped around Andrew, or with Andrew wrapped around him. Neil had expected that to change, when they’d bought their own house and Andrew had immediately dropped an inordinate amount of money on a gigantic king size bed, but apparently, Andrew had just wanted the _option_ of spreading out like a starfish without touching either the edge of the bed or the other person in said bed. When it came right down to it, wherever they started out the night, Neil woke up tangled up with Andrew—unless Andrew was having a bad night.

Today is not one of those days, though, and Neil luxuriates in Andrew’s weight, Andrew’s warmth.

He remembers being shocked by that, the second time Andrew had kissed him: body heat, from someone who didn’t want to hurt him. Feels it, even now, the _luxury_ of being touched by someone who doesn’t want to hurt him. Of being touched, somehow, by someone who _loves_ him. The shock of being loved.

He feels it when Andrew wakes up—Andrew’s breath on the nape of Neil’s neck changes, deepens; Andrew’s arm, wrapped around Neil’s stomach, tenses, relaxes, pulls Neil closer. Andrew kisses the base of Neil’s neck. Neil hums, content, and when Andrew tugs at him, he rolls over, landing face-to-face with Andrew, and falls in love with him again. It’s a drop in his stomach, a lightness in his heart, a smile he can’t stop from spreading across his face. And here, where it’s just the two of them, still so early in the morning, Andrew isn’t armored. The anxieties of last night clearly haven’t survived the morning light. His eyes are soft. He puts a finger to Neil’s lips.

“What are you thinking about?” Andrew murmurs.

“You,” Neil says against Andrew’s finger.

Andrew raises an eyebrow, hand moving to brush Neil’s hair back.

“Thinking about how much you love me.”

“It’s a lot,” Andrew agrees.

“Remembering when we bought this bed.”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt to get a new mattress,” Andrew says.

“It’s only five years old.”

“It feels older than that.”

“We only sleep in one place.”

“We could move around. Your side of the bed tomorrow night, my side the night after.”

“We’ve created such a dip right here, though. We might just—roll back down.”

“We could break it in,” Andrew says.

“What did you have in mind?”

Andrew twists away and scooches towards the edge of the bed, a feat made more difficult by the fact that Neil isn’t lying—the bed is big enough that it would be possible to lie on the edges just fine, but there’s a reasonably obvious dip in the center, in spite of the fact that Neil and Andrew turn and flip the mattress regularly.

Andrew reaches into his bedside table and pulls out mints.

Maybe they should get a mattress pad. Would that solve the problem?

Andrew returns to Neil. Neil opens his mouth, and Andrew puts a mint in it, and puts a mint in his own mouth. Neil nuzzles into Andrew’s neck as he chews, running his nose up Andrew’s jugular, feeling Andrew’s Adam’s apple dip, finding Andrew’s jawline, warm skin, how long it took for Andrew to consent to skin-to-skin contact not buffered by the threat of violence. How worth the wait. How nice, to close his teeth ever-so-gently on the skin on Andrew’s neck and feel Andrew’s shiver, see the goosebumps wherever Neil’s lips touch. Neil slides a hand into Andrew’s hair, tugs gently—not pulling him away, just enough to make him _feel_. And then Neil presses his lips to Andrew’s pulse, and _knows_ that Andrew can feel him. Neil likes this. It’s his goal to make Andrew feel enough _good_ to outweigh all the _bad_. Every time Neil’s lips make Andrew’s pulse skyrocket, the _good_ comes just a little closer to outweighing all the times Andrew’s pulse has risen in response to fear. Neil makes his way back up to Andrew’s mouth, which Andrew welcomes with a hum, swallowing Neil’s content sigh, wrapping his arms around Neil’s waist to pull him closer.

Pressed up against Andrew, the rest of the universe is nothing.

Neil puts his forehead against Andrew’s. “Where did you come from?” He breathes.

“Juvie.”

Neil huffs a laugh, bumping his nose against Andrew’s. “Do you know how much I love you?”

“Mm. Must’ve forgotten.”

Neil tugs gently on Andrew’s hair. “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest,” he murmurs. _Much Ado About Nothing._ One of Andrew’s favorites. “I do love nothing in the world so well as you.” He meets Andrew’s eyes, and Andrew doesn’t look away. “I don’t know how I found you. I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Andrew’s thumb strokes Neil’s cheekbone. “I can think of a few things, off the top of my head. What happened, the other night? When I came back to bed and you were crying?”

“That actually happened?” Neil asks. It feels distant, vague, fake. Dreamlike. Even as he thinks that, though, he remembers what it felt like, the terror, the emptiness, and he squirms closer, trying to eliminate all space between himself and Andrew. Dips his head forward, putting his mouth to Andrew’s ear, so that he can whisper. It’s one thing to talk about the mafia out loud, to say the name _Moriyama_ ; that’s a threat he can deal with. If it comes for him, so be it; it’s his time. The problem is that the universe seems to like Neil damaged and broken, and this is one evil that Neil can’t stand even to _think_ about too loudly. He whispers it. “I dreamed you were gone. I dreamed you’d disappeared, and I couldn’t find you, and I was reaching for you, and you weren’t there.”

Neil drops his face to Andrew’s neck, more for comfort than anything else, but Andrew grabs his hair and tugs, pulls Neil around so that Andrew can look him in the eye.

“I’m not leaving you,” he says, hard, quiet. A promise. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Neil puts a hand to Andrew’s face. “It wasn’t that you _decided_ to leave. It’s just that you were gone.” He feels it, like an empty stomach, like waterlogged lungs. Something broken and absent. Andrew, gone.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Andrew repeats. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, already there, Andrew’s mouth the entirety of his world, and Andrew pushes him, rolls them, until Andrew is on top of Neil, pushing him into the mattress, the only thing in the universe Neil needs. 

Thirty minutes later, sun streaming through the curtains and brightening the room to a level that can no longer be ignored, legs shaky and lips numb, Neil stands, hauling Andrew with him. He has to clean himself off, as does Andrew, and then they really should go downstairs. Do something. He’s hungry, anyway.

He looks at Andrew, and Andrew is looking at him, and Neil gets caught there for a minute, because Andrew is wide open and Neil _knows_ him, knows every emotion in Andrew’s heart, and it’s all right there, right there for him to see. And it’s not all fury and fear. It hasn’t been for a long time.

Neil is getting soft in his old age.

When he met Andrew, he’d needed apathy—needed someone who could look at him, all his scars and bruises, and not care; who could hold Neil up without breaking a sweat. These days, the sight of that level of apathy, of blankness, is a sign that something is wrong. Neil doesn’t mind seeing Andrew bored, or unimpressed, or uncaring—but he hates to see deadness in Andrew’s eyes. He likes to look at Andrew and know that Andrew is _alive_.

Years ago, Neil asked Andrew to choose him—to choose, more specifically, him and Kevin, exy, the Foxes, _them_.

Andrew had made his choice.

It had taken Andrew some time to figure out what that meant, but Andrew doesn’t break promises. He’d tried walking away; he’d tried distance; he’d tried it all. And then he’d decided to stay, realized that that would involve a lot more openness than he was accustomed to, and had doubled down.

It had involved lots of therapy.

The fact that Andrew had allowed Neil to be there for it had been—

Neil had done his best to keep Andrew standing, when Andrew hadn’t been able to hold himself together. Had done everything in his power to keep track of the scattered pieces of Andrew. And Andrew had let him. Had let Neil help put Andrew back together again. Neil wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve that honor, that show of trust, but he didn’t intend to take it for granted. 

“How are you holding up?” He asks, quietly. The house is still silent; Neil’s reasonably certain the girls aren’t up yet, let alone listening at the door. It still feels like something that ought to be kept quiet.

Andrew tilts his head. A question.

“Mentally,” Neil clarifies. “You’re not shoving it all down, right? Are the kids too much? I can ask them to step off, if you need space.”

“They help more than hurt,” Andrew says.

Neil waits as Andrew chooses his words.

“As long as they’re around, I’m helping. When things start to come up, I remember that I’m helping, and when I forget, you’re here to remind me. I remember that I have you, and that the kids have us, and that I need to be someone worth having.”

Neil swipes a finger over Andrew’s cheekbone. “You are,” he murmurs. “You always have been.”

Andrew turns away and pulls Neil into the bathroom.

Eventually, clean and with properly brushed teeth, they head downstairs. Natalie and Paige aren’t far behind.

“Thoughts on waffles?” Neil asks.

“Sure,” Natalie says.

“Waffles are good,” Paige agrees.

So they make waffles.

“What do you want on them?” Neil asks. “Peanut butter?”

“Syrup?” Andrew suggests.

They place their preferred condiments on the table and wait.

“Is this, like, a personality test?” Paige asks.

“No,” Neil says. “It’s just to see which one of us is right.”

“Right about what?”

“About whether syrup or peanut butter is the ideal topping for waffles.”

Paige and Natalie stare at Neil and Andrew.

It occurs to Neil that, maybe, him and Andrew just standing there might be a little threatening.

He sits.

Andrew slides, more slowly, into his seat.

“Is this—is this what you guys do when we’re not here?” Natalie asks.

“Yeah,” Neil says.

“That’s—I mean, it’s stupid. You’re both stupid,” she says. “I mean—it can’t be syrup, because that’s way too sweet.” She ignores Neil’s triumphant look. “And it can’t be peanut butter, because that’s way too sticky, it’ll glue your mouth shut.” She ignores Andrew’s triumphant eyebrow in favor of grabbing both peanut butter and syrup. “You have to do _both_ ,” she says, ignoring the exclamations of horror from both Neil and Andrew. She slathers peanut butter on, and then, as Neil and Andrew watch, silently, world collapsing, she pours syrup on top.

“That’s blasphemous,” Neil says.

“It’s homophobic,” Andrew decides.

Natalie gives them both a look of utter scorn. 

Neil and Andrew turn to Paige. “Tie breaker,” Neil says.

She holds her eyebrows up in a look of disdain. “I’d rather not,” she says, standing to grab the butter out of the fridge.

Neil stares into the middle distance. “We failed,” he says. “We failed as parents.”

“They’re young yet,” Andrew says, patting Neil’s hand. “There’s still time.”

Neil sighs and grabs the peanut butter. “We’ll have to bring them around to peanut butter,” he says, “in case of the apocalypse.”

“Absolutely not,” Andrew says. “Maple syrup lasts _forever_. You think peanut butter won’t grow mold?”

“Not if it’s sealed properly,” Neil says. “And with the amount of sugar in maple syrup? It’ll rot your teeth. No dental care, post-apocalypse.”

“Won’t there be?” Andrew asks, setting his fork down and settling in. Neil mirrors him. “The assumption is always that, post-apocalypse, most of the population will be gone, and the survivors will be the people with the guns, not the nuclear physicists. But how do we know? That assumes that the apocalypse will be something that will require physical violence to survive. What if it’s a volcanic explosion? It’ll take people out by geographic location, not by physical ability or by gun license.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Neil allows. “So we’re looking at an apocalypse wherein dentists might survive. Do they have access to their equipment? Is the power on, or are their x-ray machines useless? How often do they have to replace that equipment, and are there people who know how to produce it and have access to a factory that they can run? Do we still have supply lines? Post-apocalypse, will something produced in China be capable of making it to America? What about disinfectant? The instruments have to get cleaned somehow. What’s the incentive? Does money still have value? Are we paying in peanut butter?”

“I don’t think that most of that is relevant,” Andrew rejoins. “There was dental care prior to electricity, and I think we’ll manage it without, post-apocalypse. Not to mention, the apocalypse could jumpstart solar and wind—some of that, people can rig up themselves, and the only incentive we’ll need is that otherwise, nothing will work. Internet, too, we can work up, as long as it’s mesh—phone-to-phone instead of a Verizon-style national network—and maybe it won’t be what we’re used to, but it’ll work. Whether or not the supply chains will recover isn’t a problem—again, we had those pre-tech. We can build ships. We can sail them. The problem is, what if the apocalypse is that something happens to China itself? Then we’re a little fucked, but even then, people make things in places other than China.”

“And getting off-topic,” Neil says. “What’s the apocalypse? We’ve gotta settle on one.”

“Zombies,” Andrew says.

“The usual rules?”

Andrew nods—it’s a given.

“What are the usual rules?” Paige asks.

“Zombieism is transmittable by bite,” Neil says, ticking the rules off on his fingers. “It’s decimated the population, but it hasn’t discriminated—we can’t say, for instance, that dentists are more likely to get bitten, and have thus disappeared, or that the elderly are more susceptible, and have thus taken all cultural knowledge with them. We assume that borders are closed. We assume that much of the population lives in compounds, so that they can maintain some kind of civilization without the enormous risk of having to leave a safe zombie-free zone. It’s up for debate whether or not the army has been disbanded due to the fact that a zombie infection would shred it, or if the army has been turned outwards to deal with zombies; we can’t rely on them to enforce anything except isolation. Am I missing anything?”

Andrew swallows a bite of waffle. “Nope. How long has it been since the apocalypse?”

“How long do you need?”

“Not long. Dental’s a top priority.”

“Dental care?” Natalie breaks in. “Dental care is a top priority? In a _zombie apocalypse_?”

Neil looks at her. “What happens if you get a really deep cut?”

She shrugs. “You bleed.”

“You bleed. How do you care for it?”

“Disinfect it. Wrap it. Maybe stitches?”

“What happens if you get a cavity?”

She shrugs. “You ignore it?”

“And then you die,” Neil says. “Dental care was one of the first kinds of healthcare we invented, precisely because—oh,” he says, sitting back. “Fine. You win,” he says to Andrew.

Andrew takes a victorious bite of syrup-with-waffle.

“Why?” Paige asks.

“If you don’t treat a cavity, you end up needing a root canal. Best-case scenario, you lose the tooth. If it happens too often and you can’t chew, you’re pretty bad off; surviving on liquids is possible, but not great. A whole _society_ surviving on liquids? Mm. Not great. And everything past that best-case scenario is pretty bad; that infection can spread, can get to your brain, and can kill you in a large number of ways. So dental care was invented pretty early on, because otherwise, people end up dead. So, yeah, even in a zombie apocalypse, dental care should be a top priority—if not _especially_ so. If your goal is to survive, dying at the age of 30 because of a bad tooth is a dumb way to go.”

“Which means,” Andrew breaks in, giving Neil a chance to eat some of his waffle, “that post-apocalypse, even if you didn’t have fully trained dentists and an operational dental care facility, it would still get invented pretty fast. Most people understand some basics of dental care; it’s not like they’d be starting from scratch. And sure, they’d probably fuck up, and sure, maybe some people would die, but they’d get a functioning dental care system up pretty quickly. Therefore: I can eat syrup in the middle of a zombie outbreak, because we’ll have dental care.”

Natalie puts down her fork. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Not too much, these days,” Andrew says.

“Okay, but why does it matter what you _can_ eat?” Paige says. “Is it more likely that you’ll have access to syrup, or to peanut butter?”

“Depends on location,” Andrew says, “and therefore impossible to answer.”

“Okay,” Natalie says, “but if you only have access to peanut butter, who cares what you like?”

Andrew sits back. “First off, the question wasn’t _are we more likely to have access to peanut butter or to maple syrup_. Second of all, I care. Third of all, that’s not a fun argument to have.”

“Fourth of all,” Neil breaks in, “that’s why you should enjoy peanut butter. Because what if it’s all you’ve got?”

“What if all you’ve got is syrup?” Andrew rejoins.

“No protein. You’re dead anyway.”

“Peanut butter isn’t a complete protein.”

“It is if you’ve got some whole-grain bread. And you can’t tell me that the first thing people start growing won’t be whole grains to make bread with.”

“I have a question,” Paige says before Andrew can respond. “Why do you have _usual rules_ for a zombie apocalypse scenario?”

“Because if you’re going to argue, you need to have rules for that argument,” Andrew says. “You can’t win an argument if the rules keep changing. So if we need an apocalypse scenario, we need to figure out what it is, how it’s affected the world, what’s going on, who lived and who died, and it’s way easier to have an established scenario with established rules than to figure it out every single time.”

“Why zombies?” Natalie asks.

“Because that’s fun,” Andrew says.

“Weird,” Paige says. “What about in space? In space, I think Neil wins.”

“Well, but that’s a different scenario,” Andrew says. “Do we still have contact with Earth? How long will we be up there? Because if we’re going up for a week, I’m bringing syrup.”

“Well, this should be pretty clear-cut regardless,” Neil says, dredging up what understanding he has of space travel. “There’s not much space in a spaceship. Syrup doesn’t have much nutritional value, so it doesn’t make sense to bring it.”

“Sure,” Andrew says, “But consider this: I want to bring it.”

“ _Want_ isn’t _need_.”

“Imagine,” Andrew says, “that you are _in space_ with _no chocolate_. Tell me how much you want chocolate.”

“Lots,” Neil concedes. “But _want_ isn’t _need_.”

“Isn’t it?”

Neil raises an eyebrow.

“If you want nothing, it’s because you’re dead,” Andrew says simply. “Or at least close. Thus, being alive means _wanting_. Therefore, isn’t fulfillment, to an extent, of at least some of those wants a necessity?”

Neil looks at him, hazel eyes and blond hair, beautiful and alive and familiar with the concept of _wanting_ , and loves him, desperately, and he knows it’s showing up on his face, but Andrew says nothing about it. Just looks back at Neil and waits. He opens his mouth to make an argument—it’s more important to survive than to fulfill a want—but isn’t he living proof that that’s bullshit? Isn’t _Andrew_ living proof that that’s bullshit? Hasn’t he had precisely this argument with Kevin at least eight times? “Fine. But I think they’d still have to include peanut butter. For protein.”

“Then it’s probably smarter for me to take the Natalie route,” Andrew says, indicating her pile of slop.

“Don’t joke about that kind of thing,” Neil says.

“It’s just food,” Natalie says.

Andrew and Neil glance at each other, and elect not to argue.

Halfway through breakfast, Neil’s phone buzzes.

He ignores it.

And then it buzzes again, five times in rapid succession, and he gives in. He knows who it is, anyway.

_WHY have you not called me yet?_

_HEY ARE THESE TEXTS BLUE FOR A REASON_

_NEIL JOSTEN DID YOU GET AN IPHONE_

_ARE YOU IGNORING ME_

_NEIL_

_ANSWER ME!!!!_

“Is it okay if we talk to Nicky?” Neil asks. “Andrew’s cousin,” he adds.

Andrew shrugs; the girls shrug.

Neil double checks his WiFi connection and facetimes Nicky, who answers with a shriek that has Neil turning the volume down before Nicky’s even done.

“Is this an _iphone_? Neil Josten, are you _living in our century_?”

“Andrew has one too,” Neil says immediately, tilting the phone so Nicky can see the glare Andrew is aiming in Neil’s direction.

“Liar,” Nicky says, and then the screen goes grey.

Neil stares at it. Did he do something wrong? It says _paused._ How does he make it un-pause?

Andrew’s face goes blank, and he withdraws his buzzing phone from his pocket. He shows the screen to Neil.

Nicky’s facetiming him.

Andrew takes a deep breath, nostrils flared, and then answers the phone, immediately aiming it at the ceiling.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Nicky says, through both Andrew’s and Neil’s speakers.

“What’s wrong?” Erik asks, off-screen.

“Andrew and Neil got _iphones_ ,” Nicky says, half an accusation.

“No shit,” Erik says, coming around to stand behind Nicky. He waves.

Neil waves. Andrew does not, because he’s got the phone aimed at the ceiling.

“Where’s Andrew?” Erik asks.

“Next to me,” Neil says.

“Ah,” Erik says, frowning, presumably at the image of Neil and Andrew’s kitchen ceiling.

And then Nicky’s face takes up the whole screen again. “I was so goddamn shocked about the phone situation I forgot you’ve got kids now? Where are those?”

“Those? You mean _they?_ ” Andrew asks. “They’re people, Nicky. Oh. Hey. Two phones. Look at this.” And he props up his own phone to face Natalie, and then plucks Neil’s phone out of his hands and sets it up to face Paige. “The _height_ of convenience.”

“Thanks,” Paige says. “Hi.”

“Hi! Oh my god, _hi_! I’m Nicky. This is my husband, Erik. Who are you? Hey. Hang on. Brunette. _What_ is on your waffles?”

“My name is Natalie,” Natalie says, affronted. “And it’s syrup and peanut butter.”

“Oh, yes, _tell her_ , Nicky,” Neil says, grinning. “I’m listening.”

“Mm. Might be a bit hard,” Nicky says, “given I’m on her side these days.”

Neil grabs his phone so he can stare Nicky in the eye. “You’re lying. Oh, fuck, you’re not lying.”

“Look, I was a sweet-toppings kinda guy for so long, Neil, for _so long_.”

“I know.”

“I thought you _wanted_ a peanut butter friend?”

“Not like this,” Neil says. “Not like this.”

Andrew sticks one middle finger into the frame, aimed squarely at Nicky.

“Blame Erik—” Nicky breaks off with a laugh as Erik swats at him.

“He _asked_ ,” Erik says, pushing Nicky’s head out of the way. “He asked, specifically, for peanut butter, for waffle purposes.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Natalie says.

“Seconded,” Paige says.

“You have terrible children,” Nicky says.

“We love them anyway.”

“Kids are a burden.”

From off-screen, Neil hears Angela yell “ _Hey_!”

“We love you, though,” Nicky tells her. “We love you so much.”

“ _Dads_ are a burden,” Angela asserts. She’s five years old, she knows both German and English, and her vocabulary is entirely Andrew’s fault. She grabs the phone from Nicky. “Hi, Uncle Neil.”

“Hi, Angela.”

“Where’s Uncle Andrew?”

Neil passes the phone to Andrew.

Angela takes off, apparently unconcerned by Natalie’s face on half the screen. Andrew listens, seriously, as she details the struggles of a five-year-old, including a skinned knee, Nicky’s failure to take her to the park daily—“It was _freezing_ yesterday,” Nicky yells in the background—the fact that there are other people in her kindergarten class, and the fact that Erik decided not to let her read the book Andrew had sent her for her birthday because it was too advanced for her—Andrew struggles, torn between the assertion that _she’s a smart kid and she can read the goddamn Hobbit_ and _your fathers know what’s best_ , but she doesn’t wait for him. She moves on to an in-depth discussion of a TV show Neil knows nothing about. And she does the whole thing in an English-German hybrid, mixing grammar until Neil feels desperately sorry for her teachers. She knows—to an extent—what’s German and what’s English; Neil, Andrew, Aaron, Katelyn, and now Freddie have spent Christmases in Germany since Neil graduated, and last year, Neil listened to her order dinner and dessert at a restaurant in German. It’s just that she seems to be firmly of the belief that anyone who can’t understand her when she speaks both languages is not worth her time.

Eventually, she decides she’s done and passes the phone back to Nicky without so much as a goodbye. Erik runs after her as she heads for the back door.

Andrew raises an eyebrow at Nicky. “ _The Hobbit_ is too advanced?”

Nicky gives him an apologetic grimace. “Erik’s worried she’ll want to watch _Lord of the Rings_ after she reads it, which she will, and _that_ actually _is_ a little scary.”

Andrew looks at Neil, who waves a hand in the air— _I know. I don’t understand it either_.

“Anyway, give the phone back to Paige, I have questions for them.”

Andrew sets the phone up so it’s facing Paige, who makes a face at Andrew.

Neil hears Nicky take a deep breath, and then Nicky begins shooting off questions—how’s school? Are Neil and Andrew good guardians? What TV shows do Natalie and Paige like? Are they learning German? How are they doing? Can they understand him when he speaks German? What can they say? What are they learning? He knows Neil and Andrew know German, but really, Nicky’s a much better teacher, Natalie and Paige could always call him for help.

Neil glances at Andrew— _we could just get up and go._

Andrew looks like he’s sincerely considering it.

“Hey,” Paige says. “Whatever you’re planning— _don’t you dare_.”

“What?” Nicky asks.

“I don’t know,” Paige says, eyeing Andrew and Neil as they do their level best to appear innocent. “But they’re definitely up to _something_.”

Neil keeps his mouth shut. She’s not _wrong_.

He settles down. Andrew takes his hand, and that’s enough to keep Neil from getting restless.

Eventually, Paige and Natalie return the phones to Andrew and Neil with looks of intense relief, and Nicky informs them, completely seriously, that he’s proud of them. Neil thanks him. They say their goodbyes, and Neil points an accusatory finger at Andrew. “It’s your fault we have these things.”

Andrew just shrugs, and Neil thinks about the only lie he ever remembers Andrew telling—and even then, it was told in Nicky’s voice: That family is meaningless. Andrew had dropped Cass like nothing, in order to protect a brother he hadn’t even known.

Of course, Andrew had also killed his mother. So, certainly, he didn’t think that family was _everything_. But it mattered to him, in some obscure way. The ability to Facetime Andrew and Neil would make Nicky happy; Andrew would give into it, inevitably. Andrew’s getting soft in his old age.

They spend the next few hours playing GTA, with one break: Natalie and Neil go for a run, and Andrew and Paige watch another episode of _The Office_. Natalie sets the pace, and it’s a little easier than the day before. Neil keeps his mouth shut.

And then they go to Abby’s.

When they arrive at Abby’s house, everyone else is already in the kitchen, marinating in the smells of garlic and basil as something cooks in the crockpot. Allison is watching a video on Matt’s phone, and Neil hears the sound of a furious car engine and a crowd roaring. 

They glance up as Neil and Andrew walk in.

“Hey—hey! Kids! There they are!” Dan cheers.

“Oh, thank god,” Kevin says, “it’s just been John for too long.”

“Yeah,” Thea says, “we hate it when there are other adults around to watch him.”

Kevin shrugs and gives her a grin. Thea grins back.

Renee smiles at Natalie and Paige. “I’m Renee,” she says, “It’s nice to meet you. Which one of you is Natalie—”

Natalie raises a hand.

“Great! So you must be Paige. We’re happy you’re here.”

“Showing us up,” Allison says, raising an eyebrow at Renee. “Making us look like we don’t have manners.”

Renee smiles at her. “Then maybe, you should introduce yourself.”

“All in good time, babe, all in good time. I’m Allison.”

“Matt.”

“Dan.”

“You know me,” Kevin says.

“Thea.”

“That’s John,” Kevin says, pointing at John, napping in Wymack’s lap.

“I’m Kevin’s dad,” Wymack says. “You can call me Wymack. All these assholes do. Including, most of the time, my son.”

“I’m Abby—here, take a seat, we’ve got space,” she says, pointing at empty chairs. Natalie and Paige sit, but before Neil and Andrew can take seats, Matt gives them a glare that should by all rights knock them off their feet.

“So why were you ignoring my texts?” Matt asks.

Neil grins.

He pulls his new phone out and tosses it across the table, to the sound of gasps.

Andrew displays his own phone, more sedately, to the sound of even-more-shocked gasps.

“I never thought it would happen,” Matt crows, turning the phone on, turning it off, and sliding it back towards Neil. “ _Real_ phones. He wouldn’t even get a qwerty until, like, two years ago,” he tells Natalie and Paige. “We were all recording bootleg ringtones, individualized to each contact, creating individual vibration rhythms per person, jailbreaking our phones to get fun backgrounds, and this boy had, fucking, the standard Motorola ringtone for all of us and the background the phone came with. It was offensive.”

“That’s not true,” Neil interjects. “I had a special ringtone for Andrew. Now, to be fair, he’s the one who set it, but the fact remains.”

“Really?” Allison asks, delighted. “How long were you dating when _this_ happened?”

“We weren’t,” Neil says. “It was when he first got me the phone.”

Allison and Renee lean forward, chins in hands, an oddly synchronized move. “What was the ringtone?” Allison asks.

“Uh—Del Shannon’s _Runaway_.”

Allison’s eyebrows pop up, a question, and Neil grins as he remembers.

“We’re sitting there, and he’s trying to convince me to look at the phone at all, and he uses my phone to call his, and it’s just: _and I wonder where she will stay, my little runaway, a-run, run, run, runaway_ , and then he hangs up and calls _me_ , and it was a part from the same song. Asshole,” Neil says with a grin, watching Andrew grab a beer from the fridge. “Rubbing it in.”

“What part of the song did _he_ use?” Allison asks.

“Why, you need to hear me sing _more_?”

“Yup,” Allison says.

Renee, Matt, and Dan all seem entirely too interested, but Neil can’t fathom why. He’s not a good singer. “ _I’m walkin in the rain, tears are fallin’ and I feel the pain, wishin’ you were here by me to end this misery—_ ”

“Oh,” Paige says, “is that when you realized he liked you?”

“What? No. Why?”

Renee puts her head on the table.

Neil frowns. “No, he was being an asshole. There I was trying to keep it a secret that I was a runaway, and he goes and sets my ringtone, knowing full well I don’t know how to change it—” he makes the mistake of glancing at Andrew, and Andrew is absolutely blank. “Andrew. Andrew, that was—when was that? It was—”

“September **,** ” Andrew says blandly.

“See? Way too soon,” Neil says. He remembers being in Exites in November, remembers Andrew putting his hand to Neil’s mouth, remembers the beginnings of Andrew’s attraction. September was too early even for _that_ , let alone for a _special love song ringtone_.

“I just want to point out,” Andrew says, each word precise, “that the first time he met me, we were in the same general vicinity for five non-consecutive minutes. The second time, he figured out how to tell whether or not I was on my meds, and also how to differentiate between me and Aaron, within an hour and a half, and we were dressed _exactly_ the same with _exactly_ the same hairstyle. Identical.”

“Only an hour,” Neil says scornfully. “I figured it out _well_ before I told you.”

Andrew looks at him. “And how did you accomplish this monumental task?”

“Aaron picks me up at the airport, smokes a cigarette, and puts the pack in his back pocket. We get to the apartment. I turn around for a few seconds, and he’s standing with you. And then Aaron turns to unlock the apartment, and there’s no pack of cigarettes in his back pocket. So either he’d gotten rid of them when I wasn’t looking, or he hadn’t picked me up at the airport. I asked him for clarification about the fights that had happened over the spring semester, and he answered—he should’ve known we hadn’t talked about that on the ride over, but he didn’t say a word. So he hadn’t picked me up. You had. And you weren’t able to drive or stop smiling when you were medicated, but you’d driven, and you hadn’t been smiling. So you were off your meds.”

“See?” Andrew says. “He’s smart, I swear he’s smart.”

“Why were you staring at his butt?” Paige asks.

“I wasn’t. I was noticing details.”

She stares at him.

“In my childhood, noticing details was the difference between getting a scar and getting killed.”

“No, I see that,” Paige says, “for sure. Anyway, when did you figure out he liked you?”

“March,” Neil says. “The day we played the Bearcats. For the second time,” he specifies, for the sake of the Foxes. Although he's not sure why he's bothering. 

“ _Wait_ ,” Matt says, eyes wide, “did you—did you _not know—_ hang on. Hang on. You didn’t figure it out until _after we did_?”

“What?”

“We figured it out in March, too—”

“Don’t you _we_ this,” Allison says scornfully. “ _I_ figured it out, and then _told_ you when the FBI brought Neil back and Andrew nearly killed them.”

“What?” Paige asks.

“Okay,” Allison says, settling in for a good time, “so we played the—Bearcats? Who cares—and we _won_ , and they were _not_ happy, we were a little nothing team with the bare minimum number of players and we’d been the shittiest team in NCAA for years before that. So they weren’t happy, their fans weren’t happy. Meanwhile, apparently, that was the day Neil’s dad—oh, fuck, hang on—”

“We know,” Natalie says, “Sort of. He didn’t go into detail. But I’m happy to hear some details.”

“Great. So Neil’s dad got out of jail that day, and the feds had him released back into Baltimore, and—” She hesitates, looking at Andrew.

Andrew looks grim.

Neil takes his hand.

"You can tell this part, if you want," Allison says, releasing the story to his control.

“They took him,” Andrew says. “Two of Nathan’s men dressed up as security guards, and they were walking us out to the bus, and then they started a riot, and when it calmed down, they’d taken Neil. We found his stuff five gates down.”

His hand is tight in Neil’s, his knuckles white.

“Kevin knew the truth, I knew he did, and I—” he waves a hand, giving in, handing control of the story back to Allison, and Neil rubs his thumb against Andrew’s in silent reassurance.

“He choked me,” Kevin says, stealing the story before Allison can pick it up, faint echoes of the shock he’d felt audible in his voice. “I told them who he was. Who was really after him. Neil had told Andrew, months before that, that his dad was a gopher for the Moriyamas who got above himself. Andrew figured out when Neil disappeared that that was a lie—the Moriyamas wouldn’t have needed to stage a riot. And he knew I knew the truth. So he choked me. And then he went—I mean, he went crazy. We thought Neil was dead for a solid few hours, and I'll be honest, I kind of thought Andrew was going to jump off a roof. And then we found out Neil was alive, and we had to go to Baltimore to talk to the FBI—not that it went very well; none of us told them anything useful—but Andrew went batshit. Refused to talk at all, and attacked an FBI agent, and they had to handcuff him to Wymack just to keep him from doing more damage. Well, they didn’t _have_ to. But Wymack convinced them it was a better solution than hauling him away.”

“And then,” Allison says, picking it up with a glance at Kevin that says that _this_ part is hers, “they tell us that Neil is coming, but we have to move the bus. And _we_ means _Wymack_.”

“It was tough,” Wymack chips in, “driving the bus while handcuffed to a raging psychopath.”

“And then, before they can get back,” Allison continues, “a bunch of agents turn up, and tell us we have _20 minutes_ to talk to Neil and can only approach him _one at a time_ , which, come on, and Neil walks in all bandaged up, looking just _so_ pathetic—not pathetic like, haha, look at that idiot, but pathetic like, oh my god, there’s a kid who needs some hot chocolate and a hug—and he’s staring at us, y’know, taking in the results of the riot, and we’re staring at him and his fucked-up shit, and then he goes white and starts asking where Andrew is, and then Andrew slams bodily into the door—like, just open it, it’ll be faster—gets the thing open, smashes past an FBI agent, and then one of them starts going for a gun, and Neil tried to be a hero and grab him, but his hands were all fucked up? Andrew went fucking rabid, Abby tried to go over there to look at Neil’s shit and Andrew threatened to murder her. And also threatened to murder Neil. Would _not_ look away from him. Absolute fucking wreck. I really thought he _was_ going to murder an FBI agent, it was that bad,” she says, examining her nails. “And then I was like, cool, you guys just made me _several_ hundred bucks, go talk to the feds so you can come back and tell me when you hooked up. And, first of all, they _never did_ , the jackasses. Second of all, there was _much_ more shock going around than there should have been. I mean. _That_ little show from Andrew, and Aaron and Nicky were still surprised? Mm mm. It was love.”

“I mean,” Matt says, “I’d like to point out that Neil did just say that even _he_ hadn’t figured it out, so I think you should cut us a little slack.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Neil says.

He finds himself on the receiving end of several disbelieving looks.

“What, because he got violent? I mean, after the Kathy Ferdinand show, he punched through a window, and that was _while_ medicated. And he wasn’t in love with Kevin, was he? He punched Matt for punching Kevin, and nearly broke Allison’s arm for slapping Aaron, and you guys were his teammates. He cared much less about a fed than about his own teammates. Him nearly killing one wasn’t proof of his love for me, it was proof that he'd promised to protect me, and that the FBI agents were standing in the way of that."

"Didn't you say you'd released Andrew from that promise of protection _before_ you got kidnapped?" Paige asks. "Or am I confusing the timeline?"

"No, he had," Neil says, impressed by her powers of recall. "But Andrew has a protective streak wider than this country."

“Andrew,” Paige says, face breaking under a wave of delight pouring onto it from some invisible source, “didn’t you just say he was _smart_?”

Neil looks at Andrew, and he’s got one hand over his eyes.

“He's an idiot. An absolute idiot. Jesus. He does one smart thing, and I think he's got brains and I marry him, and then seven years later he goes and reminds me he doesn't have any.”

“What?” Neil asks, lost. 

Dan steeples her fingers together. “Neil, forget about the feds. Forget about March. Andrew made sure that you both had matching ringtones, and the ringtone was a song about a lost love.”

“It—” Neil looks at Andrew, and Andrew looks like he’s in physical pain. “Are you all right? I mean, no, even when we _started_ sort-of-not-dating it was a fling for like, _weeks_ before he agreed it might be something more, and even then it was just—I mean, when he gave up Aaron for me, _that_ was something, but he’d been saying for _weeks_ that—”

“Remember how he threatened to kill me because I tried to take away your out-of-state vacation?” Kevin asks.

“What?” Paige asks.

“Neil wanted to go on vacation,” Kevin says. “Over spring break. Which was _ridiculous_ , given we still had to face the Ravens and were nowhere near good enough—”

“We _beat them,_ dickface,” Allison says. "Sorry, Thea."

Kevin waves her off. Thea snorts. “And it would’ve meant _me_ leaving the court, because Andrew wasn’t going to leave me behind, and there wasn’t a chance in hell of me leaving, so I told Neil no, and then suddenly, Andrew’s threatening to chop off my genitals with a butter knife.”

Andrew shrugs. “Neil wanted to go on a vacation.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “That was, like, two weeks before I figured it out anyway.”

“No, hang on, you _had_ to know,” Wymack says, looking at Neil. “In _November_ you stuck his hand up your shirt.”

“Well, yeah, but you misunderstood that,” Neil says. “You _ended_ _up_ being right, but at the time—I was trying to prove that he could trust me with Kevin, that I wouldn’t run away at the first sign of trouble. I wasn’t going to tell him the whole damn story, and I wasn’t going to take my shirt off with 80 people there, but letting him feel the scars worked just as well.”

“Neil,” Renee says, lifting her head from the table, “Andrew doesn’t even _shake hands_ with most people.”

“He didn’t seem to have any problem touching _me_ ,” Neil retorts. “He’d just about strangled me a day before that, and also a week-ish before that—"

Allison bangs her head into the table.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew is staring at the ceiling.

“Oh, jesus,” Neil says. “They’re _right_?”

Natalie laughs.

Some other time. Some other time, he’ll appreciate that his kid knows how to laugh. Right now, he’s trying desperately to figure out what everyone else, apparently, knows. “No. Wait. Hang on. I see November,” Neil says, thinking back to Andrew calling him a pipe dream. Neil tries to remember the scene differently: Not Andrew annoyed about a crush, but acknowledging, without the haze of the drugs, that it might be something more, something that had started back when he'd been medicated. “But _when_ —”

“Probably,” Paige says, leaning across the table, “before the _matching love song ringtones_.”

“Okay, but look, I didn’t know, how was I supposed to know? I mean, this is all well and good, but the question was _how did I figure it out_ , and hindsight is 20/20 but at the _time_ I didn’t know, and how was I supposed to know?”

“You’re the worst,” Andrew says.

“Really, though, it’s not like you said anything!” Neil protests. “I don’t—I don’t remember what I did, but I told you it would make you hate me, and you said you already did, and wouldn’t notice. What was I supposed to think?”

“Didn’t you just tell us _yesterday_ that he gave up drugs because you asked?” Paige says.

“That was as part of a deal,” Neil says. “He said—what—he basically told me I should ask him to give up cracker dust.”

“Stop,” Andrew says, “you are _criminally_ incorrect. What you said was: Make a new deal with me. And I asked what you would take for it. And you asked what I would give you. And I told you not to ask questions you already knew the answer to. Five minutes later, you told me to stop taking cracker dust.”

“Which was the only think you’d have been willing to give me,” Neil completes. “See?”

“Yeah,” Paige says. “He was willing to give you _anything you wanted_. I see that.”

“That’s not—what he said. What?”

“How else could you interpret that!”

Neil waves his hands. “As—as me already knowing what he’d be willing to give!”

“Yeah,” Natalie says. “ _Everything_.”

“That’s not how real life happens,” Neil says. He looks at Andrew. Andrew isn’t looking at him. “Fuck, Drew, what the fuck?”

“You were really so fucking oblivious it was actively painful.”

“That was—I mean, how was I supposed to—"

“Remember when you got back from Evermore?” Wymack asks. “And we were watching them practice, and Andrew kept hitting the ball directly at Dan and Kevin?”

“Yeah.”

“And I sent you onto the court to ask him to stop? And he told me to—what was it— _stop getting above my paygrade_? You really were so goddamn confused. You didn’t get it at all.”

“I didn’t pledge my eternal love, I asked him to stop and he did.”

“I had to go shopping with him,” Kevin says, “every single time he decided you needed a new outfit for Eden’s. Which, can I say, I saw in a _totally different light_ once you guys started dating. But—but—and this is _crucial_ —I figured it out pretty much _when_ he started letting you drive me, in his _Maserati_ , to the court, _without him,_ even though I was _still in danger_. Also, did you think you were being _subtle_ when I’d get back to the dorm and Andrew wasn’t even there? And came back thirty minutes with his hair all fucked up? You two were not _nearly_ as slick as you thought you were. Also, in January? At Eden’s? When you came back to the table all upset and then you upset Andrew and then you two chatted in German for a while, Andrew vanished, and you spent the rest of the night staring at the wall? _I_ knew something was up, why didn’t _you_?”

“Good for you,” Neil retorts. “I figured out that something was up that night, too, asshole.”

“When did _you_ start crushing on him?” Paige asks.

“When—” And then Neil stops.

The obvious answer is: When Andrew told Neil he liked him. Neil had immediately seen Andrew in a different light, immediately been incapable of keeping his eyes off Andrew. Of course. That was the answer.

Neil thinks of every single time he’d trusted or relied on Andrew. For the first time in years, he remembers Marisa—the cheerleader he’d gotten stuck with, when Andrew was in Easthaven, who had called Neil _interesting_ , and how all Neil had been able to think was that Andrew also thought Neil was interesting. He remembers Andrew coming back from Easthaven, pushing up against him, and how _relieved_ Neil had been, not just because a friend had come home, but because Andrew was so sturdy, strong enough to hold Neil up in spite of all Neil’s baggage, and he remembers trusting Andrew, violent and knife-happy Andrew, down to the soul of his being, and going to Evermore at the barest mention of Andrew. Well, but he’d have done that for anyone, right? He likes to think he would have. He likes to think that if Dan or Matt were in danger, Neil would have gone, just the same. And probably, he would have. He would have. He wouldn’t have risked them suffering just so that he could be spared a little while longer; he'd grown a stunted conscience by then. But he’d probably have put up more of a fight, really—hunted for some other solution. Wouldn’t have jumped headfirst into it. Neil puts his face in his hands.

“You _didn’t know_?” Allison shrieks. “How long, Neil? _How long_ did you _not_ know about _your own crush_?”

“I didn’t come here to get interrogated,” Neil tells the palms of his hands.

Paige and Natalie are laughing, absolutely dying. Neil has never blushed in his life. He might be blushing now.

“How _long_?” Dan asks.

“I don’t know!” Neil says. “A couple months?” He remembers Nicky sitting him down in the library, insisting that Erik was right for Nicky because Erik was the only person who had ever been able to hold him up, and Neil remembers thinking about Andrew then, too. “Maybe longer?” Remembers asking Renee why she and Andrew weren’t dating, and then if Andrew was dating Kevin. Neil sits on the floor, knees pulled into his chest. “Jesus.”

“Hang on,” Natalie says, holding up a finger. “Neil, you said that the first time you met, Andrew took your breath away. I thought that meant you thought he was hot?”

Kevin laughs. “You said that?” He asks Neil.

“It’s not untrue,” Neil says defensively.

“You _lied_ to us?” Paige asks.

Neil rubs his eyes. “It was the last day of Millport’s season—my high school. We’d just lost the game. And my coach came out to talk to me, and he told me that someone was here to see me—absolutely terrifying, when you’re me. But it was Wymack. And, I told you, Wymack tried to sign me, and then he made the mistake of telling me that Kevin Day his-own-fucking-self wanted me on the team. I thought it was because Kevin had recognized me, which would be—it would mean death, essentially. So I booked it. Ran. Straight for the door. Except that Andrew was on meds, and thought it might be funny to stop me, and thought it might be _very_ funny to stop me with an exy racquet to the stomach. I dropped like a rock—couldn’t breathe at _all_. Took my breath away, see?”

He looks up, and there are very complicated expressions on the faces of his kids.

Andrew shrugs. “Lucky it was a lightweight, and not a heavy.”

“ _That_ probably would’ve broken my ribs,” Neil agrees.

“It _was_ kinda funny,” Kevin says. “In retrospect,” he adds hastily, as Paige turns a shocked stare on him. “Knowing that Neil’s fine.”

Paige rolls her eyes.

Neil grins.

And then she turns on him, and he drops his grin.

“Hang on, though. Because you said it was a fling for three weeks before you decided it was _something more_. Also, you told us that Andrew had to _agree_ that you were in a relationship. So what’s that about? What does that even mean?”

“This isn’t anything you want to know,” Neil protests. “Really, it isn’t.”

“No, no, because what was the timeline? Andrew told you he liked you, which was when you started having a _fling_? Or you were having a _fling_ for three weeks before he told you he liked you? What is a _fling_?”

Allison looks absolutely delighted. “Yeah, Neil. Do tell.”

Neil rubs his face and looks up at Andrew. “Yeah, Andrew, do tell.”

“Oh, no, they asked you, not me, Mr. Talkative,” Andrew says. “ _Fling_. That’s some bullshit.”

“You said—” Neil waves his hands.

“Sure,” Andrew says, “but I really thought you’d have figured out, a little later, that it was _bullshit_.”

“I wasn’t going to _ignore_ what you said,” Neil says, in Russian. This is getting private. “And what you said was that it was nothing.”

Andrew stares down at him. In Russian, he says, “I love you.”

“Oh, no,” Natalie breaks in. “You don’t get to argue in Russian. We want _explanations_.”

Neil keeps looking at Andrew.

Andrew waves a hand.

“Andrew informed me of his attraction to me, in January, and told me it was just physical. I mean, I pretty clearly remember thinking that that made it safe, because when I died at the end of the year it wouldn’t be anything more than an inconvenience to him.” Natalie makes a noise, but Neil isn’t pausing for questions. “And then we made out on the roof for, oh, a couple months? And then—okay. Drew—”

Andrew waves a hand again. Neil glances at him, and realizes that, maybe, discussing his own imminent demise wasn’t the best idea.

Well, it’s in the past now. Nothing to do but keep going so no one else notices. “So when Andrew first moved in with Aaron, their mom was beating Aaron. And Andrew promised to protect Aaron from any woman who raised a hand to him, as long as Aaron would stay with Andrew until they graduated. And then they ended up going to college together, and extended the agreement. As per the terms of the agreement, Aaron essentially couldn’t have a girlfriend. But by sophomore year, he and Katelyn were already essentially dating—they just couldn’t, well, _date_. Ever. Because Andrew is terrifying, when he wants to be, and Aaron didn’t want Katelyn to die.

“But it was fucking up our whole team. Aaron and Andrew wouldn’t talk to each other, because Aaron was pissed at Andrew for killing Tilda and for keeping Aaron away from Katelyn, and Andrew was pissed at Aaron for choosing Tilda over him, and we couldn’t work together, properly, as a team, until they solved that. So I…”

“Yes?” Andrew prompts as Neil trails into silence.

“Interfered,” Neil decides. “Bee told me she could fix them, if I could get them to go to therapy. So I asked Katelyn to talk to Aaron, and eventually, Aaron went to therapy with Andrew. A little while after that, Aaron used me as leverage: Technically, depending how you looked at it, I was a violation of their agreement. So Andrew let him go. For me. And then Aaron told me. And I asked Andrew, and he agreed that, yeah, maybe he had done that, and then, _after_ that, I said that we were a _thing_ and he didn’t argue.”

“Is that—a normal relationship progression?” Natalie asks.

“No,” Renee says. “But when it comes to the Foxes, _normal_ doesn’t mean much.”

“You’re not even Foxes anymore,” Natalie points out.

“No,” Renee says, “but we were all Foxes for a reason, and that reason is usually that our ‘normal’ is most people’s ‘dystopia.’ Most teams are teams because of geographic location. Our team was a team because Wymack decided we all deserved second, or third, or fourth, or eighteenth chances. You never really graduate from being a person who got another chance.”

The room falls silent in the face of Renee’s sincerity, until Kevin breaks it. “Well, you probably didn’t have a crush on Andrew as long as he had a crush on you. He put _effort_ into those outfits. Hey, Andrew, what the fuck, though? How long—no, though, we first brought him to Eden’s in—what—June?”

“Oh, are we interrogating Andrew now?” Allison asks, delighted. “Same question. When?”

Neil waits for silence that doesn’t come.

“When he accused me of lying to him by virtue of _not_ telling him I was sober. I told him to figure things out for himself, sometimes. He told me that he had.”

Neil frowns, and then he has to look up, distracted from his own agony. “Andrew, that was, like, day one.”

“Mm.”

“Andrew, you’ve had a crush on me almost since the day we _met_?” Neil asks. “That’s embarrassing.”

Andrew looks down at him. “We’re _married_.”

“Yeah, but I was nothing back then,” Neil says. “Neil Josten, quiet pushover.”

“Right,” Andrew says, expressionless.

“Didn’t you break into his room a month after that?” Kevin asks Andrew.

Natalie makes a noise.

“Forget that,” Wymack says, breaking in. “You dragged him to Eden’s, drugged him, got him all good and fucked up, and then came back and argued a bunch in German, _while_ you had a—crush on him? He was so unwilling to be in the same space as you after that that he _hitchhiked back_.”

Paige makes a noise.

“Well, I wasn’t _stupid_ ,” Andrew says. “I thought he was a threat. I wasn’t wrong, actually, although I _was_ wrong about him being a threat to Kevin, specifically. Was I supposed to just let him stand there, being a pathological liar with hundreds of thousands of dollars and color contacts and lists of nonsense numbers, just because he was pretty?”

“Do I get to ask a question?” Paige asks.

“Sure,” Renee says.

Paige looks at Wymack. “Did you just say Andrew drugged Neil?”

Wymack freezes.

Abby laughs.

“I might have,” Wymack says guardedly.

“Like, how Andrew was drugged because he was prescribed those drugs?”

“Now,” Wymack says, “I don’t _actually_ know what happened. That _is_ just a conclusion I jumped to. It might be completely wrong.”

Paige and Natalie look at Neil.

“What?” Neil asks. This isn’t particularly a conversation he wants to have. It might not be a very good lesson to teach them—that if a man hits them in the stomach nearly hard enough to break a rib and then spikes their drink, they should marry him.

“ _Did_ he drug you?” Paige asks. 

Neil’s courage fails him, and he looks at Andrew. “Yeah, Andrew. Did you drug me?”

Andrew looks at him. “We should get you to the doctor. Get you checked out for Pitcher’s Elbow.”

Neil frowns. “What? Why?”

“Because of how hard you just threw me under the bus.”

Neil cackles, head tilting back. He’s not the only one who laughs, and certainly not the only one surprised into laughter, but it’s him that Andrew is looking at when Neil looks back at him. Neil doesn’t miss the look in Andrew’s eyes—pride? Love? Satisfaction? Neil grins at him, gooey.

“Joking won’t save you,” Natalie says. “We demand answers! We’ll riot,” she threatens. “We’ll unionize and then we’ll riot.”

Andrew looks her dead in the eye. “I was protecting Kevin from a man with enough money and power to _murder_ people without bringing down so much as an ounce of suspicion on his head. Meanwhile, along comes Neil Josten, who had barely played exy for a year but was _so_ good Kevin insisted he’d be Court? I broke into his room while he was out, and found out that he had $250,000 cash on him, along with a hard-on for all things Kevin and Riko—”

“Gross,” Natalie says.

“And _nothing_ about him looked like money, and in high school he’d been sleeping in the school gym. And yet. Vast amounts of money. And he had color contacts and hair dye, and his clothes were so baggy you could barely tell he had a body under there—he was pretty clearly disguising himself. So we—Nicky, Aaron, Kevin, and myself—took him to our favorite restaurant, where we picked up our drug of choice, and then took him to our favorite bar, where we knew the bartenders, and spiked his drink. I tasked Nicky with getting him drunk while I watched Kevin drink himself silly, found Neil when he was halfway gone and walked away to let him get himself thoroughly fucked up, and twenty minutes later, I went hunting for a boy who should’ve been ready to spill every secret he’d ever had, and found out that he’d paid a busboy $100 to knock him out.”

“Sometimes,” Matt says, “I remember why no one liked you.”

Andrew shrugs. “I wasn’t looking for your friendship.”

“Okay,” Paige says, “Neil, I know you got all annoyed because we thought he didn’t love you, but—you _heard_ what he just said, right? Like, you _remember_ him spiking your drink, right? That’s not—that’s not good marriage material.”

“Eh,” Neil says, “He got better.”

“I mean, not too fast,” Dan says. “Right after that, he and his group came back and Andrew tried to break into Neil and Matt’s room—the only reason he didn’t manage it is because Neil had called ahead of time to ask Matt to keep him out. Neil, of course, hitchhiked most of the way back, and then walked to Wymack’s.”

"Okay, hang on," Natalie interrupts. "You keep saying _broke into his room_?" 

“Pick the lock,” Andrew clarifies.

“You can pick locks?” Natalie says, sitting up straighter.

“So can Neil,” Andrew says.

Paige and Natalie look at each other, and then back at Andrew. “You went to all the trouble of getting us fancy locks on our bedroom doors, and you can _pick them_?”

Andrew goes still, possibly realizing that he’s talked himself into a corner. “We can get you bolts, too, if you’d like. Or those things that you can put on the doorknob, to prevent someone from opening the door.”

“What—we’re getting off-topic,” Paige declares. “ _Why_?”

There’s silence for a second—Neil, for one, can’t figure out what she’s asking.

“He did it to protect Kevin,” Renee says. “And that, I think—wanting to protect someone, at the cost of just about anything else—is something we can all understand.”

“But like—why would you marry someone who did that to you? _How_ could you marry him?”

Neil stares at her. “I thought we covered this?”

“No, no, we definitely didn’t,” Natalie says, upset. He’s upsetting them. “You didn’t tell us what he’d done!”

“I mean, Andrew’s standing right here, first of all,” Neil says. “No need to talk about him like he’s not here. Second of all, I didn’t think it was particularly relevant. No,” he says as Paige and Natalie both open their mouths, “I really don’t think it is. I hitchhiked back, and Wymack dragged Andrew over to the apartment, and I gave him half a truth about who I was and more than I’d ever told anyone else and he told me that it was fine— _that it was fine_. He knew more about me than anyone else I knew, except the people who were after me in the first place, and he didn’t tell me to get out, he told me to go back to the dorm with him. After that, whether or not I did cracker dust, whether or not I drank—all up to me. And then Kevin and I ended up on national TV with Riko, and I went ahead and pissed Riko off, and when we got backstage, Riko came after me, and instead of grabbing Kevin and heading out, Andrew stood between Riko and me. He asked me to stay. He promised to keep me safe, and gave me a key to Nicky’s house, and to his car, and trusted me with Kevin, and we’ve just listed most of what Andrew cared about.

“When Kevin found out who I was,” Neil says, gaze drifting to him, “he told me to run.”

Kevin winces. “It was the only shot you had,” he says softly. “And the only shot _we_ had, honestly.”

“Which is true, and fair enough, and honestly a better response than I really expected. But when Andrew found out, he fought the FBI for me. I need you to understand,” Neil says, letting his gaze find Natalie and Paige again, “that I didn’t sit there and go—yeah, actually, people who drug me are good people. Andrew did it to keep Kevin safe. And he wasn’t wrong, actually—things turned out all right, but really, I was probably a bigger threat to Kevin than Riko was. I could have—and did—bring the main family’s attention down on us. And—I wanted a chance. A chance to not be in danger. A chance to stop _running_ , for just a few months, just a few months where I didn’t have to look over my shoulder. And, shockingly, the kind of guy who’ll drug someone to protect people is pretty much exactly the person I’d believe when he told me he could watch my back. And he did.”

“Right up until you went to Evermore,” Andrew says, and the look he shoots at Neil says he’s still a little pissed about that.

Neil shrugs, unapologetic. “The point is this: I’m glad you realize that spiked drinks aren’t the basis of a good relationship. And I’m glad you recognize that someone who breaks into your room isn’t someone you should keep hanging out with. But taking actions out of their real-life context and fitting them to a context-free moral ruler is a good way to end up with bullshit things like giving a girl detention for punching a boy, regardless of the reason why she threw that punch,” Neil says, raising an eyebrow at Natalie, who goes red. “Now, if we’d like to stop shitting on Andrew, I’d appreciate it.”

“Also,” Dan says, frowning, “I mean—have you ever seen abusive relationships? They’re not—I mean, it’s not like people wear shirts saying _abused,_ but you can figure it out, if you look long enough. Someone’s scared. Someone’s quiet. Someone’s jumpy. Someone’s nervous. Neil—for upwards of a year, Neil barely laughed. He barely _smiled_. He’d do it if it was expected of him, and sometimes he even pulled it off, but he only ever really looked happy after we won a game—and even then, it was a toss-up. Andrew barely _spoke_. I mean, he talked when he was on his meds, but even then, barely to us, and when he came off his drugs? Nothing. This?” She points at Neil and Andrew, flings them a look, and looks back at Natalie and Paige. “This is a fucking _miracle_.”

“I’m just going to chip in here,” Wymack says.

“Mm,” Neil and Andrew say. 

“I know,” Wymack says, “I know. I started this. I’m sorry. But I’d just like to say that Neil was, from September onward, the only person who could reliably approach Andrew without getting hurt. Except me, but I was a special case. And Aaron, but Aaron never really tested that. Neil could walk up to Andrew while Andrew was in the middle of a goddamn murder spree, and Andrew would put away his knife. A couple times, that’s almost exactly what happened, actually.”

“Neil just said, like, two minutes ago that Andrew regularly tried to choke him,” Paige says, throwing Andrew a look that’s more nervous than it ought to be, in Neil’s opinion—she hadn’t blinked an eye when she’d found out that Andrew had killed Tilda. Or when she’d found out Neil had killed people. Or when she’d found out Andrew had threatened to kill Henry. Well, piling that all up, he supposes she has the right to be a little nervous. Maybe they’ve been talking too much about Andrew’s freshman year violence.

"Never laid a hand on me after he got off his meds," Neil says. "And even before that, it was usually because I was very purposefully provoking him."

“When Andrew got out of rehab,” Kevin says, “Neil had just gotten back from Evermore, and technically he’d broken his promise to Andrew—he said he’d keep me safe, while Andrew was away, and then he passed me off to Matt and handed himself over to fucking Riko. Andrew made Nicky give him a full recap of everything he’d missed, _except_ an explanation for the _variety_ of bruises and cuts Neil had gained, and then told Nicky to send Neil to meet him on the roof. Andrew vanished, Nicky left, and Nicky came back three minutes later to tell me that we were going to be down a teammate—Neil had gone to explain to Andrew that he’d abandoned me and gone to Evermore, and was bringing Andrew his knives, and we’d probably have to pick up the pieces. Neil came back without so much as a bruise. It was almost as shocking as the time Renee walked into Evermore and walked out with Jean.”

“Okay,” Paige says, and Neil can hear her gearing up for more, and he pulls in a breath and reins in his temper. “But—”

“Enough,” Neil says, standing. “I’m tired of this. I don’t understand why I have to haul up my whole past, Andrew’s whole past, every time anyone finds out I’m married to him, or anytime anyone finds out he’s not fucking Ghandi.”

“Ghandi was racist and sexist,” Renee says.

“We’re all happy he’s not Ghandi,” Neil concedes. “But that’s not the point. I wasn’t coerced into marrying him. I wasn’t brainwashed into thinking that, actually, being drugged is fun. He didn’t fucking Stockholm Syndrome me. I didn’t marry him because I was stupid, or because I didn’t understand what he’d done to me, or because I was being abused, or manipulated, or—fuck. And anyway, the thing with the racquet was 11 years ago. The rest of it was ten years ago, at least. After that, he calmed down a lot, so like, there’s no need to pick him apart about it.”

“Okay, but like, there’s a difference between smacking someone and _repeatedly trying to strangle them_ , and like, the fact that it was ten years ago doesn’t really matter when it was apparently such an _established_ behavioral pattern,” Natalie insists. 

Neil sees red, takes a deep breath, and desperately tries to tone it down. Pink. Maybe he can see pink. They’re kids. Andrew is an adult. Andrew doesn’t need Neil to defend him. “Again, context,” he says, flatly, reigning it all in, drawing on all of his years spent shoving his temper down. “If we’re looking at behavioral patterns, every one of the Foxes had some shitty ones, and not a one of us had good habits. As it turns out, sometimes you behave a certain way repeatedly because of your situation, and changing that situation can help you change your behavior. Not to mention, in context, violence was the only thing that had ever served Andrew. It kept his cousin safe, it kept his brother safe, and it kept Kevin safe. And that was pretty much universally what he used it for—to keep other people safe. Hitting me with a racquet didn’t serve that purpose, no, but he was very heavily drugged, and it served the purpose of keeping me there so Wymack could talk to me. He hadn’t gone through the hell of flying all the way to Arizona just so I could run away.

“Also, I’ll be honest, it’s really weird that you’re sitting here talking about me like I was a—an innocent boy being taken advantage of, or some shit. I spent so long lying that I literally didn’t know how to tell the truth. I didn’t give half a shit about other human beings—I put every single person on our team in danger so that I could play a sport, and it didn’t bug me any. For the first few months I was a Fox, I’d have sold everyone in this room to Satan for a shot at safety. I didn’t know who was after me or why for a while, but I _did_ know that my homicidal father and his homicidal friends were on my trail, and when Andrew offered to stand in their way, I accepted, and believe me, I didn’t have a second thought for his safety—I thought that if they came looking for me, they’d kill him, and all that bothered me about _that_ was that I’d have lost my shot at running away. And then I went and pissed off Riko, and he killed Allison’s boyfriend in retaliation—sorry, Al—and, again, can I tell you? I didn’t care! I was worried she’d be angry at me and that would be uncomfortable, but it took me a couple months before I felt much guilt about it.

“And, on _top_ of that,” he says loudly, overriding the five people who open their mouths, clasping his hands behind his back and leaning against the counter, doing his level best to keep his voice flat, to keep it calm. He’s never been able to keep his goddamn mouth shut, but he shouldn’t scare them, not if he can help it. “We should really talk about the fact that I was _worse_ than Andrew. Let’s all remember, please, that the original group of Monsters was three-quarters Andrew-and-family. He signed with Wymack in large part because Wymack would sign Aaron and Nicky too. He gave a shit, and he did his level best to protect all of them, he was ready and willing to go to jail to protect Nicky, and meanwhile, I wasn’t willing to so much as shut my mouth for the sake of keeping us all safe. 

“ _And_ ,” Neil continues, becoming slowly aware of the fact that maybe he’s making a scene, “why don’t I get any say in this? Doesn’t it matter that, after eight months, I felt safer around Andrew than I’d ever felt around anyone else? Doesn’t it matter that, except for the racquet thing, Andrew has never so much as bruised me? Doesn’t it matter that if I told him to move out and never talk to me again, he would? Fuck, doesn’t it matter that in the two weeks you’ve known him he’s done nothing but try to keep you safe and fed? I see why you’re upset,” Neil lies, “but bringing up shit Andrew did ten years ago when he was drugged out of his mind and trying to shove it down his throat isn’t a good look. If you’d like to be angry at someone for being a piece of shit ten years ago, you should be aiming that at the one of us who quite literally had to be taught how to care about other people. Hey, Kevin, remember when I broke into your room and called you a cripple? Anyone remember when I met up with Katelyn and told her to ruin her and Aaron’s relationship for the sake of our team unity so we had a shot at championships, and then had a brawl with Aaron in the hallway? Or are we just having fun dragging up Andrew’s bullshit?”

“Hey, Neil?” Dan says.

“What?”

“Calm down, because you’re getting loud. I get it,” she says, holding up a finger, “we went where we shouldn’t have gone, and you’re as protective of Andrew as he is of you, but Neil, _they’re_ kids and _we_ already know and love you, and there’s no call for this.”

Neil knows she’s right. He does, really, he does, and in the past few years he’s worked very hard to cultivate emotions other than anger and fear, and he’s worked so hard to be able to control his anger, but if he thinks about it for half a second he’ll be able to see Andrew, helpless and hopeless and trying desperately to convince Neil to let him go murder a rapist to protect a bunch of theoretical children and help Natalie and Paige sleep better at night, but he can’t _explain_ that, he can’t tell them that, he won’t air more of Andrew’s dirty laundry, and—

And just like that, his anger fails him, and all he’s got is shame. They don’t know why he’s so angry.

“It’s not their fault we decided to get nostalgic at Andrew’s expense,” Dan says, “and it’s not their fault they don’t know how much work Andrew put in to become the kind of guy we invite to group dinner.”

“No,” Neil says. “No, it’s not. Natalie, Paige, I’m sorry. Getting angry and ranting at you in public because I didn’t like what you were saying isn’t a good look. I shouldn’t have done it, and I won’t do it again.” He presses back into the counter.

Paige and Natalie stare at him blankly. Neil’s heart kicks into overdrive—he’s fucked up. He’s scared them. He’s made them feel unsafe. He’s—

And then they simultaneously make a face at him.

“Is this more of your sappy shit?” Natalie asks. “Jesus. I punch a kid at school—nothing. I ask Andrew about his drug addictions—nothing. I yell and whine and argue—nothing. I suggest that Andrew’s mean—fucking ten-minute rant, huh.”

“I know how to solve this,” Paige announces, “and how you can apologize. I want the presumably gross, presumably disgusting story of how you two violent, lying, abusive—"

“Andrew doesn’t lie,” Neil says.

“Shut up—rude, emotionless, piece-of-shit fuckers learned how to be, like, in a relationship.”

“ _No_ ,” Natalie says.

“I want _sappy stories_ ,” Paige says, holding her hands in the air like she’s calling down demons and gods.

“ _Why_?” Natalie asks.

“I’ve thought about it and I’m back to being pro-Andrew and I want to be proven right, so you’re all going to tell me sappy stories about the two of them.”

“ _God_ , Gigi, _why_?” Natalie asks, and Neil blinks—a nickname for Paige. He’s never heard Natalie call her that.

Paige places a fist gently on the table. “He found you with a knife and gave you a different, better knife, and fuck it, I’m pro-Andrew. They’re going to prove to you that I am right.”

“You’re the worst,” Natalie complains, but even as she sits back in her chair, the Foxes sit up, grinning.

“One time,” Matt says, “I asked Andrew why he liked Neil. Andrew said that Neil had cute bedhead.” Natalie makes a prolonged noise of disgust, which Matt ignores. “And _then_ , a week later, I asked Neil why he liked Andrew, and he said—fuckin guess— _Andrew had cute bedhead_. To this day they maintain it was not planned.”

"It was not," Neil confirms.

“Neil has this special nickname for Andrew,” Dan says, “and one time I tried using it, Andrew literally pulled a knife on me, Neil turned him away and then gave me a look that cut me to the bone. Neil’s the only one allowed to call him by any nickname, at all.”

“What nickname?” Paige asks.

“Drew,” Neil says.

“That’s barely a nickname. Why is Neil the only one allowed to call you that?”

“It’s not my name,” Andrew says.

“Why does Neil get to call you something that isn’t your name?”

“Because he’s Neil.”

“Answers, Andrew!”

“Not about this.”

Paige opens her mouth, and then with a clear and herculean effort, turns it on Matt. “More.”

“Okay, so for this you need to know something about Neil, which is that he’s a light sleeper,” Matt says, clearly in his element.

“He’s literally not,” Natalie says. “Once I walked into the living room and he was napping and I cleared my throat _twice_ before he even opened his eyes.”

“Ah,” Matt says, “and was Andrew there?”

“Lying on top of him like a cat,” Natalie says.

Matt nods knowingly. “See, for months, Neil slept on his side, facing the wall—”

“Couldn’t risk you seeing me without my contacts in,” Neil says.

“Shut up—and that’s just how he’d sleep. Wouldn’t move. _Unless_ anyone made any noise at all, in which case he’d be up. And, like, if you did something sudden—not an alarm clock, he got used to those—but, like, if you banged the door, he’d grab under his pillow. Found out later he was looking for a gun, so probably if he’d actually had one he’d have shot me eighty times before he moved in with Andrew. But, anyway, the boy was a light sleeper—the night after we got him back from the FBI was an exception, he slept like a baby, but that was the only time I ever saw him actually _relax_ while sleeping. _Unless_ he was sleeping on Andrew. Kevin and I went and got drunk one night and when we got back, we were stumbling around like elephants, laughing and being college-kid-stupid, and then walked into the actual bedroom part of the dorm and found Andrew glaring daggers at us and Neil drooling on his shoulder. Just, absolutely, the _cutest_ thing I’ve ever seen, if I wasn’t absolutely _certain_ Andrew would’ve murdered me I’d have taken a picture.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Neil breathes in Andrew’s direction. "I'd have to kill Matt myself if he'd circulated a picture of me drooling."

“Andrew used to sit in the library with Neil while he studied,” Allison volunteers. “Andrew, generally, claimed he was allergic to the library, but when Neil needed to buckle down for a test or whatever, Andrew was there. Never actually studied, of course, but he’d sit there. My last year of school was great, cause I’d just study with Neil. Every 20 minutes Andrew would shove a bottle of water in Neil’s direction, and I’d be like, oh yeah, gotta stay hydrated. And every few hours Andrew would bring Neil coffee, and I’d be like, oh hey, my coffee cup is empty. I ended up being in a math class with Neil and it was great, Neil would bully Andrew into quizzing us. Andrew always fucking did it.”

“Well, yeah,” Wymack snarks. “Neil asked, didn’t he?”

“Oh yeah,” the Foxes say, in varying degrees of synchronicity. “Neil asked.”

“Does that mean something gross?” Paige asks.

“No, it means that there would be something we all knew Andrew didn’t really feel like doing,” Dan says, “and instead of asking Andrew, we’d go ask Neil, and five minutes later Neil would be like _Andrew says yes_. Like—Eden’s. The bar they like. Andrew invited people along if he thought they were worth knowing, and then never invited them again, and that was that, it was a thing his group did,” she says, neatly excising half the truth. “And then, one day, Neil just comes wandering in, and was like, _oh, guys, you can come to Eden’s for Halloween, Andrew invited you_ , which was the most ridiculous thing—”

“And it had _very_ little to do with Andrew,” Kevin says. “Neil was like _we should invite the upperclassmen to Eden’s for Halloween_ , and Andrew was like _eh_ , and Neil was like _it’ll be good for the team_ , and Andrew was like, _ohhh-kayyyy_. And that goes for literally _anything_. The only trick was that if Andrew had already said no, he probably wouldn’t change his mind, so you really had to go to Neil _first_.”

“Giving away all my secrets,” Andrew says.

Kevin mimes zipping his mouth shut.

And then he sits up again. In French, he asks Neil, “do the kids know Andrew’s afraid of heights?”

“I don’t think so,” Neil says. And then he switches to Russian. “Do you care if the kids know you’re afraid of heights?”

“Nah.”

Neil waves a hand at Kevin.

“Andrew’s afraid of heights, and hates flying, so every time we have to fly to a game, Neil sits there and reads him Shakespeare in Russian until his voice gives out. And then he takes a nap, on a plane full of people, which he can do because Andrew’s there.” Kevin raises his hands like he’s scored a goal.

“Okay, this is all really cute, but none of you have told me the story of how the two big, tough, scary, stab-happy, emotionless, evil monsters learned how to waltz, and I feel like that should’ve been the first thing you guys told us, because that’s really just quintessential sap, right? Like, when people talk about how their parents met, it’s all about like, oh yeah, we used to go dancing, and oh hey someone put on music so we’ll relive our glory days and—why is everyone staring at me?”

“You’re talking about Andrew and Neil, right?” Renee asks.

Kevin’s head swivels to stare at Neil. “Fucker. That’s where all that new footwork comes from. When did you learn how to _waltz_?”

“ _You two waltz_?” Allison shrieks. She’s immediately shushed by three different people, all staring at John, still sleeping on Wymack. “This changes _everything_ ,” she says softly. “Renee, we need to learn how to waltz, we can’t be less adorable than fucking _Neil and Andrew_.”

“We can learn how to waltz,” Renee agrees, grinning softly at Allison. And then she looks at Paige. “How did you find out they waltz?”

“You don’t know?” Paige asks. “We caught them—”

“ _I_ caught them,” Natalie corrects. “On their anniversary. Went downstairs for a glass of water. Andrew twirled Neil.”

Abby exchanges a glance with Wymack that is prouder, Neil thinks, than the situation properly calls for.

The Foxes face Neil.

Neil looks at the wall of puppy eyes he’s confronted with. “Hey, Andrew, why don’t you tell them how—”

“Oh no,” Andrew says, “I’m not the one who decided to run my mouth.”

Neil grins, and then he sighs. “We were driving home from work on our third anniversary,” Neil says, and every single person in the room—minus Andrew—sits up straight, polite, hands folded in laps, the very image of attentive listeners. “And Andrew said, _you know, I never learned how to waltz_ , and I asked him if he wanted to learn, and he said, and I quote: _Mm._ So I told him that if he wanted to learn he’d have to actually say so, and he did, and then we went home and watched Youtube videos until we figured it out, and now on our anniversary and every once in a while when we’re bored we waltz, and I’ve used the footwork to make our exy better.”

Paige gives Natalie the same look that Neil gives Andrew when he really, _really_ just wants some homemade bread, and Natalie performs a neat eye roll.

“Do I get to add one?" Andrew asks, immediately becoming the target of an overwhelming quantity of surprise.

"Of course," Allison says, delighted.

"I didn't have a favorite color until, oh, a year and a half after I met Neil—"

"Hang on," Neil says, shocked to the core of his being. "No, hang on, hang on—I asked you the most invasive, personal questions conceivable in my first year there, and you never once lied to me, but you're telling me that you lied about _your favorite color_? What was the _point_?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Andrew says patiently. "You asked, and I opened my mouth to tell you I didn't have one, and that's when I found out that my favorite color was the color of your eyes."

Neil sticks his face in his hands. He is absolutely, definitely blushing, he can feel how hot his face is. Everyone in the room is shrieking, as overjoyed by this revelation as Neil is. He leans sideways. Andrew doesn't budge as Neil falls into him.

It's apparently too much for John, who lets out a screech that could lift the roof and begins twisting around. Wymack fumbles him, managing to get him on the floor without any major mishap.

“We’re going to play with him,” Neil announces, relieved at the opportunity to get out of the room, knowing full well his face is still bright red. John obligingly takes off into the hallway, headed for the living room. “Kevin, did you want to help Nat and Paige with their history homework?” Neil asks, already halfway out of the room.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kevin calls after him.

Neil reaches back, and Andrew takes his hand, so quickly that Andrew must’ve been reaching forward. Neil clings to him as they head after John, whom they find sitting in a pile of Hot Wheels.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks at Neil.

They sigh, and sit down, and crash some cars into each other, much to John’s delight. He whoops and joins in.

Neil takes stock of his life.

In Russian, he says, “Thank god we didn’t get babies.”

Andrew nods.

“Although, apparently, teenagers are also a pain in the ass.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Andrew says, “but I think it’s just _people_ that are the problem.”

“So true, so true,” Neil says. He runs the car over John’s foot, and John informs them that he is delighted to be run over.

“I’m sorry.”

Neil stares sideways at Andrew. “For what?”

“You have to explain to people why you married me. I’m sorry for being that kind of person.”

Instant boiling rage. Neil dumps water on it. There’s no need to get angry. He regrets his outburst already, he doesn’t need to have a second one. Natalie and Paige are just kids. “If you weren’t who you were, I wouldn’t have married you. Don’t apologize for being the man I love. I didn’t _settle_ for you. I didn’t fall in love with you just because you were available, and happened to be interested. Don’t apologize because I love you.”

Andrew says nothing.

Neil scooches around to face him. “I’m serious. Have you ever asked me to apologize for not going to you day one and spilling my guts? No, you haven’t, and never will. And, somehow, the fact that I was lying about my whole life the entire time you were figuring out who I was, the fact that I endangered the whole team—and, once, fucked over every athlete in Fox Tower—just to get a chance at playing a sport never strikes anyone as being nearly as horrifying as you trying to protect Kevin.” Neil wraps his empty hand around the back of Andrew’s neck. “I love you, Andrew Minyard. As I have for a reasonably long—if unconfirmed—amount of time.”

“You’re an idiot,” Andrew says.

Neil shrugs. “Sure. But not about this.”

“None of that was anything you did. It was never your fault.”

Neil shrugs again. He recognizes that he didn’t personally kill Seth, or bring Drake to Columbia, or trash every car in the Fox Tower parking lot. He knows that. He knows he’s not to blame. He also knows that he hadn’t given the Foxes a say in whether or not they were okay with being endangered by his presence, and he certainly hadn’t given that choice to the rest of the athletes there.

Andrew studies his face. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, already leaning in.

Neil wants to take Andrew and go home and just go back to bed. Lock the door, get back under the covers, tell the sun to go back down, and stay there, wrapped in soft things until the edges disappear from their lives. Maybe let Andrew tell him again how pretty his eyes are.

Neil yelps as John rams a car into his thigh.

“Little monster,” he mutters, twisting, practically falling backwards into Andrew to put some space between himself and the armed toddler.

“Like father, like son,” Matt says cheerfully, appearing in the doorway.

Neil looks up at him. “That’s a fun little saying for us all to adopt.”

Matt shrugs as he comes to crouch next to them. “Certainly, I’m hoping to prove it wrong.”

Neil picks up a car and runs it into John’s car. John runs over Neil’s car. “Aren’t we all? Well, maybe not Kevin.”

“Yeah, how’d _he_ win the dad lottery?” Matt asks.

Andrew snorts.

“Hey, Andrew,” Matt says, and Neil tenses at the tone. “I just wanted to—I just wanted to say I’m sorry. And I’m glad you’re my friend now, even if you used to kinda suck.”

Neil looks over his shoulder.

Andrew cocks his head to one side.

Neil waits.

“I’m glad you’re my friend, now,” Andrew says, and Neil hopes Matt can’t hear how Andrew sounds slightly pained by the words. “Even though I haven’t made that easy.”

Neil catches the look of surprise on Matt’s face before he can smother it and turns away so they don’t see him grinning.

He plays cars with John for a minute.

“Didn’t expect that,” Matt says finally.

“I’m trying,” Andrew says drily.

“To what, shock people into having heart attacks?”

Andrew doesn’t bother answering that.

Matt stands. “I’ll send you videos of the Demon.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Neil glances back a minute later, ascertains that Matt’s gone, and grins at Andrew, who gives him a raised eyebrow in return.

Neil shrugs. He continues playing cars with John, who seems to be rapidly learning a harsh reality: There’s not a whole lot to do, when it comes to Hot Wheels.

“I’m never drinking beer again,” Andrew mutters, getting up. “I’ll be right back.” He heads into the hallway, and the bathroom door shuts behind him.

John stands, unsteady on his feet, and toddles insistently into the kitchen, Neil hot on his heels. And then, as Neil rounds the doorway into the kitchen, something slams into him, his whole body jerks, and there’s warm, sticky liquid down his shirt, and Neil didn’t see the threat, he’s inside, in a safe place, what happened?

“Shit,” says a voice, and it’s not mom's, but it should be, Neil is bleeding, heavily, he can feel it, his shirt sticking to his stomach, and he puts his hands to it and the cotton is sticky, wet, his heart is beating too fast, he needs to calm down, but his hands shift and he _feels_ it bloody against his skin, there’s something wrong,

“Neil?”

Something wrong, he looks up, “I think I’ve been shot,” he says, levelly, he can’t panic, he’s panicking, he can’t panic the person who’s supposed to bandage him up,

“You haven’t been shot.”

Neil trips backwards from the man standing up, old, too old, hands on his stomach, shakes his head, “I have been, I can—” he breathes in on the feeling of a bullet, of pain, tightness in his stomach pulling at his muscles, “I have been,” he says, insists,

“Neil,” says a woman, and Neil turns toward her, where’s mom,

“I don’t think it went all the way through,” he says, tells her, but she’s not mom, he shouldn’t be telling anyone this, he has to keep it a secret, has to lie, but mom isn’t here, he has to get help, someone has to believe him,

“You haven’t been shot,” she says, gentle, and it’s too much, he can _feel_ his stomach pulling, lifts his hands and can smell his own blood, pats at his shirt and feels it wet and sticky, why doesn’t she believe him, he needs her to believe him, if she doesn’t believe him she won’t take it out, he tugs his shirt off, “see, look,” but there’s,

There’s nothing there,

He puts a flat hand against his stomach, wet, sticky, but there’s nothing there, puts a hand on his chest, but there’s nothing there, a hand reaches towards him and he backs away—who is _that_ , why is there nothing there, why won’t anyone listen to him—and then Andrew is there. Andrew is there, and he puts Neil in a chair, he’s got a fistful of Neil’s hair, pushing, down, head between his legs, and that’s familiar, and Neil lets him do it.

“Stop,” Andrew says. “Stop, so you can tell me what’s wrong.”

“He says he’s been shot,” says someone, someone familiar. He knows that voice. It’s his brother. He doesn’t have a brother. Matt. “I—I was coming around the corner, I didn’t see him, and I slammed into him and dumped half my coke down his shirt, and then he started—doing this.”

Neil can feel it. Sticky, wet, coating his hands. Andrew’s hand in his hair, pulling, distracting. Neil’s breath is coming too fast. Coke. He feels it on his stomach. Sugar-sticky. Not blood-sticky. Just soda. But, somehow, Neil is still too far away, in an alley, turning to run, iron and salt sharp in his nose, shoes searching for friction on the ground, Mary aiming for the one Neil didn’t shoot, neither of them having been fast enough to prevent the hole in Neil’s shoulder, tugging at every muscle, a pulsing, shivering pain of such magnitude that Neil can’t comprehend it, even as he feels it.

“Neil,” Andrew says, blank and dead and flat and everything Andrew isn’t supposed to be anymore. But it’s because of Neil. It’s because he’s worried about Neil. He won’t be okay again until Neil is okay. Neil needs to be okay. Andrew’s hand in his hair, Andrew’s voice in his ears. Neil hauls in a breath, and then another one, here, at Abby’s house, and he’s not in Milan anymore. Not in Milan. Puts one sticky hand to the gunshot wound, long-healed, long-closed up. He’s 29 years old, not 14. Andrew’s husband, not Nathan’s son. One muscle at a time, Neil relaxes. He goes limp. Andrew holds him down another breath, and Neil puts a hand to his own throat; his pulse is slowing. The floor he’s staring at is Abby’s kitchen floor; she’d replaced the tiles four years ago, but he knows what it looks like.

Andrew pulls Neil up, and Neil goes, unresisting, and lets his eyes rest on Andrew’s face.

Andrew waits.

“You never forget what it feels like to get shot,” Neil says quietly. An explanation. It doesn’t matter that he’s being quiet. It’s dead silent in the house; even John isn’t making any noise. “It’s like—a full-body blow. And then—” he puts a hand over the puckered scar. “Warmth. Sticky, sticking to your shirt, all over your hands.” 

Andrew stares at him.

Neil jumps a little when someone shoves a blanket in his direction—Dan. Not looking at him. He looks around, and just about everyone has their eyes averted. They didn’t _leave_ —that would mean not hearing what Neil had to say. But they’re trying not to look. “I can’t,” Neil says. “I’m still covered in soda.” He holds up sticky hands.

Possibly, he should feel exposed, he realizes.

But it’s his family.

“Just take it,” Abby says. “I can wash it.”

Neil shakes his head, dislodging Andrew’s hand entirely, which is a shame. But Andrew takes the blanket and wraps it around Neil’s shoulders.

“Let’s go,” Andrew says. “Bathroom. Where’s your shirt?”

“I have it,” Matt says. “It’s covered in soda, though.”

“I can just wash it in the sink,” Neil suggests.

“I saw,” Matt says, and it takes Neil a minute to understand what he’s saying—he saw Neil’s scars. “I’m sorry. I just—wasn’t prepared for you to rip your shirt off.”

“Me too,” Dan says.

Kevin raises a finger in a silent admission of guilt.

“Oh,” Thea says. “Were we _not_ supposed to look at whatever the fuck is going on, on his body?”

“No,” Kevin says. “We’re not.”

“It’s—I mean, it’s not your fault,” Neil says.

“Wait,” Natalie interrupts, surprising Neil—she and Paige had blended so perfectly into the seats beside Kevin that Neil had forgotten about them. “You guys haven’t seen his shit?”

“I have,” Abby says. “David has. But I think we’re alone in that. Have you?”

“Yeah,” Natalie says. “He did a little show and tell.”

Allison makes a face. “I no longer feel guilty for looking at you while you were panicking and stripping, actually. What kind of show and tell was this?”

Neil shrugs, pulling at his skin, sticky-warm. “We were threatened. Natalie was worried. I informed her that there was no reason to be, and she requested proof, and threatened to get herself beat up if I could not provide said proof. So I showed her.”

“We’ve been friends for _ten years_ ,” Kevin says.

Neil shrugs again, skin still sticky, bad, his shoulder aching. “It took me a year to be okay with you guys, and then another couple years to be okay with _myself_ , and I wasn’t particularly in the habit of wandering around shirtless, so it’s not like it ever came up,” he says reasonably.

“Cool,” Matt says. “So what the fuck is up with all of that?” He asks, waving an empty glass in Neil’s direction.

“I was on the run,” Neil says, bleeding, not bleeding, not bleeding. “From a guy named _the Butcher_. What did you think he did, yodel at me anytime he caught up to me? Also, hey, Matt, why do you drink _warm soda_?”

“Don’t get him started,” Dan begs, but it’s too late.

“So when Coca Cola first started up,” Matt says, drawing himself up to his full height, “refrigeration wasn’t widespread, so coke was formulated to taste good _warm._ Pepsi, on the other hand, got started _later_ , and their soda is made to be drunk _cold_. So if you give me pepsi, I want it with ice, but if you give me coke, it should be warm.”

Neil blinks at him. The soda is drying on his skin, and it’s prickling at his brain, warning him that he’s bleeding, that if he doesn’t clean it it’ll get infected, that he needs to wash up so he can see the extent of the wound. His hand is itching for a shot glass, his throat waiting for the burn of cheap whiskey to dull the pain, pain that he knows isn’t there.

“See?” Matt says, looking at Dan. “Neil agrees.”

“I didn’t say that,” Neil says. Sticky, warm, bad.

“Are we going to ignore your scar collection?” Thea asks.

“Yes,” Kevin says.

“I mean,” Matt says, “how many—”

“Can I go wash the soda off first?” Neil asks.

“Oh, yeah,” Matt says. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Neil waves that off and heads into the bathroom. Andrew shuts and locks the door behind them. Silently, Andrew grabs the blanket and drops it on the ground. Grabs a towel, runs it under the sink, and turns to Neil.

“I can—”

Andrew turns blank eyes on Neil, and Neil shuts up and submits, holding sticky hands to the side while Andrew scrubs at his stomach.

Andrew allows Neil to wash his own hands.

Neil turns to face Andrew and waits.

Andrew studies Neil.

“I hate,” Andrew says in Russian, “that you know what it feels like to get shot.”

“It only happened once,” Neil says.

Andrew stands perfectly still.

Neil hates this.

“Once was enough, clearly,” Andrew says.

“I didn’t know,” Neil says. “I didn’t know that was a memory that could be triggered, short of by actually shooting me again.”

Andrew reaches out and puts a hand flat on Neil’s stomach.

Neil stops talking. He wonders, silently, if this is a consequence of taking back his childhood. He decides against floating that possibility just now. 

Quietly, in Russian, Andrew says: “Do you know how many nightmares I have about these? That they’ll open up, or that you’ll take off your shirt and have a new one, or that one of them goes deeper than you realized, or that one of them killed you. Why don’t you have scars on your back, Neil?”

“What?”

“You call yourself a runaway. You say you got these scars while you were on the run. But if someone shoots you while you’re running away, the scar should be on your back. If someone throws an axe or a knife at you while you’re running away, the scar should be on your back. But they’re all on your front. I hate you for that.”

Neil puts his hand over Andrew’s. “I survived.”

He waits.

He waits for a threat. For a buffer.

He can see a muscle in Andrew’s jaw twitching.

Andrew reaches up with his free hand and pulls Neil’s forehead down to Andrew’s.

Neil can feel the tension in Andrew’s hand, and hear the shakiness of his breath, and he hates it, and he’s so happy that Andrew is _feeling_ , and so flatly furious that what Andrew is feeling is _this_. He wants to wrap Andrew back up again, safe in his cocoon of knives and dead eyes, and wants to pull Andrew into his arms and never let go.

Andrew pulls away, picks the blanket up, and wraps it around Neil.

Neil stands there.

“You look fucking ridiculous,” Andrew says.

Neil grins. “Thanks.”

They look at the bathroom door.

What if they snuck out the bathroom window instead, and went home?

Neil sighs. “We should go back out.”

“You’re sure?” Andrew says. He glances at the window. “We could probably fit through the window.”

Neil laughs. “I was thinking the same thing, but we’d have to come back for the girls.”

“Give them a call, ask them to come out front.”

Neil grins, sighs, and gives up.

They’re his family.

He doesn’t want to face them, at all.

He feels—ashamed.

He couldn’t help it.

But that’s precisely what he’s ashamed of.

Andrew puts a finger under Neil’s chin, and pulls Neil’s face around so Andrew can look at him.

A tiny crease appears between Andrew’s eyebrows. “They love you,” he murmurs.

Neil knows this. But—still. But: To protest that he’s being a pain, causing them trouble, would be useless. His family grabbed hold of him after he’d caused vast amounts of suffering; there’s no reason for him to start worrying now.

He kisses the tip of Andrew’s nose, opens the door, and heads back out into the rest of the world, and is greeted by Matt—holding a refilled glass—who says, “nice cape.”

“Thanks.”

“I have a question,” Kevin says, “before these fucks get a shot. Earlier, you said _you were threatened_? By who?”

“I believe it’s _by whom_ ,” Andrew suggests.

Renee smiles. Neil meets her eyes—she’s relieved. An Andrew who’s speaking is better than a silent Andrew.

“Some guy,” Neil says, waving a hand. “Also, where’s my shirt?”

“In the laundry,” Abby says. I’m just running a quick load, it’ll be out in a bit. David could probably lend you a shirt until then?"

“Hang on,” Kevin says. “What do you mean, _some guy_?”

Neil shrugs.

“You didn’t tell them?” Paige asks.

“No,” Neil says. “It’s your business.”

“You can tell them,” Natalie says.

Paige nods.

“Natalie punched a kid,” Neil says. “And—”

“Oh, _hell_ yeah,” Allison says, leaning towards Natalie, one fist out. “You’re basically an honorary Fox.”

Natalie bumps Allison’s fist.

“Why?” Renee asks.

“Because he was touching my boob,” Paige says.

Silence.

“I can teach you how to box,” Matt says. Neil can hear the strain in his voice. “How hard did you hit him?”

“I broke his nose,” Natalie says.

“Good,” Dan says. “Good.”

Renee looks at Andrew.

“I punched his dad,” Andrew says. “And may have threatened to cut his throat.”

“Good,” Dan says. “Good.”

“And then we left,” Neil says, “and as we walked out, he got off the floor, and insisted that he would destroy us. He informed me that I was not exempt. He said he would break me.” Kevin snorts, loudly. Neil ignores him. “I informed him he would not, and we went home, and Natalie asked how I could be sure. Apparently, his son wanders around school telling everyone his dad _knows bad people_ , and Natalie was worried that those bad people might come after me, me being vastly less threatening in appearance than Andrew is. I told her she didn’t need to worry. She said she’d let the kid beat her up the next day, so that that family would feel better. I did what I had to do in order to reassure her that she did not have to.”

Dan turns fully in her chair to face Natalie and Paige. “It’s not your job to take the blows to protect adults. Never. Anyone who tells you otherwise deserves to get punched.”

Natalie and Paige just stare at her.

“Also,” Kevin says, “Neil and Andrew are really hard to break.”

“They’re like cashews,” Allison offers up. “You can try, but you’ll probably get murdered somewhere in the process.”

The twins do some more staring.

“Is it my turn now?” Matt asks, an edge and strain to his voice that tells Neil how furious Matt is. “How many of those did you get Freshman year?”

“Um.” Neil pulls the blanket aside and points them out. “These. There were more, but they didn’t go deep—they faded. And this one doubled up—he aimed for that one, I think. My memory wasn’t working too great.”

“ _He_?”

“Riko.” He glances up in time to see Kevin get up and walk away. Thea doesn’t follow him. Neil can read everything she’s feeling—horror, disbelief, retroactive fear, and he can see her remembering Jean, remembering Kevin. He refrains from rolling his eyes. The hero worship people hold for Riko, the unwillingness to believe, to accept, never fails to bother him. The world _knows_. Every exy fan knows Riko broke Kevin’s hand; every exy fan old enough remembers watching Riko try to murder Neil. They all remember the aftermath of Riko’s suicide—the disbanding of the Nest, the fact that the Ravens hadn’t even been allowed to play for a year, Edgar Allen footing the bill for massive amounts of therapy that may or may not have worked. And yet. And yet, it’s unthinkable for anyone to mention it. Riko had been royalty. He’d been the king. No one had thought to hate him until he was dead, and then they were nervous about speaking ill of the dead.

He’d expected better from Thea, though.

She looks away, and he realizes he’s been staring at her.

“It’s better than what Jean dealt with,” Neil says, ignoring the tension radiating off Andrew.

“ _Aimed_.” She glances at him. “Jean and Kevin were—” she grimaces. “Not _calculated_. But _aimed_? That’s different.”

“Not particularly,” Neil says. 

“What about your dad?” Allison asks. “Didn’t he leave any scars?

Neil shakes his head. “He, actually, didn’t get me. I mean, he got close, but I know how to run. I’d have been dead, not scarred.”

“Really? I thought that’s why you couldn’t play.”

“No, that was because of my hands and arms, and those were Lola’s fault.” He looks at his hands—they’d gotten off more lightly, in terms of scarring. Not because they’d been lightly touched, but because his hands are so calloused that the scars were harder to spot.

He looks up, and finds Matt staring at Andrew.

He glances at Andrew, who shrugs.

“How—” Matt gestures at Neil, but he’s looking at Andrew. “How do you handle _looking_ at him?”

“Thanks,” Neil says, pulling a chair out and sitting in it. Not at the table. That would mean leaving Andrew standing by the counter, alone, and that bothers Neil.

“No, not like that,” Matt says, rolling his eyes. “Just. How are you not absolutely furious, every time you see a scar? I’m so angry I could puke, and you’re—I mean, you’re _you_. How do you not go into a rage every time you see him?”

“He’s alive,” Andrew says. “He’s alive, and they’re dead.”

“That doesn’t help,” Matt says.

Neil can feel Andrew’s tension, and then he feels it slip away. “He’s alive,” Andrew repeats, “and they’re dead. Or, at least, imprisoned without parole.”

“Or taking 80% of his salary,” Allison says.

Renee slaps Allison’s hand, almost reflexively. Her movement gets everyone’s attention, which means that Neil is the only one who notices Andrew’s full-body flinch.

Allison looks at Renee like she’s never seen her before.

“ _Allie_ ,” Renee says, a reprimand.

“It’s _true_ ,” Allison says.

Neil wraps himself in the blanket again as an uncomfortable silence falls.

Neil should apologize to Natalie and Paige.

And then John runs, babbling, into the room, followed by Kevin, who looks pale. John pauses, just for a moment, and then aims himself, headfirst, at Neil, and runs.

Neil catches him, just barely, and lifts the kid into his lap. “Little monster,” he says, waving a finger in front of John’s face. “One day, I’m not going to catch you, and you’re going to headbutt my knees.”

“It’s too bad you guys aren’t having any kids,” Dan says wistfully. “They’d be _the_ little monsters. Children of the _original_ monster.”

A flash of annoyance; Neil lets it pass. “No, they’re calling themselves the Minyard-Josten Rivalry,” Neil says. He puts a hand in front of John’s eyes, and John freezes; takes his hand away, and John laughs so hard he almost falls out of Neil’s arms.

“You’re having kids?” Dan asks.

Neil glances up, and aims a finger at Natalie and Paige. And then he remembers that he and Andrew hadn’t told anyone. “We’re adopting them. We have to get their caseworker on the phone tomorrow, so she can tell us what to do.”

“Congratulations!” Renee says, and Neil looks up, but she’s beaming at Natalie and Paige. “Are you happy about it? I’m sure they asked you, right?”

Natalie and Paige nod. A ghost of a smile crosses Paige’s face.

“The Minyard-Josten Rivalry?” Matt says, grinning. “Who came up with that?”

Natalie raises a hand.

“Nice.”

“What’s wrong?” Neil asks.

Paige and Natalie discuss, all quick looks and eyebrow twitches, and Paige sighs. “You’re still okay with adopting us? Even though—like, the whole last hour?”

Neil catches John’s wrist before John can start pulling his hair. “Yeah? Should we not be? Are _you_ okay with us adopting you?”

“More to the point,” Andrew says, “Are you okay with _me_ adopting you?”

They look surprised to be asked.

The Foxes do their level best to fade into the background. Wymack puts his face in his hands.

“I mean, yeah,” Natalie says. “Yeah.”

Andrew shrugs. “I made you a promise. There’s no need to keep asking.”

Natalie looks around, shrewdly. “Has Andrew ever broken a promise?”

“Not unless Neil asked,” Renee says.

Natalie looks at Neil.

Neil cocks his head to one side. “I’m not asking him to break his promise to you. Also, I don’t think he would, regardless. I don’t just—get everything I ask for.”

The room erupts in a bout of coughing, which Neil ignores.

“Anyone remember that time I punched Aaron, so Andrew tried to break my arm, and everyone else was too scared to get close or even talk to him, but Neil just wandered up and stuck his face in Andrew’s and said some shit in German until Andrew _decided_ to leave me alone?” Allison says to the room in general.

“Anyone remember how Andrew didn't care about exy, until Neil asked him to?” Wymack asks drily.

“Anyone remember when Aaron wanted Katelyn to attend Andrew and Neil’s wedding, and made Neil ask Andrew?” Kevin says loudly. “Or the many, _many_ times Andrew flatly refused to play exy, and let opposing teams beat us, until Neil asked him to shut down the goal? What about the time Andrew decided he wasn’t going with us to see Tangled, until he mysteriously changed his mind after Neil asked him to?”

Neil holds up both middle fingers, waves them around at everyone, and then looks at Natalie and Paige. “We’re adopting you, unless you decide otherwise.” The girls stare at him silently. “Also, I’m sorry for getting so worked up, earlier. It wasn’t right, and I won’t do it again.”

John laughs, making Neil jump—Neil wasn’t doing anything. But John isn’t looking at him, anyway. Andrew’s playing peek-a-boo with him. Neil’s heart does a couple flips, he falls in love with Andrew, and then his heart settles down again. 

“That boy has actual blood-related uncles,” Thea says, “and you two are still his favorites.”

Neil grins at her. “Of course we are.”

“Okay,” Dan says, “Now that you’ve settled all your weird family shit, do we get to throw you an adoption party?”

Natalie and Paige look taken aback.

“What’s an adoption party?” Paige asks.

“A party, celebrating the fact that you’ve been adopted. Andrew will make cake.”

“What?” Paige says.

“Look,” Matt says, “I’m usually a bigger fan of cake mix than I am of homemade cakes—they’re just not that good. But Andrew makes a mean cake, all right? One year he decided to bake away his problems, and we all got homemade cakes, like, every week. I still dream about those cakes.”

“What about apple pie?” Neil suggests.

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Why not both?”

John stands up on Neil’s thighs, wobbling like a big chunk of jello, and Neil grabs his waist to hold him up. “Both is good. Dan—thoughts on stuffed shells?”

“I’ll make the shells if you’ll make the sauce,” she agrees cheerfully.

“Works for me.”

“You don’t have to throw us a party,” Natalie says, annoyance flaring.

“Do you not want one?” Dan asks. “We’ll keep it small, I promise.”

“You just—don’t have to,” Natalie says.

“We don’t want to waste your time,” Paige explains.

“Jesus,” Wymack says, looking at Neil and Andrew. “Are you _sure_ they’re not biologically yours?”

“Yup,” Neil says.

“This is how you used to make us feel,” Matt accuses. “I hope you like being on the other end of it.”

“What?” Paige asks, confused.

“The shock,” Allison explains, “that someone might _care_ about you, at all. Or want to spend time with you. Or want to do nice things for you. The fear that your general existence is a waste of everyone’s time. Neil used to pull this shit all the time.”

“I remember Nicky saying something about how Neil was his friend,” Kevin says, “and I remember Neil standing there for three minutes before saying, in just, the most _pathetic_ voice ever, _Am I? Your friend_? And it was, actually, the _saddest_ thing I’ve ever heard, not least because Nicky is everyone’s friend.”

“Fuck you,” Neil says. “Anyway. Adoption party?”

He can see Paige working up a question, and he prepares, but he’s offered the Foxes a redirect, and they take it.

“Balloons?” Dan suggests. “Noisemakers? You’re too young for alcohol.”

“No noisemakers,” Neil says.

“Okay. How about music? Are we talking no noise at all? Or do they just not like noisemakers?”

Neil shrugs.

Dan looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks at the kids.

Dan looks at the kids. 

Natalie crosses her arms. “Didn’t they already tell you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s none of our business,” Renee says. “Unless we’re throwing you a party, in which case, we don’t want it to be terrible for you.”

“You haven’t asked us any questions,” Paige says, almost affronted. “You can’t tell me Neil didn’t tell you anything.”

“We don’t ask questions,” Allison says. “We don’t pry into people’s personal lives.”

“And we don’t need to know why,” Wymack asks. “If you don’t want music, there won’t be any music. We’re not here to get personal.”

“I mean,” Abby says, “that line doesn’t work, off the court, at my house, having a group dinner.”

Wymack shrugs. “The point is: We all have shit to deal with. That doesn’t mean all our shit has to be public knowledge. So. Music or no music?”

Paige and Natalie converse silently, and then Paige looks at Dan and says “We can do music.” She looks at Neil and Andrew. “Can we invite people?”

“Sure!” Neil says. Friends? Do his kids have friends? “Yeah, of course!”

“You’re very happy about this,” Natalie says.

“I’m normal happy about this,” Neil retorts. Judging by the looks he gets, he doesn’t sound normal happy about this. He decides against responding.

“No, this is great,” Matt says, looking precisely as excited as Neil feels. “Who are you inviting? Do you have a bunch of friends?”

Natalie and Paige give him some derogatory grimaces, but Matt’s been on the receiving end of far worse looks, and he doesn’t so much as flinch.

“Is that a yes? Oh no. Is it a no?”

“It doesn’t have to be weird,” Paige says. “Don’t make it weird. The answer might be no. Is it weird to have a party because we’re getting a family? I don’t know if I want people there. I don’t know if we have friends good enough to celebrate that with us.”

“Just let me know how many,” Dan says. “Here. I’ll give you my number. I need to know how much food to make. We should have more than just stuffed shells.”

The Foxes divvy up food—Neil is relieved of cooking duty, but he’s tasked with helping Allison decorate. He’s done this before: It involves blowing up balloons and then standing there while Allison hangs streamers, passing her tape. He offers to help Andrew bake, but Andrew gives him a look that says _remember the time you spilled four cups of flour on the floor?_ And Neil retracts his offer. It had been a long cleanup.

And then Renee looks at Kevin. “How much more time do you need for history?”

Kevin shrugs. “They already did all their homework, on Friday, so I’m just giving them an overview of the next chapter. Maybe until dinner?”

Renee smiles. “Great! I’ll teach you how to use knives after dinner, then,” she tells Natalie and Paige.

Matt’s eyebrows fly up. “Why?”

“Andrew asked me to,” she says.

Matt looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks back.

Matt looks at Neil.

Neil shrugs.

“God, you didn’t tell them _anything_ , huh,” Natalie says.

“I’m not here to tell everyone your business,” Neil says. “We just went over this.”

“Yeah, but. I mean. What _do_ you know?” She asks Renee.

Renee’s smile doesn’t so much as waver. “I know Andrew and Neil think knife training would serve you well. I know you and Paige would like to learn. Now I know that Neil and Andrew are going to adopt you, and that you dislike sudden, loud noises. I know you go to George W. Prep.”

“That—that’s it?”

Renee just smiles at them.

“We would _love_ to know more, though,” Allison says. “No pressure. But we would.”

“Allison,” Renee says, a reprimand.

Allison just shrugs.

“Mom had cancer,” Natalie says. “She died when we were four. Dad handed us off to an adoption agency when we were six, and we never heard from him again. We don’t know anything about the rest of our family, or our grandparents or anything.”

“Thank you for telling us,” Renee says, one hand on Allison’s arm.

“Aren’t you going to ask if we want to find our dad?”

“Would you like us to ask that?” Renee says.

“No. But everyone does.”

“Not Foxes.”

“Why not?”

“I’m adopted,” Renee offers. “My mom was involved with more men then I could keep track of, and ended up in jail, and then was beaten to death by members of the gang I’d belonged to. I’m not sad about it. I’m not going to ask why you don’t want to know your dad. I don’t either.”

“I lived with my aunt,” Dan says. “I left as soon as I could. Parents and guardians aren’t always worth finding.”

“My dad got me into drugs,” Matt says. “He’s lucky I still talk to him.”

“My parents disowned me,” Allison says. “They wrote me out because I wanted to play exy instead of working for them. I’m not talking to them, and I don’t know why you’d want to talk to your dad.”

“And you know our stories,” Neil says, gesturing to himself and Andrew. “And Kevin and Thea actually have parents worth knowing. No one’s going to tell you to go hunt down your dad. I mean. Unless you want to? We—may or may not be able to help.”

“We don’t want to,” Natalie snaps.

Neil shrugs. “Lovely.”

Kevin snaps his fingers a couple times. “Enough. History.”

Natalie and Paige stare at him, eyebrows raised.

Kevin waits expectantly, eyebrows raised to the same height.

Neil and Andrew exchange an amused glance. John reaches for Andrew, and Andrew takes him, effortlessly—Neil eyes his biceps. It’s a strong husband he’s got. Andrew flicks a look at him, and Neil gives an unapologetic twitch. 

“Nah,” Natalie says.

“I’m sorry?” Kevin says.

“Apology accepted,” Paige says solemnly.

Kevin looks at Neil.

Neil shrugs. “Don’t snap at them. It’s rude.”

Kevin looks at Andrew.

“It’s not my fault you never learned manners,” Andrew says, poking John’s cheeks.

Dan snickers.

“You could just use your words,” Paige says loftily.

“You _live_ with _Andrew_ ,” Kevin says, affronted.

“He uses his words,” Paige says. “When necessary. And he has _never_ snapped in my face.”

Kevin looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. “Are you ready to resume your studies?”

Natalie makes a show of considering. “I suppose so.”

“ _Wonderful_.”

Neil leans his head against Andrew; Andrew ignores him in favor of poking John’s nose while John tries to bite Andrew’s finger.

Normal conversation resumes, but Renee leaves it. She comes to stand in front of Neil.

“If you’re feeling brave these days,” she says, “I have a proposition for you.”

“I’m not agreeing until you tell me what it is.”

She smiles. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I have a friend. She works with a foundation called _Skin Deep_ that helps people with scars—women with acid burns, army veterans, people who’ve had invasive surgeries, and so on. The foundation provides therapy, mostly; it works in individual communities to try and make scarring a more accepted thing. She’s been looking for a way to hit a wider audience, some kind of ad campaign, but it’s a tough thing to put together.”

Neil looks at Renee.

Renee looks at him. “You could be the face of the campaign.”

Neil opens his mouth to say no. There’s a billion reasons why.

He closes his mouth. There isn’t, really. He’s not hiding anymore—not from gangs, not from his family, not from himself. That takes out the vast majority of his reasoning. The rest—well, he doesn’t want the questions, or the stares. But isn’t that what Renee just said? That the whole point is to try and make scars normal? But why does _he_ have to be the face of that campaign? “Let me think about it,” he tries.

She gives him her kindest, most patient smile. “Of course.” And then she goes to sit back down next to Allison.

John falls into Neil’s arms.

Abby gets up to change around the laundry, and Neil looks forward to having his shirt back, as fast as the dryer can make that happen.

Ten minutes later, Abby pulls a chicken-and-pasta conglomerate out of the crockpot, and Neil and Andrew rejoin the table. Neil worries, for a moment, that the kids won’t join in with the usual _grab a fork and steal food out of the pan_ serving style espoused by his family, but Kevin and Dan foist food on them, and Renee subtly positions the pan close to them, and all is well.

Neil gets his shirt back after dinner. He puts it on and takes a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

He hates that.

Running. Running away, always, forever. From knives, from scars, from his father, always his father. Nathan’s dead and still Neil hides. Nathan’s dead, and still Neil hides.

He follows Renee and the kids out back, afterwards, and Andrew follows him, and Neil glances back to see the Foxes crowding around the window. Not following—that would make Paige and Natalie uncomfortable—but watching. Curious. The Foxes might not ask questions, but it should never be said that they’re not curious.

Andrew hands out knives, like a teacher passing out copies of a test.

Renee takes a deep breath, and immediately corrects how Natalie and Paige are holding the knives. She runs through why it’s important, why stance is important, the difference between fighting with knives and throwing them. She corrects them again—it’s almost instinctive, to grip the knife in a fist.

“Will you teach us how to throw knives, though?” Natalie asks.

“Probably not,” Renee responds.

“Why?”

“Are you learning this for practical reasons? Or for fun?”

“Practical.”

“Throwing a knife is—your last resort. If you stab someone, you pull the knife out, and you still have the knife. If you _throw_ the knife, and you’re in the middle of a fight, you’ve lost the knife. And throwing knives isn’t the best strategy anyway—they’re not as fast as bullets, and your target will have time to see and dodge it. Or maybe your target just _moves_ —most people don’t stand still in the middle of a fight. Or maybe you get hit or bumped mid-throw, and your aim is off. My recommendation is this: If you’re fighting long-distance, get a gun.”

Natalie makes a face. “You just don’t know how to throw knives.”

“I do not,” Renee says, unbothered, serene. “I never needed to.”

Natalie looks at Andrew. “Do _you_ know how?”

“Renee taught me everything I know,” Andrew says. “So no. But I know someone skilled at throwing knives who can demonstrate, if you’d like.”

Renee’s gaze sharpens. “Do you, now. Who?”

Andrew stares off into the distance.

“Am I supposed to guess?” Renee asks patiently.

Andrew doesn’t answer.

Neil holds out a hand to the closest child, and Natalie hands over her knife. “What’s the target?”

Andrew scans the backyard and points.

“The leaf?” Neil asks. It’s out on its own, bright red on a tree full of orange, fluttering in the breeze.

Andrew doesn’t answer.

Neil lazily tosses the knife straight up, watching it rotate, watching it move just half a millimeter in the September breeze. And when it touches his hand, he takes a step forward and launches it, just a little bit off, just enough.

The leaf vanishes.

Neil hears a commotion from inside. He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t need to know.

Renee marches over to the tree, and he watches her find the knife and tug it free. She turns around and holds it up, showing off the leaf, impaled straight down the middle, plucked right off its branch. There’s a louder commotion from inside; this time, Neil can make out individual curses. Renee stands there for a minute, staring at it, and then carries it back. She gives Neil a curious glance, but says nothing.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Natalie says. “Can I learn _that_?”

“I’m not your teacher,” Neil says. “And anyway, she’s right. If you’re fighting long-distance, bring a gun. If you’re looking to cut a man, throwing it is a bad idea.”

“Do you know how to fight with them, too?” Natalie asks.

Neil grimaces. “Minimally.”

“Who taught you how to throw?”

“No one important.”

“If it’s more important to know how to fight than to know how to throw, then why—”

“You don’t want to know,” Neil says.

“I mean,” Paige says, “I kinda do.”

“I thought you were all about being open and honest?” Natalie says. “And you already told us all the scary stuff. And Renee is gonna teach us gross psychopath shit anyway.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Renee says.

“Close combat wasn’t ever going to be my problem,” Neil says. “I started learning, because of course I did, but I was mostly expected to be able to bring down unarmed targets and carve them up. If Nathan was facing down someone armed, he did it with a gun in hand, not a knife, and I assume that the same would have been expected of me, if Kengo hadn’t decided I should go to Tetsuji instead of taking over from my dad. Hey. Renee?”

She looks at him, blank, and Neil meets her gaze, trying desperately to keep a matching emptiness out of his eyes.

“Yes.”

Confusion, and then understanding, and then a smile. “I’ll call my friend, after this.”

It’s not a long lesson. Renee tries, but she keeps having to pause to make Natalie and Paige loosen their grips. Eventually, noting the setting sun, she stops, takes the knives, and gives them back to Andrew. “Your homework,” she says, “is to learn how to walk with a knife without stabbing yourself and without being scared of the knife.”

Natalie grimaces. “That’s _it_?”

“No—you have to study human anatomy, too.”

She groans. “How long did it take _you_ to learn this shit?”

“Months, but I’d spent lots of time watching other people play with knives. I had a head start.”

They go back inside. Renee gives the room a sweeping look; Matt opens his mouth, shuts it again; Allison raises an eyebrow, but at a glance from Renee, she puts it back down. Wymack raises both eyebrows. Renee doesn’t bother looking at him. Neil offers him a shrug, and he shrugs back—good enough.

They discuss the merits of Cards Against Humanity; Allison brought it with her, but there are kids, and John is getting old enough to understand words. Abby pulls out Apples to Apples. The Foxes glance at each other and: Yeah, this could be fun.

They split up into teams of two—there’s too many of them, otherwise—and John wanders, sitting in Andrew’s lap, or Neil’s, or Wymack’s, or Kevin’s, or Thea’s, moving around as he gets bored. Dan pulls out her camera, swears up and down that it’s not cheating, and snaps photos whenever people forget she’s got it. Neil and Andrew rack up the points—Neil knows who’s judging them, he knows what’ll make them laugh—but Allison and Renee beat them by three cards anyway. All involved acknowledge their status as Power Couple—a trophy Neil and Andrew have won twice—and then they migrate to the living room, power up Abby’s Wii, and play a variety of Wii Sports games.

An hour later, they go home.

Natalie and Paige slump on the couch, shoving and smacking until they’re both lying down, all scrunched up on their own halves of the couch facing the TV. The lights are off, ostensibly to prevent a glare, but the girls look flat-out exhausted. Neil and Andrew tiptoe away; there’s no sense in sitting in there and forcing them to talk. Instead, they go out onto the back porch, and Andrew snags the bottles of bubbles he keeps by the door. They don’t bother turning on the lights. They park themselves in the rocking chairs on the edge of the porch, lean back, and blow bubbles. It was Bee’s suggestion—when Andrew finds himself reaching for a cigarette, he’s supposed to pick up the bubbles, instead. No nicotine, but the motion is the same, the inhale and the exhale are the same, and it holds Andrew over. Neil, too. He was never addicted, not in the same way Andrew had been, but he’d gotten used to it—go outside with Andrew, hold a cigarette, inhale and exhale.

Kevin had given him shit for it. “You can’t be a _runner_ who _smokes_. What happens when you destroy your lungs, idiot?”

As he’d cut back to almost nothing, so had Andrew. And then Andrew had gotten annoyed at it. He’d had been having a bad day, had stormed outside for a smoke, and then, having crushed three cigarettes into the dirt barely-smoked, had walked back inside and baked no fewer than three loaves of bread and a cake. The next morning, he’d held the box of cigarettes over the trash can and looked at Neil. Neil had said: “Do it.” Andrew had dropped the box in, and that had been that.

The cigarettes had failed to take the edge off. Andrew was unwilling to let them maintain a hold over him, and was so full of spite and rage that addiction didn’t stand a chance. It helped that Andrew had gotten over both his meds and cracker dust already; withdrawal was familiar, and Andrew felt so terrible it made no difference regardless.

Neil inhales, and when he exhales, bubbles float up towards the stars.

After a minute, he realizes the only bubbles are the ones he’s sending up, and he rolls his head sideways to find Andrew already looking at him.

Neil smiles, gooey. “If you told me,” he says softly, “right now, that you’d hung every star in the sky, I’d believe you.”

“I hung every star in the sky.”

“I know.”

Silence.

Neil can hear the _you are ridiculous_ hanging in the air.

It occurs to him that—perhaps—it’s going to remain unsaid.

He reaches out, leans over, and Andrew catches his chin. This close, even in the dark, Neil can see Andrew’s eyes, and he has to catch his breath.

“You are my answer,” he says, and Neil’s heart soars, and Andrew closes the gap between them, removing his hand from Neil’s chin, dropping it to Neil’s shoulder, trailing fingers down Neil’s arm to his wrist, and Neil—

Neil isn’t stupid.

Oblivious—certainly. Almost always, when it comes to relationships. But not stupid. He’d gotten curious, years back, when Andrew was in Oregon and Neil was missing him, and he’d done some googling. He’d been remarkably disappointed. First of all, he discovered, he didn’t find anyone in porn attractive. It was something he should’ve anticipated, given he wasn’t attracted to anyone except Andrew even outside of porn, but it surprised him nonetheless. Second, very few of the actors seemed to be having a good time, and Neil couldn’t bring himself to watch most of it. Third, what he wanted was Andrew, and porn wasn’t Andrew.

As experiments go, it was a thoroughly failed one. But failures are more useful than successes, as Neil well knows, because they become learning experiences. And Neil, lightly horrified by several anal scenes, had done further research, figured out how it was done in the real world, and put the whole thing away, ready to forget it.

Except he hasn’t forgotten it, and as Andrew’s fingers crawl down Neil’s arm until they come to rest in Neil’s hand, a rogue thought asks what they’d feel like in his ass.

He stops moving for a second, and Andrew pulls back an inch, eyebrows pulled together.

“Armrest,” Neil lies easily. Well, it’s not _really_ a lie—it _is_ digging into his ribs. The seats are wide, and the armrests are wide and thick, and now he’s thinking about it, it’s probably gonna leave a bruise. Andrew’s armrest must be cutting into his side, too.

Andrew gets up, still holding Neil’s hand, and stands in front of Neil. “Yes or no?”

Neil sets his bubbles safely out of the way. “Yes,” he says, tugging on Andrew’s hand, and Andrew straddles him, making full use of the wide seats, and Neil plants his feet on the ground like that’ll stop them from rocking backward, and Andrew leans down, bites Neil’s bottom lip, and slides his tongue back into Neil’s mouth, and Neil wonders, and then he thinks about nothing at all.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neil and andrew call harmony!!
> 
> trigger warning for violence and also murder. Also, there's porn in this one. [[there's stuff after the porn, and also character development mid-porn, so worth a skim even if it's not your thing.]] It's a busy chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can't believe the two most controversial things I've written about have been pasta and waffles 
> 
> this was one of the first parts of this fic I ever wrote and i am UNBELIEVABLY excited to share. that said, please note that essentially none of the foster/adoption process described here or at any point in this fic is accurate. I tossed accuracy down the drain in favor of drama and it is likely 99% just plain ol' wrong. it IS however very dramatic
> 
> also!!!! shout out to all the demis in the comments!!! 1) HI! it's been depressing to be aroace since ace 'discourse' destroyed the tumblr community, and I'm so happy we've all kinda gathered in the mafia-stickball fandom and 2) this is the funniest fucking thing that's ever happened to me cause. I've read these books like 10 times but when i was writing this I had to go back in like "when does neil start liking andrew? when... well... fuck. fuck that. when does ANDREW start liking NEIL? maybe... there? nah. there? also no. what about... hmm. fuck" and I wasn't sure if I couldn't figure it out because I'm aroace or because neil is demi and an unreliable narrator anyway but, having read the comments, I have come to the conclusion that in fact ANDREW is the weird one for actually having any idea at all when he developed his crush on neil

Neil wakes up the next morning in a bundle of nerves, gripping Andrew’s hand so tightly he can’t imagine Andrew’s been sleeping through it. He rolls over and sure enough, Andrew’s awake, waiting with a raised eyebrow for an explanation.

“What if Harmony says _no_?”

Andrew cups Neil’s face. “Then we’ll call someone else.”

“I’m not asking for their help.”

“I wasn’t alluding to the Moriyamas. I was saying we’ll go above her head. But I don’t think she’ll say no. Why would she?”

“Because we’re terrible people who should never have been approved in the first place.”

“Actually, as per the FBI and Bee, we’re possibly the healthiest and best people in the world.”

“All she has to do is take one look at us and she’ll know.”

Andrew runs his fingers through Neil’s hair. “She won’t,” Andrew promises. "Also, she saw us once, and didn't know anything."

Neil refuses to be comforted. “She’ll be able to feel it through the phone. My dad’s ghost will show up in a dream and tell her I’m a murderer.”

Andrew pulls Neil’s head into his chest. “My mom’s a lot more likely to pull that kind of shit. Your dad will show up in _your_ dreams.”

Neil wraps himself around Andrew. He hears the front door close; the kids are out, headed to school. “He doesn’t bother anymore. Must be busy somewhere else.”

“Good,” Andrew says.

Neil inhales, nuzzles into Andrew’s chest, and sighs as he feels Andrew’s lips brush his hair.

“It’s the foster system,” Andrew says. “They’re happy to hand over a couple kids, especially older kids—older kids hardly ever get adopted, so we’re essentially saving them four years of paying for two kids. Sure, you’ve got a fun background, but the FBI says you’re good. What’s an adoption agency going to do, argue with them? And sure, I look pretty shitty on paper, but I also have a sterling bill of recommendation from Bee. We’ve got the financial part down. We’ve got the house. We’re model parents.”

Neil squeezes Andrew in a hug; Andrew doesn’t protest.

“Nat and Paige are fine. They trust us; we can handle everything else. If we fuck up, we’ll deal with it.”

Neil gives in and lets himself be comforted.

After a few minutes spent thinking about Andrew’s chest, and how very nice it is, even under a shirt, Neil decides he can get up. 

They do laundry. Andrew cleans the bathrooms; Neil vacuums. They dust. It’s been a while since they deep-cleaned, so they take to it: straightening books on bookshelves, vacuuming the couches, dumping baking soda down the sinks. They eat lunch. Neil finds himself sorting through five-year-old receipts. Andrew wanders outside to wash the windows. They meet up to clean out their closet.

“Any skeletons?” Andrew asks.

“None. Ready to come out of the closet?”

They hold hands and step over the threshold.

They go through the downstairs closets. And the kitchen cabinets. Neil wipes out the top shelves, which they don’t use, because fuck that. Maybe Natalie and Paige could find a use for those shelves; they're both taller than Neil and Andrew.

When Natalie and Paige get home, they find Neil and Andrew in the living room, sorting through the cabinets. They have a stack of old video games to give away; a stack of old mail, ignored but never thrown out; pens and pencils, and a piece of paper on which they’re checking markers for functionality; and several kitkats, one of which Andrew is eating, leftover from a weeknight Halloween when they hadn’t gotten many trick-or-treaters.

“What are you doing? It smells nice.”

“Cleaning,” Neil says. “Don’t forget to do your laundry.”

“Yeah. What’s this?” Natalie says, picking up a photo album.

“Dan,” Neil says.

Natalie and Paige give him a confused look, and open the album.

“This isn’t a picture of Dan,” Paige says.

“She likes to take pictures,” Neil explains. “Those are all from her.”

They open it to a random page. “Where’s this?”

Neil looks. “Nicky’s old house. He used to have a place in Columbia.” It’s Neil and Matt, hanging upside down off the couch—they’d been trying to quantify the difficulty of a range of video games, based on how hard they were to play upside down.

“What’s this one?”

Neil scoots the old video games out of the way, scoots himself over, and pats the space between himself and Andrew. Natalie and Paige plant themselves there, the album open in the middle of them, so Andrew and Neil can see.

Neil looks at the picture in question and laughs. “Riko’s funeral.”

Natalie and Paige grimace, almost identically. “ _Oh_. I see it now,” Paige says, making a face. “It’s a coffin.”

“We didn’t go,” Neil says, “but Dan did. She snuck this picture. Didn’t take any more—she didn’t want to be ghoulish—but she sent it to Kevin, and then Kevin gifted it to me.”

“That’s—weird.”

Neil shrugs. “It’s a treasured present from a friend.”

“ _Really_ weird,” Paige says.

“Hey, he was a terrible person, and sometimes I just need a little pick-me-up, and I like having a picture of him being lowered into the ground.”

“Getting weirder,” Natalie warns. "I have a question. Why didn't Aaron come to the dinner yesterday?"

"Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't," Neil says. "He used to not come at all—he wasn't sure if Andrew would be good about seeing Katelyn more than once a month, and he refused on principle to leave Katelyn behind—"

"What principle is that?" Paige asks.

"It's a principle. We're a very principled family."

"You are?"

"Yeah, we just don't have the usual principles. Anyway, he and Andrew talked it out—"

"Really?" Paige laughs. "I figured he'd have gone to you."

"Well, I mean, he _did_ , and then I asked Andrew, who then talked to Aaron—I didn't lie I just skipped a step, don't look at me like that—why are you laughing?— _and then_ Andrew agreed that, no, it wouldn't be an issue, and talked to Aaron about it. But, I mean, Katelyn's a neurosurgeon, and Aaron's a pediatrician, and they've got a kid, so sometimes they find it in them to come and sometimes they don't."

"I have a question," Paige says, apparently satisfied with that answer. "Why is it that, when you were trying to convince us Andrew wasn't an violent freak, you decided to tell us that you were _also_ a violent freak?"

Neil frowns. "Well, when you put it like that."

"I mean, how else would you put it? Like, look, my fix was the obvious one, you know? Like, _noo, you're just hearing the bad side, here's_ good _stuff he's done_ , but instead you were like, _oh, me too_. Like, it doesn't bother me, one way or the other, it's whatever, but—where was the logic, there?"

"Well, when you put it _that_ way, I am thoroughly convinced that you are no longer scared. Look. In hindsight, it was not my best moment," Neil says. Paige, Natalie, and Andrew don't bother hiding their eye rolls. "But—I think—it's the same thing the newspapers do, and the reporters, and the talk shows. The idea is that I am some angel from heaven—"

"Not wrong," Andrew says.

"—who was victimized by a bad dad," Neil continues. "Whereas Andrew is Satan incarnate, and unchangeably evil, and I am suffering immeasurably for being married to him. With regards to Andrew's level of villainy—"

"High," Andrew chips in.

"—it shouldn't really be an issue, because you've been here for two weeks and in that time have never seen him so much as lose his temper. I mean, he's shown you how kind, and gentle, and loving, and thoughtful, and—"

"We get it," Natalie says.

"—and _good_ he is," Neil says, cutting his list short. "But you still seem to have trouble wrapping your head around what you think of as such a big change, when in reality it wasn't much of a change at all, it was just that the universe let up long enough for him to get his footing a little. And you know full well that I've killed people, but—I don't know—maybe you think I sat there, weeping over their bodies, horrified by what I'd done? I just—you can treat Andrew the way you treat me. However good you think I am, you should know Andrew is too. I'm not saying that you're wrong about me _now_ , I'm just—I'm just saying that—" he works his way around a command, or anything condescending, or anything rude. "I'm just saying that, maybe, if it was possible for me _back then_ to become me _now_ , and for you to see me as—Natalie, the other day you told me I'm not a liar. But I _was_. It was my definitive characteristic. But as far as you know, based on two weeks of existing in my vicinity, it's not who I am—but that's only true because of the amount of effort I've put in. But Andrew has done the same thing. So I guess I'm hoping that you'll be able to see me as I am now as a human who's made progress, and to realize that Andrew is the same. Does that make sense?"

Paige mimes picking something up, moving it three inches to the left, and putting it back down. "That's me taking you off a pedestal. Is that what you're trying to say?"

"I mean, a little, I guess. I'm bad at this."

"Yep," Natalie agrees. "You are." She flips a few pages of the photo album without pausing, and then stops. “What’s this?”

“Our wedding,” Andrew says.

“You—have pictures?” Paige asks.

“Dan took pictures,” Neil corrects.

“You don’t have any framed.”

“We don’t have any framed photos, why would we start with our wedding?”

“Why _don’t_ you?”

Neil shrugs. “Why would we?”

“That’s what normal people do,” Natalie says. 

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

Neil looks at Andrew, who looks like he’s having several realizations about their adult life, and bursts out laughing.

“What?” Natalie says.

“I was a foster kid,” Andrew says. “There were never pictures of me on anyone’s wall. And then I went home, and my mom and Aaron had a rocky relationship—not many pictures there. And of course there weren’t any once my mom died—who was gonna get me in front of a camera? And then when we went to college—the only house we ever really went to was Nicky’s, which had the same problem, namely, who was he hanging up pictures of? _Certainly_ not me. Dan was the only one who ever took pictures of me, and she didn't have access to our house."

“Meanwhile, there were never any family pictures in _my_ house,” Neil says. “Maybe my mom had a couple on the fridge or something, when I was in Little League, but when you plan on chopping people up, you don’t usually have pictures of your kid hanging around. And then my mom and I spent years on the run—where were we going to hang a picture? Really, the only place I’ve ever seen pictures hung up like that is at the Foxhole Court. And that was all Dan.”

“Oh, is that why you have, like, three decorations?” Paige asks.

“I mean,” Neil begins indignantly—after all, why would he and Andrew cover up all their hard work? The house had been 26 years old when they’d moved in, and it hadn’t changed an inch in those years. They’d repainted—lighter colors downstairs, darker colors upstairs. They’d gone for tasteful colors downstairs—other people had to see that, after all—but Neil had categorically refused beige; he’d spent too much time in hotel rooms to want his house to be beige. They’d fixed up the bathrooms, renovated the kitchen—it had been a good time for it, given Andrew was back in therapy and happy to smash and rip things. They’d discovered wood floors underneath the rugs, and had chosen to keep them. They hadn’t gone all out—no moving walls or anything, nothing too fancy; they were both skittish about spending too much money, and neither of them saw anything wrong with the general layout of the house—but still. They’d made changes. Chosen their furniture. Picked out curtains and blinds. Andrew had dropped an unknown amount of money outfitting their kitchen.

And then they’d left all of it absolutely bare.

Neil’s indignation dies out. He looks at their Olympic medals—that’s one decoration. He thinks about the mirror in the front hallway—a gift from Nicky. The fancy china set they never use? Allison. The fake flowers in the dining room? Abby. There’s two Edward Gorey prints in the living room, on either side of the TV, and they’re gifts from Dan and Matt. “No,” he says, eventually. “We have three decorations because our friends gave them to us. Left to our own devices, all we’d have in terms of _stuff on walls_ is the medals. And _that_ box is hung on Command strips. The prints are only hung properly because Dan and Matt came over and hung them up themselves.”

“I don’t know how to find a stud,” Andrew says. “Except—” He snaps his mouth shut.

Natalie cringes. “Were you about to say _except Neil_?”

“This is why I don’t make jokes.”

Neil snort-laughs. “I could say the same about you, _stud_.”

“Please,” Natalie says. “ _Please_ be gross _any_ other time.”

Neil and Andrew settle down. “We’ll be good,” Neil promises.

“You should put this one on the wall,” Paige says, pointing. It’s the one Dan had liked the most—they’d just signed their marriage certificate, and were half-turned towards each other, holding hands, looking at each other, Neil grinning like crazy. Dan had had it blown up and printed at a size to be framed—it takes up a full page of the photo album on its own. The fact that Andrew and Neil had then proceeded to not frame it had infuriated her.

“It’s cute,” Natalie agrees.

“When we get a chance,” Neil says evasively. “Keep flipping.”

She flips backwards, to the beginning of the book.

“That was the day Dan, Matt, Renee, and Allison graduated,” Neil says, pointing at the picture Abby had taken of the team. “That’s the Championship trophy we won that year.”

“Where’s this?”

“Eden’s—it’s a bar in Columbia. We used to go there just about every week. To be fair, by _we_ , I mean Andrew, Aaron, Nicky, Kevin, and me. The other four pretty much only joined us on special occasions—Halloween, end-of-the-year parties, and other stuff like that.”

“Who’s that?”

“Roland—our preferred bartender. Nicky, Andrew, and Aaron used to work with him—they’re all still friends.”

“We have a groupchat,” Andrew confirms.

“Oh!” Paige dives for her bag. “We got the mail. Before I forget.”

She holds it up, and Andrew takes it. He tosses it, one by one, into the existing trash pile, and then passes an envelope to Neil.

“From the school,” Neil says, glancing at it.

Natalie and Paige both look wary.

“What, did you do something I should know about it?”

“I mean, I punched a guy,” Natalie says.

“Another one?”

“You don’t sound nearly worried enough.”

“You haven’t given me anything to worry about yet,” Neil says, pausing in the process of opening the envelope to glance at Natalie. “Did you punch someone else?”

“No. What would you do if I did?”

“Probably, ask why,” Neil says, turning his attention back to the letter. He reads it at top speed, looking to reassure the kids. “What’s Parent’s Day?”

“Oh!” Paige says, looking relieved. “It’s—”

“No, hang on, why’d you look so relieved?”

“I thought Natalie might’ve done something,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“I thought _you’d_ done something,” Natalie says.

“Okay. As long as no one did anything I should know about," Neil says, settling the argument. "What’s Parent’s Day?”

“We’re going to have a short day,” Paige explains. “Like, shorter periods, not like we get to miss a class. And then we go home. And the parents all come in and meet the teachers and stuff. You probably don’t have to go.”

Neil shrugs and scans for a date. “It’s next Tuesday. It’s from 2 to 5.” He looks up at Andrew. “I’ll go?”

He can see Andrew deliberating: Let Neil go alone, abandoning him to the hell of whatever Parent’s Day is? Or skip therapy?

Neil can see Andrew tilting in favor of sparing Neil, and he can’t let that happen. Andrew needs his therapy sessions, now more than ever. “I’ll go,” he decides. “If we both leave practice early, Kevin’ll kill us.”

Neil watches as Andrew fights the urge to shit on Kevin.

This isn’t a fight Andrew needs to win. He sighs and acquiesces. “What do you want for dinner that night? I’ll cook. Or bake.”

Neil grins. “Give me a day. I’ll give you a menu.”

“Okay. You’re procrastinating.”

Neil shrinks half a foot.

“Procrastinating on what?” Paige asks.

Neil holds out a hand. “Her number’s in your history, not mine,” he tells Andrew. “Calling Harmony,” he tells the girls.

"It's been two weeks, hasn't it?" Andrew asks, frowning. "We should've heard from a case worker, by now. We're supposed to meet with them once a month. Someone should've called _us_ to make an appointment."

"I haven't heard anything," Neil says as Andrew digs his phone out.

“Why are you procrastinating on it?” Paige asks tentatively, eyes tracking the phone as it moves from Andrew’s hand to Neil’s.

“What if she says _no_?” Neil says, staring at the call history. He finds it quickly—Colorado area code. Andrew, of course, hadn’t added her to his contacts. And then he pauses.

Andrew has a habit of changing Neil’s name in Andrew’s phone. Neil is reasonably certain he’s never been in Andrew’s contacts as ‘Neil.' For a while, it was Runaway. And then Pinocchio. Pipe Dream. Exy Boy II. Hospital Magnet. DNI. Husband. Graduate. Exy Man II, changed once Neil pointed out it sounded like ex semen the second, to Ex Semen II. Dude from the Banquet. Rival. Teammate. Husband made a second appearance, sometime around when Andrew moved in with Neil. Homeowner. And so on. Last Neil had seen, it had been Father of II. Now, though—now, it’s Answer.

Neil hits Harmony’s number, and puts the phone on speaker.

It rings twice, and then Harmony says “Hello?”

Neil’s heart kicks into overdrive. Natalie bumps him with her shoulder. “Hi Harmony, Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard here. Fostering Natalie and Paige Gray?”

“Hi, Neil, Andrew,” she says, voice strained. “Is something wrong?”

Neil glances at Andrew. “No,” he says carefully.

She gives a little laugh. “It’s fine. I warned you they’d be trouble. Are you two both all right?”

Neil closes his eyes. “I think there’s a been a misunderstanding. We’re not calling because there’s a problem. We’re calling because we’d like to adopt them, and are looking for instruction on how to go about that.”

“Oh,” Harmony says after a silence that goes on just a beat too long. She’s surprised. “Okay. Well, you’ve already met our foster requirements, so you don’t have to deal with those again. Ah, your—hmm. Well, this is—hmm.”

Neil looks at Andrew. Something's wrong. Something's wrong, he knew it, and it's gonna be bad.

"Where do you guys live?" Harmony asks.

"South Carolina."

"Hang on a minute, all right?"

"Sure," Neil says. He gives Paige and Natalie a reassuring smile. The looks on their faces say it didn't work.

After a moment, Harmony gets back on the phone. "This is—odd. I don't seem to have any record... there must've been a mix-up somewhere. I'll find your records. Let me get back to you? In the meantime, let me—let me set up—have you been contacted about your monthly meeting? I'd assume not, since you're calling me. I can schedule that, at least, when I sort this out—in two weeks? Is there a time that works best for you?"

“We’re open to whenever,” Neil says, “as long as it’s after school—if you need to talk to the girls? I assume you do? They get home at 3:30, we get home at 4. Sorry, I know that's a little late in the work day.”

“You let the girls stay home alone for half an hour?”

“They’re old enough,” Neil says, trying not to sound defensive. “They’re not allowed to cook when we’re not home. We should teach them the Heimlich,” he says, looking at Andrew. “Remind me.”

“I—you were paying attention when I told you that Natalie has violent tendencies, correct? One of her foster fathers was hospitalized—she’d stabbed him. She didn’t get a knife from nowhere. That kind of unsupervised time could be a mistake.”

Neil breathes and counts to five. “We heard you the first time,” he says patiently. He will not yell; he will not get angry. He is a riverbed and his emotions are water; they will pass. He has more important things to do. He's already had his weekly outburst, anyway. “We’re not concerned. Natalie hasn’t shown any violent inclinations since moving in. She’s a good kid.”

“You should be concerned,” Harmony says impatiently. “Tr—her foster father didn’t press charges, because he didn’t want it on her record, but anyone else would have put her in juvie. She’s been involved in incidents at school, too, instigating fights. We don’t know why she does it, which doesn’t bode well for her mental health—”

“Harmony,” Neil interrupts. “That’s nice. Thank you for the warning. Let me know what's up with our records once you've found them; we’ll talk to you then. Have a great day. Bye.” He hangs up, tosses the phone to Andrew, and holds his arms open for Natalie to fall into them, which she does almost immediately. He wraps his arms around her. He looks at Andrew—they’re not going to give Natalie and Paige the option of being present for the next phone call. Andrew agrees.

“I’ve shown nothing but violent tendencies,” Natalie mumbles into his shoulder.

“I’m a good liar,” Neil says. “Ask Andrew.”

“You’ve never lied to _us_.”

“It’s only been two weeks,” Neil says. “Give it time.”

Natalie sits up, sniffing. She digs the palms of her hands into her eyes. “Are you saying you’re going to lie to us?”

Neil shrugs. “I’m not a fortune teller. I mean, probably not, but who knows?”

“You’re horrible at this,” Natalie says.

“I told you we would be,” Neil says cheerfully. “You agreed to this.”

“What if they can't find your records?" Paige asks.

"Then we'll submit everything again," Neil promises.

Paige takes Natalie’s hand.

They simultaneously take a deep breath, and then Natalie flips to the next page in the photo album.

Thirty minutes later, they finish the album, put it away, and stand, each of the girls scooping up armfuls of trash while Andrew finds a box to put the used games in and Neil scoops up the Halloween candy and the working writing utensils and hunts for a place to put them.

And then Andrew does a perfect 180 and hauls ass over to Neil, holding the stacks of games up in the air. Neil drops everything he’s holding and grabs Andrew’s phone out of his front pocket—Harmony’s calling. “Neil Josten speaking,” he says, putting the phone to his ear. He waves the girls off.

“Harmony. I have this number down as Andrew’s,” she says with a laugh. “Guess there was a mix-up somewhere.”

“No, this is his phone,” Neil says. “Don’t worry about it. What's up?”

“So—this is—we're very sorry, first of all, and we'll absolutely be doing some work to figure out how this happened," Harmony says, and Neil's stomach drops, "but somehow, your records got pretty hopelessly mixed up—we have, for instance, the original house visit, but the financial records we have are for other people, the background checks we have are for other people, and somehow, we seem to have placed you in Colorado."

"I'm sorry?" Neil says politely. He can do polite outrage. He can do that, and no one ever need know that this mix-up was no accident. Why the fuck would the Moriyamas do that? They didn't need to, they really didn't need to, and it was bound to cause trouble. Neil remembers the man who had laughed so hard at the idea of Neil and Andrew fostering, the one Neil had, perhaps, bullied into fixing things; would he have gone overboard out of spite?

"We've located the correct entries for most of your file," Harmony says, calm and collected. "We'll have to check up on certain things, obviously, but, well, our main source of concern—Neil, I've done some quick research, and people with your and Andrew's backgrounds should have been—more thoroughly vetted. Our South Carolina branch would like to drop by for a visit, a little sooner than the monthly one you should have had, just—would Friday work?"

Neil is going to bring the Moriyamas down with his own two hands. "We can do Friday, absolutely. And of course, we understand you have to do your job, but my more immediate concern would be—you don't intend to take Natalie and Paige away in the interim, correct?"

"Well, I can't see any—well, I suppose we have several concerns, but I don't know that we could find a place for them before Friday, anyway. So no, we won't. We will, however, likely want to talk to them."

“Great," Neil says. Everything else, he can deal with. "What kind of questions will you be asking them?"

"Just questions about their general state of being, questions about their safety."

"I see. Anything else we need to know?"

"They'll likely want to talk to people who can vouch for your character, but our agents should be able to coordinate all that."

"Understood. Assuming that all goes well, how long a process is this?"

"Theoretically, you'd be able to adopt them after they'd been living with you for six months."

“Great. Thank you.” He lets her say goodbye this time. It seems only appropriate.

He puts Andrew’s phone back in Andrew’s pocket. And then he relays the information Harmony had given him. Paige and Natalie hold a non-verbal conference, during which Andrew and Neil non-verbally commit to maintaining perfect behavior. Neil decides against calling the Moriyamas, as they're the ones who got him into this mess anyway, and then Andrew continues his hunt for an appropriate box. Neil picks up everything he’d dropped and finds places for it. Natalie and Paige take out their history homework, and Neil and Andrew set about making dinner.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asks, pulling out a pot.

Neil, Natalie, and Paige all look up.

Andrew looks at Neil. “Something’s wrong.”

Natalie and Paige look at Neil.

Neil had wanted to be known. He’d wanted to be a real person, with connections to other people.

He hadn’t expected _being known_ to still feel so weird, several years in.

“They're not taking the kids."

He gets bad looks from all involved, and hastens to clarify. "Like, they don't even have our background checks, they're going off what pops up in a google search. We could be mafia-backed child abusers. I don't _want_ them to take you," he tells Natalie and Paige, "I just feel like she should've put up more of a fight in your best interests."

“World’s fucked,” Natalie says.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“No problem.”

Neil gets back to dinner. Renee texts him that evening—her friend at _Skin Deep_ is putting things together at top speed, and would a film date of the 23rd be acceptable? Neil checks his schedule—he’s surprisingly busy these days—and is free; he agrees. He makes a mental note to cancel if something comes up with the kids; he's unwilling to fight for his kids _and_ film a scar-based commercial at the same time. Renee promises both to relay that information and to introduce Neil to her friend. Neil has a moment wherein he’s terrified: He can’t show his scars off, what the fuck is he thinking, putting them in a commercial? Why is he the face of the campaign, anyway? In his head, Renee lectures him on white male privilege and discourses on the best ways to get people to _listen_ —she tells him that hurricanes with female names are more deadly than those with male names, because hurricanes with female names are perceived as being less of a threat; she tells him about stigma and about how much work it takes to make people look at what they’d rather ignore.

He thinks, instead, about house visits and interviews, and that’s _so_ much worse that he very nearly forgets about the commercial altogether. 

“Oh,” he says, halfway through dinner. “We have an away game this weekend—we have to fly out to Texas.”

The girls look at him.

“You can come with us, if you want. We’re flying out Saturday morning and flying back Sunday morning. If you don’t want to come—I don’t know if you should be alone all weekend. I can talk to—Abby and Wymack,” he decides on the fly. “Either have them come over for part of Saturday, or you could spend the night with them? Thoughts?”

There’s fidgeting. Glances. Long looks replete with meaningful twists of the mouth and eyebrows. An eye roll. Some squinting.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Andrew says. “You can take until tomorrow.”

“No, I mean, it’s just…” Paige trails off.

“You can also think out loud,” Neil says. “You don’t have to do this whole thing in silence.”

“We don’t want to intrude,” Paige says. “But we also don’t want them wandering around _here_.”

“Why not?”

“It’s _our_ house.”

“You don’t want to intrude on them, but you don’t want them to intrude on us?” Neil clarifies.

Paige nods.

“Andrew, Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron used to spend summers at Abby’s,” Neil says. “You’ve got _nothing_ on them.”

“We were terrible,” Andrew says. “Dan’s lot used to call us the Monsters.”

“ _Oh_!” Paige says. “That’s why—okay. _That’s_ why she said you should call your kids monsters.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Sorry, we forgot you didn’t know.”

“We’ll stay at Abby’s,” Natalie says. “If she’s okay with it.”

Neil looks at Paige, and Paige nods. Neil sends Abby a text, and she answers ten minutes later. “Abby’ll pick you up around 1,” he says. “We’re heading out around 8—you’ll be alone for a few hours, but not long. She’ll drop you off the next morning.”

“Why do you guys get so much—down time?” Paige asks. “Like, in baseball, you have games all week long, and I don’t think you usually get out of training by 3:30.”

“We’re a co-ed sport full of queer people,” Neil says. “Half of us are married to the other half, and the majority of us have kids. When the sport started, the schedule was a lot busier, but—sports like football and baseball are played by men, most of whom are married to women, who take care of the kids. In exy, the players decided it was bullshit that they wouldn’t be able to have kids unless they retired. So they all threatened to retire. En masse. Hauled out their lawyers to talk to the team owners, to find out what would happen if the players broke contract early. And then started a sport-wide union to discuss financial planning for breaking contracts. They went to practice and sat the whole thing out, across the country. And now we have practice during school hours and only one game a week, except for championship week, which the players decided was acceptable, as long as it was possible for kids to come along. It doesn’t happen, much, because that usually involves kids skipping school, but it’s about the opportunity.”

Paige nods, satisfied, and changes the subject.

Tuesday disappears, because Neil is nervous—he stops for oranges on the way home, though, and Andrew makes Neil’s favorite lemon chicken recipe, and Neil remembers to breathe, and then Paige and Natalie inform him, overawed and shocked, that Justin Warren-Pagano had dropped out of school. It isn’t surprising to him that Henry Warren would pull his son out of school over some light humiliation.

And then they head upstairs for bed, and Andrew turns to Neil. “Have you heard anything from Harmony?”

Neil shakes his head.

“Bee told me that the agency called her. They want her to be here, when they do the house calls. She told them she wouldn’t be able to make it here until 4:30. They said it would be fine—they don’t need her help with the kids. She told me about it, but the agency didn’t.”

“Character witness," Neil says.

"Who will they pull in for _you_?"

Neil frowns. “No one's said anything to me. Wymack? I have no idea. Maybe they think Bee is enough to handle both of us.”

“Are they wrong?”

“No.”

Andrew shrugs. Neil adds it to his pile of worries.

Wednesday, Riley comes over, and it lasts forever, because Neil just wants to get the interviews done and over with, and yet, it still isn’t Friday. Riley teaches the kids how to play Mario Kart. Maybe he could get Riley to apply to be a foster parent, just in case Neil and Andrew fail so badly the kids get taken away. He’s so distracted by it that Riley has to clap her hands in front of his face to get his attention.

“What?”

“I was _saying,_ what if Maria never asks me out?”

Neil’s brain grinds to a halt, backtracks, finds nothing, and returns to the present. “What?”

“Earth to Neil,” Riley says. “Thoughts. I need your thoughts.”

“You and Maria?” He frowns.

“You think it would be bad? Oh god, Neil, would she hate me?”

“What? I just—when?”

“When what?”

“When did you-and-Maria happen?”

“It hasn’t. That’s the problem.”

“Yeah, but—you like her?”

“Do you _not_?”

“Riley. What on _earth_ are you talking about?”

“The crush I’ve had on her for, like, three months now?”

“Neil doesn’t work like that,” Andrew says. “If you’d like to stab someone, he’ll know before you do. Crushes? Relationships? Absolutely not.”

"I'm demi," Neil says. "I don't know about my _own_ crushes, let alone someone else's. Stabbings make _much_ more sense."

Riley gives up on him. “Andrew. Thoughts? Me and Maria?”

He waves a hand. “None of my business.”

“You’re both useless.”

Something dies on screen. The kids aren't playing Mario Kart anymore.

“Have you talked to me about this before?” Neil asks.

“I mean, no, because at first I was like _she has a girlfriend so I shouldn’t_ and you were getting a couple kids and I didn’t want to bother you, but, I mean, you notice everything, so I thought?”

“Relationships are out of his purview,” Andrew says.

“They weren’t necessary to my survival,” Neil says. “And god knows if I'd have developed any understanding of romance if I'd been raised by normal people anyway, so no, Riley, I didn't notice, and Andrew would tell you that if he wasn't still annoyed that I didn't notice his apparently lifelong crush on me—" Neil glances at Andrew in time to see Andrew make a face and look away, and grins. He likes being right. He turns back to Riley. "So you and Maria? You guys would be cute together.”

“You sound very thoroughly convinced.”

“I mean, I have no idea what makes two people right for each other. Andrew’s theory is that it’s if you like open-plan houses versus normal houses.”

“Well, you two clearly worked that out.”

“Exactly. Ask Maria what kind of house she wants to live in.”

Riley looks at Neil like he’s just tossed her bodily into a volcano. “That’s usually called _going way too fast_.”

“Oh. Well, shit, I don’t know how long this is supposed to take.”

“Useless.”

“Sorry.”

“You should ask her out,” Paige says.

Riley jumps guiltily. “I didn’t realize you were listening.”

“Paige always is,” Neil says. “She’s never as absorbed as she looks.”

“Sorry,” Paige says unrepentantly.

“I’m not asking her out,” Riley says. “What if she says _no_? She just broke up with her girlfriend. What if she’s not over her? I can’t do that.”

Paige shrugs. Natalie shoots something.

Riley grumbles.

And then Wednesday is gone.

Thursday, at practice, Neil tries to pay attention—not to practice, which he’s absorbed in, but to Riley and Maria. Is it flirting, when Maria laughs at Riley’s joke? Is Riley happier than usual about making someone laugh? Neil can’t tell if that means they’d be good together. He’s not entirely sure what that even _means_. How do people even know ahead of time? He hadn’t expected his relationship with Andrew to be good, or to be a relationship at all, until suddenly, it had been both. Maybe Andrew’s onto something, with his thoughts on couples who argue about open-plan layouts versus traditional. Other things that piss him off about House Hunters couples: wanting to live in the city versus the suburbs. Wanting to live by the ocean versus in the middle of farmland. Rustic versus modern. Andrew insists that it’s something people should discuss _before_ getting married, rather than when they’re already married with two kids and trying to buy a house—not necessarily for compatibility, but because where you live is where you live, and it would be miserable to live in a place you didn’t like. Or maybe the point is the discussion: Neil’s pet peeve is couples who yell at each other—not necessarily on House Hunters, but on just about any show that thrives on relationship drama. He can’t see himself ever yelling at Andrew, or vice versa. Which isn’t to say they don’t have their disagreements—it’s just that the idea of trying to intimidate Andrew into agreeing is so utterly anathemic to Neil’s conceptualization of a good relationship that he can’t imagine doing it.

But it had taken time to get to that point. Time, and vast amounts of trust. And Neil doesn’t know how to build that through dating, rather than through the process he and Andrew had used, wherein Neil’s life had been in Andrew’s hands, and Andrew had placed Kevin’s life in Neil’s hands.

The end result is that Neil spends more time thinking about the general concept of relationships than he does paying attention to Riley and Maria.

Kevin makes his way over to Neil’s locker at the end of the day. “I’m coming over,” he says.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Why?”

“Because Mondays are our day off, which I’m not going to spend with you. Tuesdays are Andrew’s therapy days, and I don’t need to be present for that aftermath. Wednesdays are Riley’s days. Fridays are a shitty day for homework. So I’m coming over today.”

“That’s not what I was asking for,” Neil says drily. “To help the kids with their homework?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hang on, I have to ask them.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re your kids.”

“Sure, but they’re also, like, people,” Maria says. “I don’t know what we’re talking about, but I think I’m right.”

Neil points a finger at her as he shoots off a text. “Correct.”

“Yeah, but they have to do their homework, right?” Kevin asks.

“Not necessarily,” Neil says. “I mean, if they had a good reason for not wanting to, I probably wouldn’t make them.”

“Is that how parenting works?” Kevin asks skeptically.

“If you worked for seven or eight hours and then went home and worked for another four, it would be considered exploitation,” Andrew says, running fingers through damp hair and flicking water at Kevin’s face.

“I literally did that until my wife kicked my ass for it,” Kevin says.

“I know,” Andrew says. “I was there.”

“Oh, is that why you guys stopped staying late?” Maria asks.

“Mostly,” Kevin says. “Andrew insisted that he and Neil hadn’t survived college and two years of separation just to spend all their free time with me. And then Neil threatened to just start making out with Andrew in the locker room.”

“Why—” Maria looks at Andrew and Neil. “Why did you need Kevin’s permission to stop practicing late?”

“Have you ever _met_ Kevin?” Neil asks. “It’s not that we needed his permission. It’s that he would’ve made our lives hell if he hadn’t agreed to it.”

“There would’ve been whining,” Andrew says, counting off on his fingers, “glaring, the silent treatment, _very_ pointed passes, sharp remarks, and a bunch of arguing in French. It was easier for Neil and me to whine, and glare, and slam the ball at Kevin’s feet, and make a bunch of sharp remarks, and for Neil to talk some shit in French for a week and a half until we got what we wanted.”

“I can’t see you as a whiner,” Maria says, making a face at Andrew.

“That’s what makes it worse,” Kevin says. “He doesn’t _say_ anything. You can just—feel it coming off him in _waves_. Or I’d take a shot on goal and he wouldn’t even move. It was like our sophomore year all over again. Meanwhile, I’d get home, and Thea would do the whole thing where—I’d turn on the living room light, and she’d be sitting there, in a chair, and she’d go _I’ve been waiting for you_ , and I didn’t want to die young of a heart attack.”

“Thea sounds like fun,” Maria says. “I appreciate her aesthetic choices.”

“She’s pretty cool,” Kevin says.

“Sounds like a good thing you’re spending more time with her.”

“Oh, no, I’m not arguing that it’s _not_. I’m just saying that everyone I thought I knew unionized to force me to shut down night practices.”

Neil’s phone buzzes. “Natalie and Paige approve,” he tells Kevin. “You’re allowed to come over.”

“Thanks,” Kevin says.

He follows Neil and Andrew home, waits while they collect the mail, and follows them through the door, and Neil watches him physically fight the urge to snap the kids to attention. He wonders how Thea handles it. Although, to be fair, he’s never seen Kevin snap at Thea—Kevin treats her with vastly more respect than he treats anyone else. And to be even more fair, it’s hard to be polite around Andrew, where the word _please_ is off-limits. But Kevin restrains himself, and they find the kids on the kitchen floor, waving cat toys back and forth for two highly entertained cats. Sir makes the mistake of getting distracted by their entrance, and King takes the opportunity to smack Sir in the face, and they go zooming out of the kitchen.

“Ready?” Kevin asks.

“What’s in the package?” Natalie asks, looking at the one piece of mail that didn’t make it to the trash.

Neil shrugs, opens it, ignores Kevin’s growing impatience, pulls out the object inside, and laughs. And then he looks at it again, and laughs some more, and shows it to Andrew, and laughs some more.

It’s a picture of Neil, Andrew, Natalie, and Paige, playing Apples to Apples, Neil leaning over to high-five a grinning Paige. Natalie’s laughing, Andrew looks content, and the whole picture is very nice—symmetrical, straight, clean. The picture is fine; Neil likes it, and is happy to have it. The funny part is that it’s already framed, and comes with a note that says, in Dan’s handwriting: _IF YOU DON’T HANG THIS I’LL COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND HANG YOU, I SWEAR TO EXY._

Andrew shows the picture and the note to the kids, who loudly protest the death threat even as they smile at their first-ever family photo. Kevin seems unphased, and, in fact, vastly more concerned with the time they’re wasting, so Neil sets the photo on the counter and he and Andrew back slowly out of the kitchen. 

They sit in the living room while Kevin teaches the kids history, and there’s no yelling, no snapping, no calls for Andrew or Neil to mediate. Which is ideal, because it’s now occurring to Neil that the house visits are _tomorrow_ , and he spends an hour alternately squeezing Andrew’s hand hard enough to break it and fiddling with his own fingers until Andrew gets tired of watching him do that and takes his hand again.

Kevin sticks around for dinner—“Thea’s got John, on the condition that we never have to teach him math, ever”—and then heads out with directions to Andrew’s favorite bakery, and his heart set on bringing Thea the best éclairs she’s ever eaten.

Neil and Andrew try to help Natalie and Paige do their homework, and it’s an absolute disaster: Now that Kevin’s gone, it’s clear that Natalie and Paige are as jittery and nervous as Neil is.

“It’ll be fine,” Neil says, when they’re halfway through their last homework sheet and he can’t handle watching the two of them fidget anymore. “You guys aren’t the ones being tested here.”

“But what if they say _no_?” Paige wails, finally able to give voice to her panic.

Andrew, eternally the eye of the storm, holds his arms out, and she flings herself into them. Neil maintains control of his eyebrows. Nothing to see there, no sir, nothing to comment on, nothing at all. 

Natalie stands, shoving her chair back. “I want a knife,” she announces, extending a hand towards Andrew.

Andrew looks at her.

“I’m supposed to practice, right? I want to practice.”

“Are you sure that _now_ is the right time for you to be holding something sharp?” Andrew asks.

“Yes,” Natalie says, sounding absolutely confident.

Andrew pulls one out of his armbands and hands it over.

“Not like that,” Neil says, correcting and loosening her grip. “If you’re too tense, this might not be the right time to practice.”

She throws him a glare and begins walking.

“Don’t look at the knife,” Neil says. “Watch where you’re going. Be aware of your surroundings.”

She huffs. “It’s awkward, with all of you watching me.”

“We’re not. Well, I am.” He glances at Andrew and Paige, who quickly avert their gaze.

Natalie turns to him so he can get the full benefit of her eye roll. “I’m going to walk in the living room instead.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

She looks surprised, but gets over it quickly enough, and wanders out of the room.

Renee texts Neil—he’s now part of a group chat with her and Nadiya Silgaard, Founder and CEO of _Skin Deep_.

 _Thoughts on filming in the Jaguar’s stadium?_ Nadiya asks. _It saves us the trouble of finding a location, and if we’re filming on a Monday, we know it’ll be empty. It’ll also make it clear who you are._

 _That’s fine,_ Neil responds. _I’ve got keys_.

He drums his fingers on the table, and then gives up. House visits plus the commercial? Too much. He waves away Andrew’s raised eyebrow—Paige looks like she doesn’t intend to move any time soon, but Neil can’t sit still anymore. He heads out into the hallway, half considering heading upstairs to throw some knives—but would that be a relief, or would it be worse? He’s not sure.

The doorbell rings.

Were they expecting anyone?

Neil opens the door.

Two Japanese men stand on the doorstep, one in a black suit, one in a blue suit, looking vaguely familiar.

Neil’s mouth is half-open for a _can I help you_ when Black Suit shoves through the door, sending Neil stumbling back—farther, probably, than Black Suit means to push him, but muscle memory takes over two steps in and tries to make him run.

He stops. “Can I help you?”

Blue Suit shuts the door behind him, and Neil's memory kicks in—this is the man Neil had spoken to, about becoming foster parents.

“Neil Josten,” Black Suit says. “We found your income statements. The real ones.”

Neil frowns. “What?”

Natalie is behind him—there to see what’s going on. Andrew and Paige, also curious, appear in the archway to the kitchen, Paige holding a glass of water, but Andrew freezes, and Paige takes her cue from him.

“We know you’ve been cheating the Boss,” Black Suit says. “It seems that the Boss has no need for a man who can’t keep his own word.”

“I—your own accountants do my taxes every year,” Neil says, almost offended. “My income is publicly known and discussed. Where do you think I’m getting extra money from?”

Black Suit crooks a condescending eyebrow. “Are you really going to lie to me? Now? You could grovel. It might make a difference.”

“I’m not lying,” Neil says, and now he _is_ offended. “Do you think I’m stupid enough to try and _hide_ money from _you_? My question is, who’s lying to _you_ , and why?”

Black Suit opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“I’m not hiding money,” Neil says, taking advantage of his silence. “I’m not a business, I can’t push it out or take it in under cover of usual operations. You’ve got a copy of my contract with the Jaguars, with Court, the contracts I make for endorsements, everything, you know exactly how much money I make. So if someone’s decided to invent money I’m making and squirreling away for all of my many, many, extravagant purchases,” Neil says, eyeing the empty walls of their thirty-year-old reasonably-sized house, “then they must have a solid reason to be lying to you. Who’s doing the lying, and why?”

Black Suit’s eyes twitch—just the slightest widening, the kind of thing Neil might not notice if he wasn’t so used to looking for anger—and he accomplishes a quarter of a turn to his left, looking to Blue Suit, before Blue Suit pulls out a handgun, grabs Black Suit’s arm, twists it behind his back, and puts the gun to Black Suit’s temple. 

Black Suit stands perfectly still.

Neil waits.

Natalie is behind him, mostly—Neil has a hand out in front of her, although he doesn’t know why, or when it got there. Paige and Andrew are within a few feet of each other, and far away from him. If he moves, he risks setting off Blue Suit.

“If you fight,” Blue Suit says, crisp, clear, “I’ll kill the kids.”

Neil stands perfectly still.

Talk? Don’t talk? “Why?”

“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” Blue Suit says.

Why hasn’t he pulled the trigger yet? Squeamishness isn’t a hallmark of Ichirou’s men. Blue Suit’s eyes are moving—Black Suit, Neil, Andrew, kids, doors.

He’s going to kill them all.

That’s why he hasn’t pulled the trigger yet. Once he does, he’ll have to kill all five of them, quick, before anyone can run away. Neil can’t look at Andrew—can’t take his eyes off Blue Suit—can only stand, tense, ready to dive in front of Natalie—she’s only centimeters behind him, if the bullet passes through Neil it’ll hit her, but hopefully not too badly—it’s not a machine gun or anything, just a handgun, unlikely even to pass through Neil in the first place. A vision of Andrew’s dead body flashes in front of Neil’s eyes. If Neil himself gets shot, he can stand for a minute. Andrew’s eyes, flat with death, pale skin. Neil can do this. He can buy Natalie enough time to run—the garage, maybe, or the back door. Andrew will have to take charge of Paige. Dead, Andrew, dead, Neil can smell that particular corpse smell, already in his nose like it never left, feel the way Andrew’s flesh will move, dead, the way his hand will hang limp until rigor mortis sets in, Neil can see the bloodstain on Andrew’s shirt, Andrew’s final movement his blood vacating his body. Maybe not—maybe Neil can rush Blue Suit, maybe he can take the bullets, maybe he won’t have to see Andrew get shot, maybe, maybe, he can’t watch Andrew _die,_ maybe, when to move, when to—

Paige drops her glass.

Blue Suit looks—surprised—checking for the source of the noise.

Neil is fast.

Neil is so, so fast.

He’s holding Natalie’s knife.

Blue Suit is pulling his arm around.

Andrew moves in the corner of Neil’s eye.

Blue Suit’s arm is swinging towards Paige.

Neil throws the knife.

The knife buries itself in Blue Suit’s throat.

The gun

goes off—

fires—

screams—

Neil is running, moving, too late, fast but not faster than a bullet, who screamed? Andrew is standing in front of Paige, Neil grabs him, pats his shoulders, chest, stomach, ribs, waist, is there blood, there is not. There is not. Andrew twists—Natalie is holding Paige, but that’s not enough, Andrew hauls Natalie off of her, kicking and screaming, and Neil drops to the ground beside Paige, looking, “Where?” Shoulders, stomach, ribs, waist, feels nothing. “Where?” He asks. Sees no blood. She doesn’t respond, staring at the broken glass to her right.

“Neil,” Andrew says.

Neil looks up. Follows his gaze to the hole in the wall above the knife block.

The bullet didn’t hit anyone.

Andrew drops Natalie, who grabs Paige again, clinging to her like a limpet. Neil reaches up and takes Andrew’s hand, squeezing, squeezing so hard it hurts. His heart is exploding. It can’t possibly still be beating. He’s going to vomit. He’s going to die. Andrew pulls Neil to his feet, fingernails digging into Neil’s hand, a relief, a reassurance, a kindness.

Neil turns. Black Suit needs to leave. Black Suit needs to be gone, so that Neil can lock the door, can drag his family upstairs, can hold Andrew and pretend that Neil had never envisioned Andrew’s dead body. So that Neil can replay the moment, again and again, as if he’d been too slow. It feels like he was. It feels like he must have been. They must all be dead.

Not now.

Andrew is gripping his hand, fury and fire and terror and relief, and Neil lets him have those emotions. Andrew can feel them for now. Neil Abram Josten doesn’t have those.

He looks at Black Suit, staring at Blue Suit, dead on the floor.

“I’m assuming you’ll be cleaning that up,” Neil says, in a remarkably steady voice. “I don’t know who to call anymore. Also, I believe you owe me a new rug.”

Black Suit flips open a phone and dials a number. Puts the phone to his ear. He doesn’t look at Neil. He speaks in Japanese. Neil catches some words— _dead, clean, lied, only one._ He hangs up. He looks at Neil. “We will clean this up. I’ll assume you were, in fact, paying your dues.”

“I don’t have a death wish,” Neil says.

“That was quite a throw.”

“I know what to do with a knife.”

“You might be on your own, with the rug.”

Neil suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.

“Your wards,” Black Suit says. “They know quite a bit.”

“You came to my house with no warning,” Neil says. “You knew full well they were here. This is not my fault.”

“They could be a problem.”

Rage burns Neil’s stomach from the inside out, sudden and slippery, crawling up his throat, sliding down his veins. “They are not a problem. They will not talk. And I will tell you this: I didn’t kill _him_ for your sake. I killed him for them. You’re welcome to them, if you’re willing to kill me first, and as I’m currently abiding by all your requirements, that seems to me to be a bad idea. You made a mess. Leave it to us to clean it up.”

Black Suit raises an eyebrow. “You forget yourself.”

“I do not.”

“You are risking quite a bit.”

“Everything.”

The front doorknob twists, and the door opens to reveal a cleanup crew. Neil is reasonably certain his neighbors would never view them as such, but Neil knows what they’re there for.

“Lots of people for a cleanup crew,” Neil remarks.

Black Suit looks him in the eye, and tilts his head to one side.

Neil understands. _Only one._ They were around the corner, ready and waiting—not just to clean up Neil, but also to clean up everyone else. They didn’t care that the kids were there, because Natalie and Paige were supposed to die, too. Neil pulls himself up straight, as tall and dangerous as he can look, standing in front of them. _Don’t touch them. You won’t touch them. You can’t touch them._ “I’d love to know what the fuck this guy was hoping to do,” Neil says. _You will get me an explanation_.

“He got uppity,” Black Suit says flatly. “People do that. If I died, he would have been promoted.”

“ _Uppity_ explains why he’d want _you_ dead. It makes no sense to kill us, too,” Neil says. “And it didn’t seem like killing you was part of the plan—not until you started questioning his story. I assume it was him who told you I’d lied? What would he have gotten, in exchange for exposing me?” Even as he says it, his brain hands him the implications. “You have a problem.” He points at Blue Suit. “How much money would it take to convince this guy to tell the Boss to take out an asset who provides as much money—and as little trouble—as I do? To convince him that it’s in his best interest to take out two high-profile names? We’re not doctors or judges, we’re on TV all the goddamn time, and this guy put in the work required to convince you and the Boss that we needed to go. How much money would it take to turn him against the Boss?”

Black Suit narrows his eyes. “What do you know?”

“Maybe nothing,” Neil says, but it’s a lie. Not a lie—just _incorrect_. He tilts his head. Massive amounts of money—that’s how much it would take. Someone who wanted Neil and Andrew dead—and the kids, too, and _that's_ a big tip-off, because there's no reason for it. Killing two foster kids would, if nothing else, bring questions from the adoption agency, questions regarding how they’d ended up in such a dangerous house, and _that_ would lead straight back to the Moriyamas. _Particularly_ given the amount of bullshitting the Moriyamas had done, with regards to Neil and Andrew's time. Killing them was more risk than it was worth, unless it had been part of the deal in the first place.

So, then: Massive amounts of money, a connection to bad people, a desire to kill some children, and, apparently, very little care for how it got done. Whoever was paying didn’t care whether or not Ichirou knew ahead of time that Neil was going to die.

“When you go through his shit,” Neil says slowly, pointing at Blue Suit, confident in the belief that Ichirou will tear this man’s life to shreds, “look for money—or something—from Henry Warren. Or,” he continues, a little louder, partially to hide the noise Paige just made, but partially because it’s occurring to him that Henry might be smart enough not to attach his name to it, “something from Mariana Pagano.”

Black Suit mouths the name _Mariana Pagano_. “What do you know?” He says again, but this time he’s paying attention. He knows something, something Neil doesn’t know.

Neil considers.

Andrew’s dead body flickers in front of his eyes.

Neil considers harder. He can’t slip up yet. “We upset them, on—on September 12th. Warren took his kid out of school on the 17th. There’s your timeline.”

Black Suit waits.

Neil decides against saying anything else, anything that could give away the fact that he knows very little and suspects only a little bit more. He, somehow, has the upper hand, and he’s not willing to lose it. Black Suit had seemed more fixated on Mariana Pagano than on Henry Warren—Neil thinks back to the crystal-clear memory of Mariana’s reaction to violence, the narrowed eyes, the silence, the absolute lack of fear or even shock. Not, he thinks now, trauma—but the reaction that Neil himself used to have, wherein he was used to it. 

Black Suit, apparently unwilling to have a staredown with Neil, removes his jacket and hands it to the nearest person—there’s blood on it. He straightens his shirt cuffs. “We’ll see you in a few months,” he says. “Tax season is coming up.”

Neil nods, and Black Suit walks out the door, and it’s just Neil, Andrew, a corpse, and a five-person cleanup crew, and Henry Warren and Mariana Pagano aren’t enough to distract Neil anymore.

Neil wants desperately to send the girls upstairs. Or downstairs. Someplace where they don’t have to look at the dead body bleeding out on the floor. The concept of having them out of his sight, though, while there are other people in the house, other people who were ready to clean them off the ground, makes his skin crawl.

Instead, he tugs Andrew to stand in front of the girls to block their view, detangles his hand from Andrew’s, and grabs the broom and dustpan. He can’t look at Andrew—if he does, he’ll break. He keeps seeing Andrew dead. Andrew bloody. Andrew with a hole in him. Andrew unfixable. Hit-something-vital Andrew. And as long as he sees that, flashing in front of his eyes, he can sit there in his shattered heart and keep moving. He knows how to keep moving. It’s something he’s very good at. He brushes broken glass into the dustpan, water seeping through his socks. Wet socks is a terrible feeling. It’s just water. It could be worse. It could be soda. But water he doesn’t even have to mop up. He remembers being in the car with his mom, running away from people with guns and knives, talking about the weather. Having wet socks is the worst. On the other hand, the water means he can probably wipe up the last of the glass with a paper towel; he should probably break out the vacuum—don’t want the cats stepping in this—but the water should let him wipe up any dust.

Eventually, he finishes cleaning. “Did you sit in any glass?” he asks Paige.

She stares at him.

“Glass,” he repeats. “Did you sit in it? Stand in it?”

She shakes her head.

“Are you sure?”

She feels the soles of her feet, and nods.

Natalie doesn’t even look up.

Neil heads to the pantry and hunts down the Nutella. He grabs two spoons. He sticks the jar and a spoon in Paige’s hands and gives the other spoon to Natalie. “Eat,” he commands, and after a minute, they do. Maybe it’s not a good idea to give them something they can puke up, but he remembers Bee opening the front door of Nicky’s house, announcing that she’d brought the hot chocolate, Andrew declaring that she thought of everything. And the girls relax a little. They won’t look at the front door, where a long cardboard box holds a body, where a group of men are steadfastly wiping up any blood that seeped through the rug. Natalie sniffles. It takes a second, but Neil realizes that Paige is crying, too—silently. Perfectly silently.

He can’t look at Andrew. He’ll break. He stares instead at the hole where the bullet is. A member of the cleanup crew walks over and digs it out.

“We’ll spackle that,” Neil says.

She ignores him.

Someone puts the cleaned knife on the table in the front hall. The crew lifts the box and carries it out, shutting the door behind them.

“We’re going upstairs,” Natalie says, lifting Paige bodily to her feet, Nutella in hand.

“If you need anything,” Neil says, “let us know.”

They ignore him and go upstairs, avoiding the creaky stair.

Neil locks the front door. He checks again to make sure he did. He walks around to the garage door to lock that one, and locks the back door, and checks all the windows, and shuts all the blinds, and stands there in the kitchen, staring at the countertop. Andrew’s behind him. He should look at Andrew. He can’t look at Andrew. He keeps seeing dead Andrew. Keeps seeing dead Andrew. What if he looks at Andrew, and it’s all he can see? Blood and bone and flat eyes and cold skin—

“Why won’t you look at me?”

“If I touch you,” Neil says, “will that be too much?”

Warm skin meets his palm, and it’s too much, and Neil turns around, and sees Andrew, and breaks. Hands on face, cheeks, neck, shoulders, gasping, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, a hitch in his breath and a choking lump in his throat and blurry vision, gripping flesh that’s firm and warm and bends under his fingers the way a corpse never would, don’t be _dead_ ,

“I’m not,” Andrew says, “I’m not dead.”

Had he said it out loud? He kisses Andrew, needing it, needing to know, and Andrew kisses him back, furiously, ferociously, one hand tight on the back of Neil’s neck, one hand squeezing Neil closer. Neil runs his hands over Andrew’s shoulders, muscular, familiar, _whole_ , runs his fingers through Andrew’s untouched hair; Andrew is grabbing at him, pulling him close, hands tight on Neil’s hips. In Neil’s head, Blue Suit swings his arm around, and Neil doesn’t move, and Blue Suit pulls the trigger, and Neil starts moving, and Andrew hits the ground, and the blood on the floor is his. In Neil’s head, the cleanup crew puts Andrew in a box and takes him away. In Neil’s head, Blue Suit swings his arm around, and Neil doesn’t move, and Blue Suit pulls the trigger, and Neil’s feet are glued to the floor, and Andrew hits the ground. In Neil’s head, they're both perfectly still, Andrew is still because he is dead and Neil is still because he might as well be dead.

“Don’t be dead,” Neil whispers, a prayer, a command. Blue Suit’s arm swings around but Natalie isn’t standing behind Neil, isn’t holding a knife, and Neil has nothing. Andrew. Bullet. Ground. Dead. “ _Don’t be dead._ ”

“I’m alive,” Andrew growls, nips at Neil’s lower lip, kisses Neil’s cheekbone. “Don’t rush men with guns.”

“I didn’t.” Andrew, dead.

“You were going to.”

“One of us had to get out. Had to take the girls and go.” Nonsensical. Andrew in Neil’s head isn’t taking the girls and running, he’s dead, dead, dead.

“Make that person be _you_.”

“No. Absolutely not. I can’t watch you die. I won’t do it.” He’s already doing it, over and over and over again, and he clutches at Andrew, at living Andrew, warm Andrew, Andrew full of all his own blood, Andrew with scars but no open wounds, Andrew alive under Neil’s hands.

Andrew grabs Neil’s face. “ _Don’t die._ ”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t you _dare_.”

“I won’t.”

“I hate you.”

“I love you.” Neil wraps his arms around Andrew’s head, pulling him in, unwilling to let go, unwilling to leave any space between them, unwilling to think. Blue Suit. Trigger. Shot. Dead.

Andrew pulls at Neil, tugs, until Neil wraps his legs around Andrew, strong and sturdy and whole Andrew, Andrew gripping his thighs, and Andrew carries him up the stairs. He steps on the creaky stair. He closes the bedroom door without looking at it, and doesn’t bother locking it. He climbs into bed, still holding Neil, off-balance, falling over, and Neil tugs Andrew on top of him, needy, desperate, incapable of removing his hands from Andrew’s skin, “don’t be dead, I kept seeing you dead, I could see your _face_ —”

Andrew grabs Neil’s chin and stares him down. “I’m alive.”

Neil stares right back, memorizing the way Andrew’s face looks alive, eyes moving, jaw tense, nose flared, looking so painfully beautiful Neil almost has to look away. But he can’t. If he does, Andrew might stop being alive.

Andrew makes a noise, deep and frustrated, and sits up.

Neil lets him go, but Andrew tugs him up, too, a complicated maneuver given Andrew is on top of him, but he accomplishes it. Andrew hauls off his own shirt, and then tugs at Neil’s—Neil removes it without further prompting while Andrew grabs lube from the bedside table, which he then drops beside him. He holds out his arms. Neil should double check. He should make sure that this is okay. Or maybe he should trust Andrew to know where _too far_ is. Or maybe he’s just so desperately relieved when his hands meet the skin above Andrew’s armbands, when he can trail his fingers down Andrew’s arms as he removes the armbands, that to protest would be to pull his own heart out. The feeling of Andrew’s skin under Neil’s hands is therapeutic—it’s so _alive_. Andrew pushes Neil back down, and he’s not even trying to be gentle, and Neil is so grateful that it hurts. He pulls Andrew down with him, arms around his shoulders, their heartbeats matching, living, so alive, Neil wraps his legs around Andrew and holds him close.

“I’m never letting you go,” he murmurs against Andrew’s jaw. “I’m never letting you out of my sight. I can’t even—I can’t even _think_ — _Drew_ —”

“Then don’t,” Andrew says, lifting himself up far enough that he can undo Neil’s pants. “Look at me. I’m not leaving you. Fuck, Neil, I love you, I’m not going anywhere,” he says, leaning down to whisper it in Neil’s ear, kissing Neil’s temple, pulling Neil’s dick out of his pants, Neil wants so badly to close his eyes but he can’t risk losing sight of Andrew. Andrew is rough, but Neil’s happy with that—he can _feel_ , he’s alive, _Andrew_ is alive, death was so close but it didn’t touch them, not today, _euphoria,_ they survived, Andrew survived, Neil survived, the girls survived, they all lived, no bodies on the floor, no one who matters, he drags Andrew’s mouth over to his own, not today, today they won, today they escaped, he moans and Andrew swallows the noise, digs his nails into Andrew’s shoulders and Andrew just jerks him off harder, harder, until—

Andrew takes his hand away.

Neil shoves his face into Andrew’s shoulder and _whines_. He wasn’t _done._ “ _Drew_ —”

Andrew pulls away. Just a little. Neil looks up at him, at Andrew, flushed and panting, eyes all pupil, hair a wreck, _alive_.

“Andrew,” Neil whispers, softly, hoarse, needy, _alive_. “You don’t get to die on me. I won’t let you.”

Andrew curses, softly, and leans down, putting his face in the dip between Neil’s shoulder and his neck, lips on Neil’s racing pulse. His mouth moves up, slowly—Neil strains upwards, looking for friction, but Andrew’s hand is on his stomach, holding him down, and Neil stays, desperate, every inhale a struggle, until Andrew’s mouth makes it to Neil’s ear.

“We have time,” Andrew breathes. “You promised me you’d die of old age. You promised. You’re not allowed to die, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Neil leans into Andrew’s mouth, turns his head, searching, finds Andrew’s lips, tongue, searching for a promise.

“Touch me,” Andrew breathes across Neil’s cheek. “Neil.”

Neil digs a hand into Andrew’s shoulders, wraps an arm around the back of Andrew’s neck, skin-to-skin, a promise, _I’m here, I’m not dead either_.

“No,” Andrew says.

Neil stops, loosens his grip, more painful than when Andrew stopped moving his hand, but Andrew shakes his head. Nudges one of Neil’s arms with his chin. “ _Touch me._ ”

Neil stops.

The rest of the world vanishes.

“Where?”

Andrew stares at him, dark eyes and puffy lips, and says: “Lower.”

“Back or front?”

“Front.”

Neil puts his hands on Andrew’s chest, splayed out, flipping a pinky over a nipple to feel Andrew shift.

“Lower, Neil,” Andrew says.

Neil can’t breathe. He shifts his hands lower, feeling ribs, feeling soft flesh over hard muscles, Andrew’s barrel of a torso an expanse of skin that Neil is eager to map.

Andrew lowers his mouth to Neil’s jaw. “Lower.”

Neil freezes. “Andrew.”

Andrew lifts his face from Neil’s throat. “Yes?”

Neil is so aware of Andrew’s stomach under his hands he can barely think, but this is more important, he knows it is. “Lower than this is your dick.”

Andrew just stares at him.

“Andrew. I need—” _so much_ — “verbal acknowledgement. Is this some mid-mental-breakdown shit? Because I won’t do that. I’m not doing that to you, Drew. I won’t be like them. I won’t let you let me be.”

“Shut up,” Andrew says.

Neil removes his hands and unwraps his legs. “Andrew.”

Andrew sits back on his heels, a distance that Neil feels keenly, all the more so because he initiated it. “Do you not want to?”

The question is a ball on the opposite side of the court, so far away from the intended goal that Neil almost laughs.

But he doesn’t.

“Andrew Minyard, I want to touch you so bad I dream about it sometimes. That’s not the issue. The issue is: we just nearly _died_ , and I’m not going to do something that’ll hurt you.”

“I’m fine,” Andrew says.

“That’s nice. Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes.”

Neil sits up. “How do you want to do this?”

Andrew thinks for a minute, and then pulls Neil in for a kiss and puts Neil’s hand directly on his dick.

That _does_ make Neil laugh, softly, into Andrew’s mouth. “Jesus, Drew,” he murmurs. “Okay. Okay. Should I do some hand stretches first?”

Andrew bites Neil’s lower lip.

Neil grins. He unzips Andrew’s pants. It feels—like he should stop. Like he’s walking into a room he shouldn’t enter. He pauses.

“Neil,” Andrew says, and there’s strain in his voice, and Neil backs off, hands off.

“Sorry, sorry,” he breathes.

Andrew looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. “That is the _wrong_ direction.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “ _Oh_.”

He reaches forward again, leans in to kiss Andrew, and tugs Andrew’s dick out, hard in his hand, already slick. “Are you okay?” He asks.

“Neil Abram Josten, are you waiting for a signed and notarized contract?”

“No,” Neil says, “I’m waiting for you. It’s been ten years. You can’t flip a switch like that.”

“You are a giant hypocrite. You have my consent,” Andrew says, his lube-covered hand on Neil’s thigh, the other finding a handhold in Neil’s hair.

Neil pulls back, grabbing for the lube. It’s been a long time since he was in charge of this. His hands are shaking, he realizes, which is odd. Adrenaline. Adrenaline and the loss thereof, and the way his heart is racing. And then he reaches down and wraps a hand around Andrew’s dick, and Andrew makes a _noise_ , and Neil is the one who made him make that noise, and Neil can’t handle it, leans forward to bite at Andrew’s throat, _feels_ his bodily response, shivers, goosebumps up his arms, presses his cheek against Andrew’s. “Drew,” he whispers, moving his hand, slowly, waiting to be pushed away, waiting for Andrew’s tension to change shape, “Andrew, I want to make you feel the way you make me feel,” he whispers, trying to mimic with his hand what Andrew does, sliding his thumb over the tip, “I want you to feel _good_.”

Neil slides his other hand around Andrew’s wrist as Andrew shivers, the ridges of Andrew’s scars familiar under his fingers, a precautionary measure—if he doesn’t have something to do with that hand, he might start jerking himself off, and this is too important, he has to focus, focus on making sure Andrew’s okay, on making sure he’s _good_. The only sound in the world is Andrew’s breath. Neil ghosts his lips over Andrew’s cheekbone, just under his eye, watching Andrew’s eyelashes flutter. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “You’re so beautiful, my Andrew, I’m so lucky, does this feel good? Is this okay?” He falls into Russian, into German, saying whatever comes into head, questions Andrew doesn’t answer and statements he ignores, except that he’s not ignoring Neil, he’s listening, Neil can tell whenever he says something that makes Andrew feel something, he’s got one hand on Andrew’s dick and one on his pulse, and it’s not a surprise to him when Andrew sinks his head into Neil’s shoulder, shuddering, spasming, silent, and then Neil has one hand he doesn’t really know what to do with.

Andrew’s already rubbed his lube-covered hand all over Neil’s pants, so that’s one option, but denim isn’t really Neil’s preferred material for most things involving semen, so he wipes his hand on his discarded shirt instead. It’s a messy night. He’ll do laundry in the morning. In the morning, he’ll likely still be alive, which is something he hasn’t had to worry about in a long time.

Andrew puts a hand on Neil’s stomach and pushes, and Neil goes—it’s been a long time since Andrew had to kick him out of the bed after sex, but he’s ready to get up if he needs to. But Andrew pushes him down, not away, and follows him, one hand hitting the pillow next to Neil’s head and the other sliding down Neil’s stomach to his dick. Neil sucks in a breath, wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders, pulls him in for a kiss like sunlight falling between the curtains.

“You talk too much,” Andrew mutters.

“You didn’t shut me up,” Neil says, and then he shuts up as Andrew twists his hand, speeds up, rough, Neil wraps his legs around Andrew’s hips, and then that’s it, he’s gone, pressing his forehead into Andrew’s shoulder and trying desperately to be silent as the universe disappears around him.

He opens his eyes again to see Andrew wiping his hand on Neil’s shirt.

“Laundry’s going to be a bitch to do,” Neil says.

Andrew nods.

And then he stands, hauling Neil with him—probably for the best, because otherwise Neil might just have lain there until the end of time, boneless and brainless and exhausted. The adrenaline rush from earlier is gone, and his heart is slowing down, and he feels like nothing, like he’s floating, like the world consists of their house, with its locked doors and windows, the girls safe in one room and himself and Andrew safe in another. Andrew drops his pants, tugs on Neil’s until he pulls them off, and then moves him into the shower, which Neil thinks is excessive. They stand there for a minute, until the water knocks some brains back into Neil, and he moves, soap, shampoo, himself and Andrew, Andrew, who lets Neil put his hands all over him, who lets Neil wash his hair, who closes his eyes and seeks out Neil’s mouth under the hot water.

This is something it had taken Neil a very long time to understand. Functionally, he’d figured it out within a few months—but _understanding_ it had taken time.

He’d thought, for a little while, that it was words that mattered. A verbal yes; verbal jousting; post-medication Andrew not bothering to talk to anyone he judged as not worth his time. _Words_. And words did matter—to Neil, himself, and to Andrew, to an extent.

But with Andrew, words are paper money. The difference between a $1 bill and a $20 bill is nothing, unless it’s backed up by something. Saying _please_ doesn’t matter unless the other party is listening. So it didn’t matter if Neil _said_ he wasn’t a danger to Kevin—until he got in Riko’s face to protect Kevin. Neil could say he wouldn’t run, but it took his scars for Andrew to believe it. Neil could spend hours professing his love and respect for Andrew, and none of it would matter—except that Neil had proven it, time and time again.

It was action that mattered to Andrew, when it came to how he interacted with the world, and he loved in precisely the same way. It occurs to Neil, slowly, a thought fully formed and floating languidly to the surface of his exhausted mind, that he really should have figured out very quickly that Andrew loved him. A key to Nicky’s house was an offer of care—safety, and sanctuary, and Andrew had seen how Neil had held the keys to the Foxhole Court, Andrew had known the key would matter to Neil. Every single cigarette Andrew had ever handed him, unprompted. Andrew’s insistence on Neil’s ownership and use of a cell phone. Post-Evermore, Andrew hunting Neil down at the library, even when no one else had known where he was. Andrew’s care was the surest sign of his love that he could offer. It had spilled out after Neil had been kidnapped; Neil should have figured it out then.

He hadn’t. It had taken years until he’d been able to consciously recognize what he’d instinctively known—that every single moment Andrew had spent caring for Neil was an _I love you_. Andrew had loved Neil far beyond what the words _I love you_ would imply, for far longer than Andrew had been able to say them. Every time Andrew had said _I love you_ , the words had meant less to Andrew than they’d meant to Neil—but Andrew said them precisely _because_ they meant so much to Neil. Andrew’s love called him to take care of Neil; him saying that he loved Neil was, in Andrew’s eyes, an act of care. So Andrew said it. The words were million-dollar bills—meaningless, as far as Andrew was concerned, except that they were so thoroughly, extravagantly, meticulously, rigorously backed up. And so _convenient_. When Neil had no wounds to bandage, no needs to be met, no wants to be fulfilled; when there was no time, or no space; when Andrew felt it, wanted desperately to show it, and could find no outlet—saying _I love you_ was a way for Andrew to care for Neil.

Neil does his level best to show his own love in Andrew’s language. He doesn’t often get the chance—an Andrew that can be cared for is only capable of existing every once in a while, only capable of dropping every single barrier when Neil is there to hold him up and no one else is there to see it happen. Neil wouldn’t have thought it would happen tonight, of all nights, right after nearly dying—but then, maybe allowing Neil to care for Andrew is Andrew’s way of caring for Neil. It’s a gift: this ability to touch Andrew, to know he’s still there, to carefully replace the well-known feeling of a corpse with Andrew’s living body, warm and soft with a beating heart.

So Neil washes Andrew, washes himself, and does his level best to take care of Andrew, who must be more exhausted than Neil. Andrew’s night didn’t end when the clean-up crew left. Neil tries to say how much he loves Andrew by being gentle, by making sure Andrew is comfortable, by making sure he feels safe, even naked, even though he’s not alone. And when he’s done, he kisses Andrew’s forehead.

Andrew opens his eyes and looks at Neil.

“I love you,” Neil whispers. He knows the words don’t mean for Andrew what they mean for Neil, but he likes saying it. He likes knowing that Andrew will remember it forever. He wants to say it forever, until Andrew has a storage vault in his head consisting of sound clips of Neil saying he loves Andrew.

Andrew curves a hand around Neil’s cheek. “I love you, too.”

Neil grins, gooey.

He gets them both out of the shower and dressed, shivering with cold and creeping exhaustion. And when he crawls into bed with Andrew, Andrew tugs Neil over, one arm under the pillow under Neil’s head, the other holding Neil’s hand, and Neil falls asleep almost immediately.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House visits!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was shooting the shit in the comments with a couple people and they went and made some awesome shit about it!!! please check out [Willow_Bird's take on Natalie's first date](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25321891) and [Shironaii/Syrren's take on andrew hugs](https://syrren.tumblr.com/post/623858027694637056/please-read-blame-it-on-my-youth-by) because both are EXTREMELY good
> 
> also I am again sticking the disclaimer up here tht I know 1 thing about the foster/adoption system and literally everything else is made up. i know most of this is bullshit but it's also dramatic, and I rely on drama to survive

Neil and Andrew are downstairs before the kids are.

They debate making sure the kids are even awake, but—if they don’t want to get up today, if they don’t want to go to school, that’s fine. Neil and Andrew are considering not going to work.

Neil goes over the front hall inch by inch, looking for any blood—none. No rug, either, but no blood. Even the grout between the tiles is clean. Possibly, it’s cleaner than it’s ever been.

The cats come downstairs, and thoroughly inspect the front hall, which is clearly of intense interest to them. And then they turn up their noses at it, in favor of food, which Andrew gives them.

And then the girls are downstairs, in their school uniforms.

Neil looks at them, but they don’t stop—they drop their bags by the door, very determinedly not looking at where the rug used to be, and join Neil and Andrew in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says.

The girls look at him. He had expected a lot; he had prepared for a wide range of outcomes. He had _not_ prepared for the look of flat surprise on their faces.

“We promised to keep you safe,” Neil says. “We didn’t. And I can’t guarantee—clearly, I can’t guarantee much of anything at all. I can’t even keep the fucking house safe. If you—if you want us to call off the house visits, we will. You don’t have to go to school today, but I understand if you can’t handle being in the house. We can call Harmony and ask her to transfer you to a different house. I fucked up, and we’re not going to make you stay here if you can’t be.”

It’s a moment before either of them can speak, staring at him with scrunched together eyebrows and twisted mouths.

“Why do you keep thinking we’re going to run out?” Paige asks. “Why—what do you _mean,_ you can’t keep us safe? I—you—last night, you killed a guy, and saved our lives. Where are we going to find parents who will stand up to the mafia for us? I mean. I don’t—I—I don’t feel _great_. I feel like shit. I keep seeing his _body_ and, and, and you said Henry Warren, this has nothing to do with _you_ , this is because of me, it’s because I wouldn’t just accept—I—”

“ _You_?” Natalie says, voice jumping an octave. “I’m the one who punched Justin, it’s not—I knew what I should’ve done and I shouldn’t have been violent and I—”

“Stop,” Andrew says, sharp and loud, and Natalie and Paige both stop. “This isn’t on you. _This isn’t on you_. It’s not on either of you. It’s not on anyone but Henry Warren. Or his wife. Neither of you did anything wrong; if Henry wanted to fight me, he should’ve sued. Nothing any of us did earned a fucking call to the mafia. And this is assuming Neil is even right, that this is Henry’s fault—it could’ve been someone else. It could’ve had nothing to do with you. Understand?”

Andrew stares them down until they both nod.

“I have a therapist. Her name is Betsy. Do either of you want to see her?”

Silence.

Andrew shrugs. “If you decide you want to, let me know. The offer’s on the table. If you want to see a different therapist, we’ll find you one you like. If you want to talk to me or Neil, we’re here. Yes?”

Silence.

“Yes?” Andrew prompts.

Nods.

“Are you staying or do you want to go?”

“Staying,” they both say immediately. “But going to school,” Natalie adds. “We’re good kids these days.”

“You don’t have to,” Neil says. “I know we’ve said it before, but you don’t have to. If—after last night—if you want to take a day off, you’ve earned it. If you want us to stay home with you, we will. And I—I’m so sorry. I am one-hundred percent serious. If you want to leave, I’ll do everything in my power to—”

“Shut up,” Natalie says. “And fuck off.”

“No. This isn’t something we did ten years ago. This is you, in danger, and, somehow, _more_ traumatized than you were when you got here, and _we can’t keep you safe—_ ”

“Oh, fuck off,” Natalie says, furious. “What the _fuck_ are you talking about? That is _exactly_ what you did! That is, expressly, by _definition_ , what you _did_! There was a guy with a gun and I thought we were all going to die and then you killed him and _kept us safe_. That’s, just, _explicitly_ what you did. I mean, what are you going to do, make sure nothing bad ever enters our field of vision? Fuck you! Our lives were shitty! There’s no adult that’s going to manage to keep all bad things out forever! It’s just not going to happen!”

“Sure, but most _bad things_ aren’t yakuza pointing guns at you. How well did you sleep last night, Natalie? How about Paige? This isn’t—”

Natalie jabs a finger in his face. “Pretty shitty, pops! I slept pretty shitty. So did Paige. But when I _did_ fall asleep, it’s because I was thinking about how if anything happened, you’d make sure we survived, not about how we’d wake up and come downstairs and you’d try, _again_ , to talk us into _leaving_!”

“Look,” Neil says, trying a different angle. “I saw my dad kill a guy, when I was a kid, and I know it’s not a confidence-inducing—”

“Was that man trying to kill you?” Natalie asks.

“No, but that’s not—”

“ _Context_ ,” Natalie says triumphantly. “You keep talking about context, so fucking put it in context! Your dad was bad, and he was trying to scare you, and he killed a guy because of those things. You killed a guy because otherwise, he’d have killed us! The two things are different! And anyway, I watched Andrew literally step in front of a loaded gun for Paige, you think I’m going to let you talk her out of this house?”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Paige asks, annoyed.

“No,” Natalie snaps.

“Yes,” Neil says. “Yes, you do, I’m not going to force you to stay if—”

“Oh, no, I’m staying,” Paige interrupts. “I just want it on record that I’m staying by choice, not because Nat is making me.”

Neil throws up his hands and looks to Andrew, but Andrew just gives him a raised eyebrow that says: _She’s right_.

“All I’m saying,” Neil tries, “is to just—maybe we’ll have another bunch of mafia-free years, and this will never come up again, and—”

“Neil,” Andrew says. “Remember when the FBI brought you back to us, and you couldn’t figure out why on earth we’d want you to stay, because you’d put us all in danger? And we told you to shut the fuck up, because you were a Fox, and one of us?”

“You were all adults,” Neil says.

“Kids aren’t stupid.”

“And we’re not _really_ kids,” Natalie wheedles, “we’re teenagers. Are you going to kick us out, pops? Are you going to put us on the streets because you feel guilty?”

Neil looks at Paige, who crosses her arms. “You promised,” she says.

Neil takes a deep breath, and swallows back all his many, many objections.

He sounds like the feds. He sounds like Browning.

But they’re _kids_.

He just wants them to have a normal childhood. A safe one, where they don’t have to be constantly looking over their shoulders, terrified.

But they won’t even step on the creaky fucking stair. They’ve been here two and a half weeks, and they already look physically healthier, and Natalie’s less angry, and Paige _talks_ , and, also, Natalie called him _pops_ , a few minutes back.

Neil sighs. Where’s the guidebook for this? Maybe the guidebook is just Wymack, happy to have Neil stay on the team even when the rest of his team was sitting there, bruised and battered, entirely due to Neil’s presence. “You will tell me,” he says, “if you need anything. Therapy. A chat. Nutella. Whatever.”

“Well, yeah,” Natalie says.

Paige nods.

“All right then, daughters of mine. What do you want for breakfast?”

“Eggs?” Paige suggests tentatively.

Neil pulls out mushrooms and tomatoes; Andrew pulls out the eggs. Neil’s eyes catch movement in the corner.

He _could_.

But, Christ, he doesn’t _want_ to.

Smoothly, as though they’d discussed it beforehand, he slides the knife into Andrew’s hand and takes the eggs from him. Andrew, without protest, begins chopping veggies; Neil cracks eggs into the pan; Paige pours orange juice; Natalie starts the toaster up. If it weren’t for the fact that their front hallway was missing a rug due to too much blood, it would be a lovely morning.

“Hey, Drew?” Neil says casually, with two eggs in the pan and another several on the way. He glances over, and knows he’s got Andrew’s attention. “I think there’s a spider in the corner, over there,” he says, pointing his chin in the appropriate direction.

Andrew stops chopping. “And?”

“Well, there’s a bug in our house, maybe you could kill it?”

“Why don’t _you_ kill it?”

“Well, I _could_ ,” Neil says, lifting his hands in supplication, “but I have egg on my hands.”

Andrew’s eyes perform a small roll, but he grabs the corner of a paper towel and a kitchen chair and drags it over to the offending corner. “Big bad killer gangster boy,” he mutters. “Can’t handle spiders.” He stands on the chair and squashes the spider. His shirt pulls up a little bit as he reaches up, and Neil examines the inch of skin he sees.

Spiders have perks, apparently.

“I _could_ kill it,” Neil stresses. “I just have egg on my hands.”

“All right, Pinocchio.”

“Look,” Neil says, pointing a fork at Andrew, “talk to me when stinkbug season comes around.”

“So you can handle stinkbugs,” Paige says slowly, “but not _spiders_?”

“I can handle spiders,” Neil insists. “I just prefer _not_ to.”

“It’s how I knew we were soulmates,” Andrew says. Neil grins at the frying pan. “Our bug lists don’t overlap at _all_.”

“Your _what_?” Natalie asks, face lighting up.

“Bug lists,” Andrew says. He tosses his chopped vegetables into the pan, and turns to Natalie. “I can handle spiders, mosquitoes, crickets, and flies. Neil can handle stink bugs, cicadas, wasps, and horse flies. No overlap. If a bug gets in the house, one of us will be able to kill it. Soulmates.”

“You can handle flies… but not horse flies?” Paige asks.

“That’s what I said.” He holds up a finger. “Horse flies are _not_ just big flies. They’re aggressive and they bite, and that is some bullshit up with which I will not put.”

“That sentence structure was scarier than any of the bugs you just listed,” Natalie accuses.

“It was grammatically correct,” Andrew says.

“So you kill _crickets_? They’re good luck,” Paige says.

“They’re bugs,” Neil answers, pushing egg and veggie around in the pan.

“Where’s the basic respect for life?”

Neil turns to look at her.

“Oh. Well. Still.”

They eat their breakfast.

When Andrew’s done, he gets up and heads into the garage. The cats sit, waiting patiently, for him to get back inside; when he comes back in, holding a screw and a screwdriver, they vanish, unwilling to have been seen waiting for him.

Andrew sticks the end of the screw into the bullet hole above the knife block and screws it in—there’s a stud there, Neil knows now. And then Andrew hangs Dan’s picture on the end of it. He steps back, examining his work, and repositions the knife block, just a half inch, so it’s centered under the picture. He returns the screwdriver to the garage, and then takes his seat.

“No spackling,” he says in response to Neil’s glance.

The kids have no complaints.

Neil and Andrew walk the kids to the bus stop.

They hadn’t discussed it beforehand, but the girls don’t protest. Neil and Andrew get a couple curious glances, but no one talks to them, and they’re fine with that. Natalie and Paige exchange some nods and hellos, and then every kid at the bus stop goes back to looking at their phones. Neil identifies his predominant emotion as envy: _He_ didn’t get to ignore awkward situations by playing Tetris, when he was growing up. He just had to stew in them.

The bus picks the kids up, and Neil can’t help but double-check the face of the bus driver: The same person as it was last time Neil walked the kids to the bus, and still no one Neil recognizes.

They go to practice, and Neil ruins Kevin’s morning—and, possibly, his whole day—by recounting the previous evening. Kevin goes pale, puts his head against the locker, curses in French and Japanese, and then straightens. “How are the kids? Have they run away yet?”

“They’re insisting on staying,” Neil says.

Kevin looks at Andrew, but Andrew’s French is limited at best, and he just stares back. “That’s ridiculous,” Kevin says. “If _they_ showed up on _my_ doorstep, I’d probably kick Thea and John out, for a solid year. Thea wouldn’t even argue. The kids can’t _stay_. It’s dangerous.”

“I tried,” Neil says. “It just pissed everyone off.”

“Stop talking about depressing things,” Riley calls from the other side of the locker room.

“You don’t speak French, you don’t know what we’re saying,” Neil calls back.

“No,” she says, walking towards them, “but I speak _Neil_ , and you are _always_ a downer, and I have a vague understanding of body language, and watching Kevin turn white and then smash his head into the locker is pretty fucking clear.”

Kevin shakes his head. “They’re both fucked-up, terrible people,” he tells Riley.

“Thanks,” Neil says. “Ready to train?”

“It’s all that’s holding me together.”

“You have a wife and kid.”

“Probably a mistake on my part. I mean,” he says, switching into French, “How are the kids taking it? They can’t—I mean.” He starts messing with his wedding ring, these days a sure sign he’s in need of comfort. “I would, legitimately, make Thea take John and _leave_. And she’d _go_. Because John would be _so_ fucked up.”

“They yelled at me for asking them if they wanted to go. I’m serious. I told them they should consider going literally anywhere else and Natalie cursed me out.”

“And Andrew?”

Andrew perks up at the sound of his name.

“Told me to shut up and listen to them.”

“Let’s go,” Clark says, circling a finger in the air as he heads for the court. “Can’t chat forever!”

So they go.

At the end of the day, Kevin tries to snag Neil while he puts on his makeup.

“Can’t talk,” Neil protests, working fast, doing his level best to keep it neat. It’s a nice day out, but he’s got long sleeves on anyway; he doesn’t want anyone from the adoption agency to see his scars. “We have people from the adoption agency coming to the house to talk to the kids.” It’s not _really_ a lie.

He sees half the locker room pop up, ears wide open and interested, and almost vomits on the spot. They’re all going to ask about this tomorrow, and they’ve got a nice long flight tomorrow, and—“Kevin, sorry, call me later, okay? Or don’t. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Maybe we should ask Abby to pick the kids up early tomorrow,” Neil says as they get into the car. “While we’re still home. I don’t want them answering the door.”

“Don’t,” Andrew says. “Don’t start. We’ll ask Abby to call them when she gets there.”

“What if someone comes by after we leave? It’s not hard to figure out our schedule. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out if the kids leave with us.”

“Neil.” Andrew squeezes his hand. “If you keep going, we’re going to end up quitting our jobs and pulling the kids out of school and hiding in the basement for the rest of our lives.”

Neil breathes. “Maybe we should get a gun.”

“Not a good idea.”

“I know.”

“Guns are dangerous.”

“I know.”

“Now’s a good time to pull out your _they’re just kids_ line.”

“I know.”

“Bee’s got open slots, if you need her.”

“I know.”

Andrew brings the back of Neil’s hand to his mouth. “How are you doing? You killed someone, yesterday.”

“I mean—are you asking me if that bothers me?” Neil asks, all anxiety derailed by confusion.

Andrew glances at him and snorts. “Sometimes, I’m almost convinced that we’re making progress towards being normal human beings. And then I watch you kill a guy and, instead of being nervous about being married to a killer, I’m worried about you, and you’re shocked about it.”

“I didn’t kill anyone who _matters_ ,” Neil says scornfully.

“Your mental health is nonexistent.”

“So is yours.”

Andrew tilts his head side to side, an acknowledgment. “Mm. But: Were I to kill someone these days, I might feel—”

Neil waits.

A moment passes.

Neil grins. “You’d feel what? Remorseful?”

“I might feel something, at all.”

“ _Would_ you?”

“I mean, probably anger.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Are you angry?”

Neil opens his mouth to say _yes_ , and is shocked to find that, by and large, the answer is _no_. “I am riddled with hatred for the Moriyamas,” he says.

Andrew raises an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, so maybe I have a skewed emotional response to murder. But I wasn’t expecting it.”

“If you’d been expecting it, would you have had time to prepare a proper emotional response?”

“Sure. I probably wouldn’t have bothered, though. I’ve got better things to do.”

They pull into the driveway, which is empty—they’re two minutes early. Andrew uses the extra time to give Neil a long, accusatory look.

“If I ever kill someone who matters, we can talk,” Neil says.

“Who decides who matters?”

“Usually, if they’re trying to kill me or my family members, they don’t matter.”

“That’s a useful criterion.”

“Thanks.”

“Yes or no?”

Neil leans in, kisses Andrew, and then gets out of the car as another car pulls into the driveway behind them. The people in the car wave, and Neil waves back. He doesn’t recognize them.

The agents get out of the car, smiles on and hands out for shaking. Neil shakes hands with them and smiles back; Andrew does neither of those things.

“I’m Neil Josten,” Neil says.

“Andrew Minyard.”

“Grant Eton,” the man says.

“Dr. Lily Graves,” the woman says. “It’s nice to meet you. I guess the kids are inside?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, leading the way inside, Andrew bringing up the rear.

The kids are inside, and are safe, which drains more tension out of Neil’s body than he’d realized he’d been holding.

They are not, however, in casual clothing, laying on the floor with the cats; nor are they in sweatpants, sprawled across the couch. They’re still in their school uniforms, and are sitting at the kitchen table, history books open, and they jump up when they see their guests.

“Hi,” Paige says, smiling, nervous. “I’m Paige.”

“Hi, Paige,” Lily says, stretching out a hand. All involved introduce themselves, although Natalie doesn’t look happy about it. “Getting an early start on your homework?”

“Neil and Andrew’s friend Kevin came over last night and taught us our history homework for, like, the next week,” Paige says.

“Is your history teacher bad?”

“No, no,” Paige says quickly. “Just—kind of boring. And Kevin is really into this stuff, he made it interesting. He says it’s stupid that we’re taught history geographically—it means we end up with no global context for anything that happens. He also thinks it’s stupid that we learn history based on wars and economics. He says it gives us a shitty view of humans.”

“That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Do you find it confusing to learn about history in different ways like that?”

“Not really,” Paige says. “It’s just a different point of view. It puts American history into perspective.”

“Kevin sounds like an interesting man.”

Paige shrugs.

“Shall we get this show on the road?” Grant asks with a grin. “I guess we’ll start with the easy stuff—Neil, Andrew, we’ve performed background checks on you, and determined that we need more information; we’ve asked character witnesses to come over, to that end. We found and checked your financial records, which were fine; you, Neil, are a very charitable man. Your house, we already knew was up to code. Must’ve had some odd glitch somewhere in the system—we haven’t found it yet.”

“Odd,” Neil says lightly.

“Very,” Grant agrees. “So, that taken care of, and given neither character witness is here yet, we’ll talk to the kids first. We’ll need someplace closed off—someplace where we don’t have to worry about being overheard.”

“You could—use the porch?” Neil suggests. “Or we could just go upstairs until you’re done?”

“It’s gorgeous out today,” Lily says, “and we’re not going to get many more days like this before winter sets in. We can do the porch. Which one of you would like to go first?” She asks, looking between the kids.

They freeze.

“We have to do this separately?” Paige asks.

“Yes—otherwise one kid could police the other, or report back to the foster parents,” Grant explains. “It’s policy.”

“I don’t want to do it separately,” Paige says, eyes flicking between Lily and Grant, getting more tense by the second. Natalie reaches out and grabs her hand.

“I don’t see why they can’t do the interview together,” Neil says, crossing his arms to stop himself from reaching out. “You’ll do better if you bring them in together. If they’re stressed, it won’t be a good conversation regardless.”

“It’s policy,” Grant says again. “We’re not asking anything difficult. There’s nothing to be stressed about,” he says. He’s aiming to reassure, but Natalie gets angrier and Paige gets smaller, and there’s no way this is going to work.

Neil opens his mouth to suggest—what? Could they do it virtually? Maybe just to argue—

“Paige,” Andrew says.

She looks at him. He crooks a finger at her, beckoning, and she lets go of Natalie’s hand to come stand in front of him.

“Roll up your sleeves.”

She does, looking more confused than stressed now, and Neil has a sudden thought that—no. That would be ridiculous. It would probably work. But not for Andrew.

Andrew holds his arms out straight in front of him—not for a hug, though, and he raises an eyebrow at Paige, who, tilting her head to one side, copies the motion. Andrew’s wearing long sleeves, Neil notes, which is at least a little bit comforting, because he’s rapidly concluding that he’s right about what Andrew’s about to do.

Between the speed at which Andrew moves and the fact that Paige’s body is in the way, Neil is reasonably certain that the agents can’t see that Andrew’s armbands aren’t as floppy as cloth should be, as he pulls them off and shimmies them onto Paige’s forearms.

Andrew crosses his arms over his chest—his sleeves may be covering his wrists, but Neil knows full well the terror of exposure, remembers the first time Nicky had handed him new clothes for Eden’s—the fact that the clothes fit so well had been a source of anxiety for Neil, because what if someone could see his scars through the shirt?

Paige looks at the armbands. Turns her arms until they’re wrists up—the black cloth hides the smooth lines of the knives, but Neil knows where they are.

And then Paige laughs, light and relieved, and takes a deep breath, shoulders falling back. She lets her arms fall. “Okay. Okay. Yeah. I’ll go first?” She says, turning to look at Natalie.

“Okay,” Natalie says.

“Yell if you need us,” Neil says.

“Yup,” Paige says, leading the way out to the back porch.

As soon as they hear the back door shut, Andrew turns and puts his forehead on Neil’s shoulder. Neil can hear his breathing, harsh and fast, three seconds away from panic, and wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders, puts one hand in his hair.

“What’s wrong?” Natalie asks. “Is it—the same thing as the first couple days we were here?”

“Strangers in the house,” Neil murmurs, “Andrew’s been holding us all together while we’ve spent the past week panicking, and now he’s got no armbands.” Neil measures out each breath, trying to make them something calm that Andrew can match. It’s his turn to hold Andrew up, his turn to be a pillar for Andrew to lean on. He can do that.

“Is there anything I can do?” Natalie asks. “To help?”

Neil shakes his head, but he holds a hand out to her, and she steps forward and takes it, leaning against Neil’s free shoulder.

“Thanks for giving her the bands,” Natalie says quietly.

Andrew doesn’t respond, but Natalie doesn’t seem offended.

“I want to learn how to throw knives,” Natalie says. Quietly. Listening for the sound of the porch door, listening for the sound of Paige in trouble. “I know you said it’s not useful. But it was. And I don’t—I’m not worried about having to—fight a war. I’m not looking to get in group fights. But if I have to fight, I’d rather be able to do it at a distance.”

“I don’t know anyone who could teach you.”

“Who taught _you_?”

“She’s dead, and if she was still alive, I’d kill her before I let her get within a hundred miles of you.”

“She couldn’t have been _that_ bad.”

Natalie’s holding his hand, so it’s a tough thing to do, but he turns his arm towards her. Tilts his head so she can see his face. His scars may be covered, but she flinches—she understands what he’s pointing out.

“ _You_ could teach me.”

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re not a teacher. But, like, it’s bullshit. I don’t know if you could teach anyone and everyone, but it works for me. When you teach me math, I get it. Paige and I are better at German than anyone else in our class. And if you don’t teach me, I’ll teach _myself_ , and you’ll _hate_ that.”

“Are you threatening me?” Neil asks, amused. He can’t hear Andrew’s breath anymore, but he can feel it, slow and steady, calm; no strangers are looking at him, and Bee is on her way. All he hears from the porch is an unintelligible murmur; nothing to suggest that Paige is in trouble, nothing to suggest that anyone’s realized she’s got knives on her.

“Maybe. Yes.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“So is that a yes?”

“It’s an I’ll think about it.”

Natalie pulls in a breath to argue, but lets it out unused.

Neil remembers Andrew’s speech about consent and smiles to himself.

A few minutes later they hear the porch door open and they separate, Andrew and Natalie crossing their arms in identical motions that Neil instinctively wants to mirror. He sticks his hands in his pockets instead.

Paige sails into the kitchen, calm-cool-collected, and says: “What’s with the bubbles on the porch?”

“Andrew and I used to smoke,” Neil says as Grant and Lily enter the room. Paige turns to Natalie, and then twists to look at Andrew. “A few years ago, we decided it was time to quit.” Andrew nods, and Natalie holds out her arms. “Bee suggested that we take up blowing bubbles as an alternative.”

“Why not nicotine patches?” Paige asks, carefully hiding the details of the armband transfer.

“It wasn’t the nicotine we missed, for the most part. It was the movement. Having something to do with your hands, having a reminder to inhale and exhale. Blowing bubbles is about the same, and a lot prettier.”

“How many times did it take?”

“Did what take?”

“Like, did you relapse?”

“No. We’re good at quitting.” A junkie he may be, but it was never for nicotine. 

“Oh.”

Natalie pulls her sleeves down over the armbands. “My turn?”

“You’re who we came in to get,” Lily says cheerfully, and they follow Natalie out of the kitchen. Neil listens to the porch door open and close.

“Well, that was all okay,” Paige says. “They just asked easy stuff. Have either of you ever hit me? Have I been punished? Do I feel safe here?” She sighs and heads for Neil. She takes his hand, puts it around her shoulders, and leans against his side. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Neil snorts. “Thanks for the encouragement.”

“No problem. Hey Andrew?”

Andrew looks at her.

“Thanks for the armbands. They made me feel better.”

He tilts his head in acknowledgment.

They stand there in silence. Paige plays a word game on her phone. Neil points out the answer when she gets stuck, three minutes in, which piques Andrew’s interest; he comes to stand on her other side. Paige tilts the screen so he can see from half a foot away. She doesn’t tell him to scoot closer, or ask why he’s standing so far away, and Neil’s not sure what miracle led to Andrew and himself picking Natalie and Paige, but, Christ, they got good kids.

Eventually, the porch door creaks open, and Natalie enters the kitchen, armbands first. She hands them over, and Andrew turns around to slide them back on his arms.

“Great!” Lily says. “Now we just have to talk to you two, Neil and Andrew. And your character witnesses.”

Andrew checks the clock, takes out two mugs, and starts making hot chocolate.

“Who are the character witnesses?” Paige asks.

“Dr. Betsy Dobson and Agent Browning,” Grant says.

Andrew looks up at that.

“Browning?” Neil says. “He’s coming _here_? Why?”

“Agent? Agent of what?” Paige asks.

“He was the FBI agent who dealt with me,” Neil says. “When they hauled me out of my dad’s house.”

“Why is _he_ the character witness?” Paige asks. “Why not one of Neil’s friends, or something? Someone he sees on a regular basis?”

“Neil’s background check,” Grant says carefully, “shouldn’t have just required an all-clear from the FBI—it should have meant an in-person meeting with an agent. Also, it seems no one ever met Andrew, let alone spoke to Dr. Dobson, and the application shouldn’t have gone through without that. We’re not certain why these steps were skipped, but we’re glad we caught them as quickly as we did.”

“An oversight,” Neil comments blandly. He wonders how much it had cost, to pay off the agency’s employees. No in-person meeting with an agent; no in-depth look into their backgrounds. Neil is almost certain that whoever looked at their financial statements hadn’t actually looked at their financial statements, at all, although nothing there would ring alarm bells, not the way a quick google search would. And then, of course, the careful mixup. Something that would be guaranteed to be noticed. What would’ve happened if Natalie and Paige had needed to switch houses? What about at the end of the month, when they’d been awaiting a caseworker meeting? Someone would’ve noticed, and then—well, this. It would’ve been plenty easy to just fix their records, to keep them in the system. Neil remembers the blue-suited man, dead on the floor, so willing to kill two kids.

“When we say _character witnesses_ ,” Grant continues, finally getting to the crux of the problem, “we don’t mean—who can tell us how good a friend Neil is, or something like that. We mean that we need people who can speak to Neil and Andrew’s actual pasts, and their suitability as foster parents.”

The doorbell rings, and Neil is shocked that no one jumps. He pats Paige’s shoulder, takes his arm back, and goes to answer the door, fully aware of Andrew’s eyes on his back, of Natalie and Paige waiting. Nothing’s going to happen. No one would do something in broad daylight with extra cars in the driveway.

He opens the door.

It’s Bee.

“Hi, Neil,” she says, a warm smile already in place.

“Hi, Bee,” Neil says, stepping back to let her in. He glances out the door—no sign of another car, Browning’s or otherwise. He shuts the door and turns around in time to see Andrew pass Bee a cup of hot chocolate.

“Thanks, Andrew! Is this the dark chocolate? You know me so well. Hi, all!”

Neil heads to the garage to grab more chairs. There’s only six at the kitchen table.

Bee is making small talk with the girls, who seem perfectly willing to show off their broken German to her—it’s not half bad, actually. He’s reasonably certain Bee understands none of it, but that doesn’t seem to bother her.

The doorbell rings again, Neil does his _please don’t be Henry Warren with a gun_ prayer, and when he opens the door, it’s Browning.

“Neil,” he says.

Neil waves him inside, extremely conscious of the lack of a rug, like maybe Browning will know there used to be one, like maybe he can smell the yakuza. “Surprised you’d come all this way.”

“Making a weekend out of it,” he says, heading into the kitchen. “This is just a pitstop on the way to see my daughter in Florida. Hi, people. Oh. Are you Betsy Dobson?”

“Does my reputation proceed me?” She asks.

“No—I remember seeing your picture, way back when we were doing background checks on Andrew,” Browning says.

“Why were you doing background checks on Andrew?” Paige asks.

“Considering putting him in witness protection. You must be one of the kids.”

“Why were you putting him in witness protection?” Neil asks.

“You know how zoos give cheetahs dogs to keep them calm?” Andrew asks. “I was the dog, you were the cheetah. Stick me in witness protection, and maybe you’d follow.”

“Oh. So you _did_ know,” Browning says.

Neil frowns. “What?”

Andrew looks at Neil. “They wanted you in witness protection, and they thought that if they could get me to agree to go, you’d agree to stay with me. I did my best to tell them to fuck off. If they’d made me choose between you and Kevin, I might’ve chosen you, and I didn’t really want to find out.”

“My greatest failure,” Browning says. “Couldn’t get a couple kids to accept witness protection. Most adults jump at the chance, and here’s you two idiots, fighting me every step of the way, putting some _ridiculously_ important testimony at risk.”

“Sorry,” Neil says blandly.

“Well, it all turned out just fine, right?” Paige says. “I mean, nothing happened.”

“It only turned out fine because the two of them are crazy,” Browning says, digging through the pantry.

“Can I—get you something?” Neil asks, watching Browning examine a box of Triscuits.

“Nah, I—oh, damn, birthday cake poptarts? You can’t get these just whenever,” he says, pulling out a packet.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew sips his hot chocolate.

“Those are Andrew’s,” Neil says.

“I’m about to fix this whole mixup and get you two a couple kids. I think I’m owed some poptarts.”

“What do you mean?” Paige asks, not to be distracted. “That they’re crazy? I mean, aside from the obvious.”

“The obvious?” Grant asks.

Paige waves him off.

Browning, halfway through a bite of poptart, says, “Oh, they killed two people we were hoping to get on the stand.”

Paige and Natalie look at Neil expectantly.

“We’ve got guests,” Neil says, aiming a glare in Browning’s direction. He doesn’t seem to notice, let alone care.

“And we’re listening,” Lily says.

Paige and Natalie give Neil raised eyebrows. Browning gestures vague permission in Neil’s direction.

“I don’t think this is an appropriate topic of conversation,” Neil says, pointedly.

“Oh, I do,” Lily says.

“Hey, it’s a good litmus test,” Browning says, shaking some crumbs into the poptart packet. “If the kids run away screaming, at least you found out early on. If they don’t, they belong here.”

“Look—“

“The kids could leave,” Lily says brightly. “Certainly, I understand why you’d be unwilling to tell them.”

“Oh, no, we’re staying,” Paige says. “I mean, it’s not like it was _bad_ , right? Otherwise, the FBI would’ve stopped you from becoming foster parents, right?”

“It was self-defense,” Browning agrees. “Go ahead, Neil, tell them the story of the testimony you stole from me.”

Neil grits his teeth, and then gives up. There’s no walking this one back, anyway. “Andrew and I went to see a movie—late, on a Thursday night, a couple months after I spoke to the FBI. We were just about the only ones there. And when we got out, there were all of three cars in the parking lot: us, some employee, and another car parked a spot away from us. Set off all kinds of alarm bells for both of us,” Neil says, remembering the glance Andrew had shot it, the way he’d run his hands over his knives. “And we get there, and—okay. So my dad had these guys, Romero and Jackson—they were never apart, and they were almost always with Romero’s sister, Lola. She’s—” he holds up his arms. Natalie and Paige grimace. “They were the ones who kidnapped me, way back when. And we get to the car, and who’s that leaning out the passenger window but Romero himself with a gun?

“He got off two shots before Andrew broke his wrist, kicked the gun my way, and then dragged Romero out the window. I shot Jackson, and—Andrew took care of Romero,” he says, deciding not to go into details. They don’t need to know about the shot to Jackson’s throat and the two shots to the head; they don’t need to know about Neil looking down, seeing all the blood, and the fear, the terror, the Andrew-broken-dead Neil had seen flashing in front of his eyes before he’d realized that the blood was Romero’s. They certainly don’t need to know about any of the gore. Gunshots aren’t often considered clean, but Andrew had been wearing steel-toed boots, he’d had his knives, and he’d had his fists, and compared to Romero, Jackson had been nothing short of pristine. “I called Browning. He sent some paramedics our way. They pronounced both Jackson and Romero dead on the scene.”

“Cool,” Natalie says.

“That’s probably not the right reaction,” Neil suggests.

“Fuck off.”

Neil shrugs.

“Are you sure they’re not yours?” Browning asks. “Biologically, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “We’re sure.”

“That one’s got your attitude.”

“We know. And her name’s Natalie.”

“I know,” Browning says. “Now, to be fair, I _don’t_ know these guys,” he says, indicating Grant and Lily. They open their mouths to introduce themselves, but Browning waves them off. “I also don’t care.”

“This didn’t come up when we googled you,” Natalie accuses.

“We kept it on the down-low,” Browning says. “No reporting necessary, no cops involved. Paramedics weren’t told shit. Neil knows how to keep his mouth shut, and Andrew barely spoke at all, so it never got out. And it’s going to stay that way,” he says, giving Natalie and Paige a look.

“We’re not snitches,” Paige says indignantly.

“I have concerns,” Grant says. “Lots of them.”

“Do you, now,” Browning says.

“I don’t,” Bee says, drawing raised eyebrows from Grant and Lily and triumphant looks from Paige and Natalie. Her serene expression remains undamaged. “It’s—unconventional, I’ll grant you, but the girls don’t seem at all uncomfortable.”

“We just listened to two men confess to murder,” Grant says. “And given Natalie’s past, it’s not the best idea to put her in a house with two people who themselves tend towards violence.”

“Natalie’s past?” Browning says. “Are you talking about breaking a kid’s nose or stabbing a guy? She really is your kid,” he says, tossing the last sentence at Neil and Andrew.

“Both,” Grant says.

“On the contrary,” Bee says. “First, I’d like to point out that that’s all the violence noted—now, I haven’t seen her file, but violence is most concerning as part of a pattern. Is there one?”

“You mean, aside from the stabbing and repeated punching of schoolchildren?” Lily asks dryly.

“Yes,” Bee answers, absolutely sincere. “Pulling wings off butterflies? A penchant for killing ants? Stabbing classmates with pencils? Pulling hair? Paige—any violence towards you?”

Paige shakes her head emphatically. Grant and Lily remain silent—all the confirmation Bee needs.

“Then it sounds to me like Natalie isn’t violent—she just gets backed into corners. And there are few people who understand that better, I think, than Neil and Andrew. Personally, I’d rather Natalie go to a family that will help her understand how to cope with difficult situations and help her avoid those corners than to a family that will _expect_ her to be violent. Dr. Graves—I’m sure you know as well as I do, how the expectations of adults shape children. How important it is that kids have a support system that believes in them.”

“And I’m sure, Dr. Dobson, that you know how important it is that kids feel safe at home,” Lily says.

Bee looks at Paige and Natalie. “Do you feel safe here?”

Paige grins. “I’ve never felt safer.”

Natalie nods her agreement. “I can actually get sleep here,” she says.

It makes Neil sick to his stomach. This shouldn’t be the safest they’ve ever been; they should be desperate to get out.

Browning snorts. “I can’t actually imagine a safer place for a couple kids.”

“That’s precisely what I said,” Bee says with a smile. “Children who have been moved around, who have been separated, who may have experienced abuse—these children benefit from stability, and from—well. Have you heard of the Bikers Against Child Abuse program? It’s a group of bikers who look terrifying, and are often considered terrifying, and they take on abused children and are scary on their behalf. Kids have been able to testify against abusers because their friends are scarier than their abusers. I’m sure there are some kids who would be nervous here, but we’re not talking about _every_ kid, we’re talking about kids who have felt unsafe enough to resort to violence. Who’s scarier than Neil and Andrew? Not many people, I’d wager.”

Paige nods. “And they promised.”

“Promised what?” Lily asks.

“To keep us safe,” Paige explains. “Andrew promised. And everyone says he doesn’t break his promises.”

“Parents are supposed to keep their children safe,” Lily says. “It shouldn’t be something they have to promise.”

“People say shit like that all the time,” Natalie says. “ _You shouldn’t have to defend yourself, you should let adults do that,_ ” she says in a high-pitched voice. “ _You shouldn’t have to worry about whether you get enough to eat, just worry about doing your homework. You shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not the adults who own you will keep you safe, you should focus on behaving well. Blah blah blah_. Like, that’s nice, but it’s bullshit, and you know it. And what _I_ know is that Neil and Andrew will _actually_ defend us, and make sure we have food, and help us with our homework, and keep us safe, and probably teach me how to have some fucking self-control when an FBI agent walks into the kitchen and starts eating the special poptarts.”

Browning looks unrepentant.

“What’s with the armbands?” Grant asks.

He gets blank looks all around.

“The armbands. Mr. Minyard gave them to Paige, and then Paige gave them to Natalie, and they must have magic calming powers, because they took Paige from the brink of a panic attack to calm and cheerful in two seconds.”

Bee snaps her head around to look at Andrew. “You _gave them your armbands_?”

“Oh, the ones he keeps his knives in?” Browning says, pulling a broken piece out of the packet.

Andrew’s face goes from smug to homicidal to blank in the space of a half-second. Neil envisions Browning’s head exploding. He tries to manifest a couple bullets, to make holes in Browning’s brain.

“His _what_?” Lily says.

Browning looks up, meets the room-wide glares, and shrugs. “Whoops. I mean, maybe something’s changed?”

“You’re a lot more talkative than I remember,” Neil says frigidly.

“I should’ve stabbed you when I had the chance,” Andrew says calmly.

“That’s threatening a federal agent, Minyard,” Browning says, but he doesn’t sound particularly bothered by it. “I’m on vacation, I’m allowed to be talkative. And, more importantly, if you’d stabbed me, I wouldn’t be here to give you two the all-clear.”

“ _We_ might not be giving them the all-clear,” Grant says. “It is—did you give two children _knives_?”

“There’s knives right in the knife block,” Neil says. “It’s not like they’d have had no access to any otherwise.”

“Natalie has—”

“We know,” Neil says, trying to strangle his annoyance. “We’re aware. Somehow, out of the 80 times your agency has informed us of this, this fact has made it to our brains. We got it. You don’t have to keep rubbing it in her face.”

“You _gave her knives_!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Neil says sarcastically. “Look. Here’s what happened. Your agency has screwed my kids over repeatedly, endangered them, hung them out to dry, separated them—endangering Natalie by forcing her to choose between her safety and her family—and then two of you, grown adults, wanted to take my kids, separately, into closed-off rooms where we can’t hear them? And then you’re shocked when they’re scared? Of course it made them feel better to be armed. They don’t know you, but they know who you’re affiliated with, and the people you’re affiliated with are the ones _they don’t trust_. Given your way, you’ll take them away from someplace they’re safe, and stick them in a home where they might actively be _un_ safe, a place where Natalie will be vilified according to directions from _your agency_ , and they might get separated again. If holding a knife makes them feel a little better, fuck, we’ll give them two.” He shuts his mouth on the _eat shit_ he so desperately wants to say and hopes they can hear it anyway.

“How did you know about Andrew’s knives?” Paige asks Browning, before Grant can do more than open his mouth. “It doesn’t feel like the kind of thing that would show up in a background check.”

“He stabbed an agent,” Browning says. “He was, apparently, tired of not answering any questions. Not a single one. He opened his mouth to say _bring me Neil_ , and then got stabby.”

Paige looks at Andrew, who shrugs.

“He wouldn’t bring me Neil. He was useless to me.”

“And you were asking _me_ who _I_ think matters,” Neil says in Russian.

Andrew sips his hot chocolate and doesn’t answer.

“Do you have any other objections?” Bee asks, once it’s clear that Andrew intends to remain silent.

“Besides the fact that the prospective parents have just admitted to murder?” Grant asks. “Who cares what other objections we have? That’s going to be a—”

“We’ll run away,” Natalie says, leaning across the table. “You can take us, but we’ll come right back. You’ll have to lock us up to keep us from running, but Neil and Andrew will just come get us, and anyway, we’re two little girls who can yell and yell until you _hate_ us.”

“I didn’t realize you’d told them so much about our interview,” Browning says to Neil. And then Natalie looks at him, confusion apparent on her face, and he laughs. “I’m sorry, have you gotten a DNA test? I’m pretty sure she’s yours. Kid, that’s exactly the line your dads gave me, back when I tried to stick them in witness protection. Minus the two little girls part.”

Natalie points at him, looking back at Grant and Lily. “See? The FBI says it’s fine.”

“If anything,” Browning says, “I think you’re being a little close-minded. The best anti-drug programs are put together by ex-drug users. The best anti-gang programs are put together by ex-gang members. If you’re worried about these kids being murderers, sticking them with a couple ex-murderers is probably best.”

“And anyway,” Neil says, “I mean, you heard the part where the people we killed were actively trying to kill us, right? What did you want us to do—stand there and die?”

Lily looks at Bee. “You seem very okay with your murderer client.”

Bee gives her a serene smile. “Andrew is one of my best patients. There are few people I would trust more with a child. And quite clearly, these two kids are doing just fine.”

Paige nods at top speed. “I haven’t bothered sneaking any food in a week and a half. We can just—eat.”

Neil looks at Andrew, who seems unsurprised by this revelation, and decides to be happy about Paige’s newfound sense of food security instead of distressed by the lack thereof. He makes a mental note to remind the kids to vacuum under their beds in case of crumbs.

“Also, have you _seen_ our grades?” Natalie says. “We’re doing _really_ well.”

“You guys have report cards out?” Neil asks.

“No, but they give a lot of quizzes, and after week one, we’ve been getting all A’s,” Natalie says. “That’s the best we’ve ever done.”

Neil grins. “Hell _yeah_! Should we set up—a reward system? Is there a restaurant you like? A—video game you want? I don’t know. Thoughts?”

“Did you get rewards for good grades?” Paige asks.

“Yeah—a good grade meant I’d survived long enough in one place to get a report card.”

“Riley’s right,” Natalie says. “You’re a downer.”

“I know that look,” Browning says understandingly, looking at Grant and Lily. “Everything’s falling apart and nothing makes sense. I once had eight college kids look me in the eye and tell me that they were willing to die to keep one kid with a gang on his tail on a sports team. Two kids want their parents to be a couple crazy fuckers who will drop dead to keep them safe? Sounds like a good deal to me.”

“Okay, fine,” Grant says. “We’ll ignore the murder, the record of violence, and the fact that one of you used to be in a gang. Let’s look at parenting styles. Natalie and Paige curse without restraint—”

“The worst things two kids can do,” Browning says very seriously.

“They seem,” Grant continues, “to have never received any kind of disciplinary action, including after Natalie broke a student’s nose—”

“ _Fellow_ student,” Neil specifies, obscurely annoyed by the implication that Natalie is not, herself, a student. “And why would we discipline her for it? The school concluded that she wasn’t at fault.”

“She punched someone,” Grant says, like Neil is stupid. “And broke his nose. Violence should be discouraged, and you seem to be the wrong people to do that—”

“Oh, sure,” Paige says. “Next time some guy starts groping me, I’ll just stick his hand all the way up my vagina, so Nat knows she doesn’t have to worry about it.”

“I’m _sorry_?”

“He was groping me! And my sister punched him! Like, jesus, can you guys stop being angry at her for it? Was there a different, more appropriate response to me being groped that she should’ve tried? Diplomacy? Should I have said _no_ a little bit louder, just to make sure everyone in a five-mile radius could hear it?”

“There’s—you could have told—”

“Nope, nope, no I couldn’t have,” Paige says, jaw working. “No one listens to kids! No one. And Justin’s rich, and I’m a foster kid, and no one alive would’ve been able to stop him. But Natalie punched him, and he stopped. And then Neil and Andrew both came to the school to stand up for her! And for me! I’m sorry, I’m supposed to care that they killed some guy who was trying to shoot them? I don’t! I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. Can I have my parents now? Or are you going to fuck us over? Also, I’m sorry for cursing.”

Andrew pulls in a breath. In Russian, he says, “I’m sorry, Dan, I _tried_ to be nice.”

Grant ignores Andrew. “I’m sorry you had that experience,” he says, “but it’s not up to Natalie to police—”

“Grant,” Bee says, “are you trying to imply that Paige should have just—waited it out? That Natalie should have stood by and watched?”

“No, I’m suggesting that she could have removed Paige from the situation.”

“The _situation_ went to school with me,” Paige says. “We had three classes together.”

“Had?”

“He dropped out.”

“Question,” Browning says. “Aren’t you supposed to do this kind of thing _before_ you let people foster a kid or two?”

“Yes,” Grant says tersely. “We’re currently working to figure out how it got overlooked.”

Browning snorts. “Did someone see the amount of money these two make and just go—yeah, hallelujah, we don’t have to worry about them going broke? Although looking around, I’d half wonder if you two _have_ gone broke. You have _nothing_ in this house.”

“We have furniture,” Neil says indignantly.

“And that’s about it,” Browning says cheerfully. “Hey. You know, if you guys had gone into witness protection, we’d have _wiped_ your backgrounds. Six years ago, you’d have popped out of the program with slates cleaner than god. You could’ve fostered 80 kids without getting so much as a second glance, as long as no one ever met Andrew. Hey. Neil, are you wearing makeup?”

“If I give you more food, will you stop talking?”

“Nope. This is _way_ more fun than most of my work.”

“Happy to entertain,” Neil says. “Shut up.”

“Don’t,” Natalie says, but she’s not looking at Neil—she’s looking at Grant. “You’re going to open your mouth and say something, and I’m going to _scream_. Just—just leave us alone. Just let them adopt us! You lose nothing, and we get two dads. Everyone’s happy.”

“We don’t do this to count our losses,” Grant says. “We do it to keep kids _safe_.”

“You failed,” Natalie snarls, all pretense gone. “You failed, and now you’ve got two fucked up kids, and you can’t help us. Neil and Andrew can. So leave us the fuck alone, and let us grow up, and let us stop worrying about whether or not we’ll get separated, or hit, or starved, or if next week we’ll be in a good house or a terrible one. You failed. Neil and Andrew are fixing it. Stop getting in their way.”

Neil tries desperately to ignore how much she sounds like him. Has she been watching clips of his interviews? What has he said in front of her? He needs this to be over so he can go have a crisis, preferably in Andrew’s arms and with a full shot of whiskey in his stomach.

“Are you done yet?” Natalie asks. “I want to go for a run.”

“You can go,” Lily says, trying desperately to appease her. “You don’t need to be here for this.”

“No, Neil runs with me.”

“You’re not allowed to go for a run alone? It seems like a safe neighborhood.”

Natalie makes a glorious noise of disdain. “I’m _allowed_. I just _want_ to go for a run with my _dad_. Is that allowed? Is it dangerous? Is it a proper father-daughter activity? Hey, Neil, make sure you check me for knives before we leave, lest I stab you while we’re out!”

“If you want to run with knives, tell us,” Neil says. “We’ll get you sheathes. You shouldn’t just run with a knife, though, that’s dangerous.”

“Shut _up_ , I’m angry!”

Neil shuts his mouth.

“Are you _done yet_?” She asks Grant and Lily.

Lily rubs her temples.

“I should’ve made popcorn,” Browning muses. “Look. You two,” he says, eyeing Grant and Lily, “I get it. This usually goes pretty smoothly. Everyone’s desperate to please—the parents, the kids. If you have to get other people involved, it goes _more_ smoothly—the parents are _so_ remorseful, when they’ve fucked up in the past, so desperate to pay it forward, so grateful for the help they’ve received. And with other people there watching them, parents are so very careful. It’s all bullshit, you know it, I know it, no one knows what happens behind closed doors. It’s why you interview the kids—because there’s always _something_ , always some giveaway, some hesitation, or a twitch, or a fake smile, an answer that they don’t think of as weird but that rings alarm bells for you. You did those interviews, right?”

“Yes,” Lily says. “We know how to do our jobs.”

“And? The results?”

“We don’t usually—”

“Sure, but I’m an FBI agent, you can tell me. The kids don’t care. Dobson’s Minyard’s therapist, she’s basically bound by law to keep her mouth shut. And Andrew never talks and, apparently except when these kids are around, Neil’s mouth is a fucking steel trap, out of which nothing useful comes. So what were the results?”

“You can tell,” Paige says. “We give our permission. Right?”

Natalie nods.

Lily sighs. “They’re fine. They honestly, legitimately feel safe here, for reasons beyond my comprehension. They’re comfortable. They ask questions. I prepare for these by reading previous evaluations; Grant does not—that way, he can evaluate their behavior without any bias, and I can evaluate their behavior with context. We haven’t exactly had the chance to compare yet, but I can say that compared to previous evaluations—Paige has been described as—” she glances at a page—“ _timid, quiet, nervous, incurious,_ and more. Natalie has been described as _angry, belligerent, closed-off,_ and so on. Paige has always done reasonably well in school; Natalie generally only does her homework under duress. Physicals have always found that they’re both short on nutrients; Paige, in particular, has struck doctors as being too skinny. Today, they’re—night and day. If we didn’t have pictures of them, I’d have asked if we’d been given the wrong files.”

Everyone looks to Grant.

He spreads his hands wide. “They talk too easily about murder. Their stance on violence is not encouraging. Their reaction to finding out that their prospective parents are murderers was disturbing.” He waves a hand. “My recommendation would be to give the kids to people who will get them therapy.”

“Not to state the obvious,” Bee says, “but should either Natalie or Paige want therapy, I’ll make time.”

“Maybe,” Paige says.

“Let me know,” Bee says. “Andrew and Neil have my number.”

“Is that it?” Natalie says. “Are we good?”

“If you’re looking to help the kids,” Browning says, “your own observations and the kids in question have decided that you’re all good to go. And regardless, you don’t really have any leg to stand on, with regards to taking the kids _away_. Minyard’s atoned for his sins and then some, and his therapist is sitting here vouching for the fact that he’s practically a different person. Neil's crimes were all self-defense, and he very much did choose a life on the run and a long talk with the FBI over hanging out with gangsters, which shows a pretty solid moral base, one I’d think you’d want violent children to get up-close-and-personal with. The deaths of Romero and Jackson were pretty thoroughly self-defense. The FBI has cleared them of all wrong-doing. They’ve never done any of the shit that would knock them out of the game altogether—rape, or kidnapping, or torture, or first-degree murder. Your hangups about the kids cursing and being fine with violence are on the kids, not Neil and Andrew, and you’ve just told me yourselves the kids are thriving here. Also, we should wrap this up, because in fifteen minutes, I _will_ be on vacation, and then I won’t be nudging you gently towards a yes, I’ll be bringing down all the might of the FBI so I can get out of here.”

“We don’t make decisions day-of,” Grant says, “but I’ll take that into consideration. We have a few more questions.”

Natalie groans, loudly, and Grant gives her an apologetic smile.

Everything they’ve got, though, is easy. They go over the things kids need—doctor’s appointments, food, education. Lily sighs and broaches the topic of adoption—do you understand that you would be responsible for raising them? Yes. That they wouldn’t be on government healthcare anymore? Yes. The cost of raising two children to adulthood? Yes. Kids can be adopted after six months in the house, with monthly caseworker visits. And so on. And at 5:02, Neil shows them out the door, and heads back into the kitchen so that he and Andrew can share a look that says: _Whiskey? Oh, yes, as soon as possible. Followed by a movie? I’d kill for that, yes, oh my god._

Neil pulls out a smile for Bee and Browning. “Thanks. I think.”

Bee drains her hot chocolate. “Not a problem,” she says cheerfully.

“It was fun,” Browning agrees. “Let’s do it again sometime. It’s nice to see my greatest success, every once in a while.”

“I thought he was your greatest failure?” Paige asks.

“Sure,” Browning says easily. “But! Look at him, sitting here with his husband, the picture of domesticity. Empty house, but full hearts. Still alive, and, clearly, thriving. Hell, he’s _happy_ , not drinking himself under the table, and following the law! A success story. We love to see it, at the FBI. And look at Minyard, sitting there drinking his hot chocolate, not stabbing anyone. They’ll do great. You _are_ wearing makeup,” he observes, looking at Neil. “I thought you were looking more like Nathan than I remembered.”

Andrew pulls out a knife and moves to stand.

“And I’m just going to be on my way, now,” Browning says, striding around Andrew and out the kitchen. “See you again in another five-odd years?”

“Give or take a couple,” Neil says, showing him to the door, hoping and praying that it’ll be a lot longer than that.

And then it’s just him, Andrew, the kids, and Bee, and Bee knows them too well to be a threat at all. Andrew takes his seat when Neil returns. He reaches out and takes Neil’s hand and closes his eyes. Neil feels Andrew’s fury draining away.

Andrew has never seen Nathan. Not so much as a picture. Neil has none, and has never felt inclined to go hunt some down; Andrew didn’t seem willing to do so, either. He knows why Neil had hated his own reflection for so long. Neil gets the distinct impression that Andrew is _scared_ to see a picture of Nathan—he’d never be able to forget it, after all, never be able to look at Neil without seeing Nathan.

Neil is unutterably grateful for this.

He doesn’t want Andrew to look at him and see Nathan. He can’t forget Lola, telling him how much he looked like Nathan, calling him her _type_. Neil and Nathan look too much alike for Neil to ever be comfortable with Andrew knowing what Nathan looks like.

“Well, that was interesting,” Bee says lightly.

“That was terrible,” Natalie says. “I hated it. I never want to see them again.”

“We’ve got, what, five more visits?” Neil asks. Natalie grimaces at him. He shrugs. This one’s out of his control.

“I’m off,” Bee says. “Promised to be at Abby and David’s by 5:30.”

“What, they moved in together?” Neil asks.

“No. None of us can stand each other.”

Neil raises an eyebrow.

“I’m OCD, Abby knows what bleach is, and David has no idea what to do with an empty surface except to pile things on it. He’s a borderline hoarder.”

Neil raises his other eyebrow.

“We’re all happy with our own houses.”

“Have you ever considered, like, three floors, one of you gets the main floor, one of you gets the second, and one of you gets the third?”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Bee says. “But I don’t think so.”

Neil shrugs. It’s not his business.

“See you on Tuesday, Andrew,” she says, and Andrew looks at her. “We’ll talk about the armbands. And whatever else you’ve got.”

He waves a finger at her.

“I’ll show myself out,” she says, gentle smile in place, and she does, and Neil sits on the floor and leans his head against Andrew’s hip.

“Don’t sit,” Natalie says. “We have to go for a run.”

“Why didn’t any of the Foxes tell us about Jackson and Romero?” Paige asks.

“They don’t know,” Neil says. “It was a week after school had ended; all the upperclassmen were back at home, Nicky was in Germany, Aaron was with Katelyn, and Kevin was with Thea. It was just me and Andrew. And we were staying at Nicky’s house—we were alone. We didn’t want to worry them. We didn’t tell them. They weren’t there when I testified, either, so they never found out.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t think about it much, honestly. The only consequence was that Andrew’s knuckles were a little red, and we had to throw out some clothes that were beyond help. And—I mean—they’d been terrible, and then they were dead. They don’t live in my head, like my dad did, or Lola. And no one ever asks about them, or mentions them. They’re nothing.”

Andrew puts his hand in Neil’s hair. Neil wants nothing more than to stay here, right here, to forget about Romero and Jackson again, to close his eyes and spend all his energy concentrating on Andrew’s fingers against Neil’s scalp.

Natalie waits.

Neil sighs, takes Andrew’s hand, kisses his palm, and stands. He follows Natalie upstairs, they split up to get changed, and then he follows her back downstairs, shutting the front door on the sounds of _The Office_.

They run.

Natalie sets a harsh pace, which drops as they run until they slow to a walk along the highway. This time, though, Natalie doesn’t apologize. Neil doesn’t mention it.

“We should start speaking German at home,” Natalie says, once she gets her breath back.

“Okay,” Neil agrees. “Why?”

“Immersion is the best way to learn a language. And you and Andrew get to speak Russian when other people are around, and you get to talk without people knowing. I want to be able to do that.”

“That sounds good to me,” Neil says in German.

“Fuck,” Natalie says.

So Neil breaks it down, and then teaches her a few German curse words.

Slowly, absolutely destroying the grammar, Natalie says in German: “If we’re still here next—I don’t know the word for _semester_ —”

“You will be,” Neil says.

She ignores him. “Maybe I want to join the running team.”

Neil grins. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“Also, you used the wrong _the_.”

“Fuck!”

They walk a few more minutes, and then Natalie picks up the pace, and they jog the rest of the way home.

They don’t make it back until after the episode is over, which is fine by Neil. Natalie heads upstairs to shower, and Neil finds Andrew in the kitchen with the bottle of whiskey they keep hidden in the back of the pantry. Neil knocks it back, the burn nothing short of comforting, tasting as it does like Andrew and home, like safety. Andrew hides the bottle, pulls Neil’s forehead down to his own, and then they start dinner.

The four of them eat in silence. It’s an odd return to Paige and Natalie’s first days with Neil and Andrew—except that this time, Neil is silent too. He has nothing to say. And this time, it’s not uncomfortable. Paige and Natalie aren’t twitchy; they’re not nervous about the food. Andrew isn’t holding himself together with scotch tape and desperation. They’re all just—silent. It works for them. After dinner, they put on _Much Ado About Nothing_ ; it’s Andrew’s favorite.

When it ends, the girls protest, loudly, that it is _not_ their favorite.

“First of all, what’s with that line where Hero was like _I am a maid_ and Claudio was like _oh, thank god, I can marry you now_?” Paige asks, incensed.

“That was stupid,” Natalie agrees. “Also, there was just, a _vast_ number of naked people. Like, was that necessary? I _will_ agree that the constable guy was funny.”

“Hero and Claudio—I don’t care about them,” Andrew says. “I’m a much bigger fan of Beatrice and Benedick, who _cannot woo peaceably_ and love each other _no more than reason_.”

“It’s a familiar dynamic,” Neil says, grinning.

“Also,” Andrew continues, “it’s the—imagine being accused of something, and then your parents go all-in and yell at a prince to insist that you’re innocent? To insist that the people who have wronged you are in the wrong? And that you, yourself, deserve protection and reparations?”

Natalie snorts, and Neil can’t see her eyes, but he’s certain she’s rolling them. “I don’t have to imagine that,” she scoffs. “I _have_ that.”

Neil and Andrew freeze.

Oh.

“I’m glad,” Neil says softly.

Andrew turns off the TV.

And then Neil and Andrew check all the locks—double and triple, to keep their girls safe, to be the kind of parents they’d wanted—and all four of them go upstairs.

Andrew holds his arms out, and Neil slides his armbands off.

The things Neil would do to keep Andrew safe and well—

Andrew tilts his face up, a wordless question, and Neil leans in for a kiss. He wraps himself around Andrew, and Andrew wraps himself around Neil, and maybe they fucked up terribly today, but, shit, things could be worse. They seem to be doing right by their kids, and that’s good enough.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neil and Andrew go to texas for a game! fluff, sweetness, backstory. also porn. also, stuff during and after the porn. the usual.

The next day, Neil and Andrew are out of the house by 8, and the girls aren’t even up yet. Neil sends a shocking number of texts on the way to the airport—one to the girls, asking them to vacuum and clean their room while they’ve got the privacy; another one to the girls, asking them to text Neil when Abby gets there; one to Abby, asking her to text when she gets the girls—and then Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand. Gives Neil a meaningful glance— _they’ll be fine._

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand and puts his phone away. “I know,” he murmurs. “How do parents _do_ this? Just—leave their kids places? How do you walk away from a _baby_? I can barely handle leaving two teenagers alone for a weekend, what would I do with a baby? How do people—choose babysitters? I _know_ Abby, I trust her, and I’m still freaking out.”

Andrew rubs his thumb against Neil’s.

They make it to the airport on time; they meet the rest of the team at their gate, gear in hand. Somehow, no matter how many times Neil goes through this airport, it’s always odd—always a little weird, to realize that he knows the airport. The more familiar with it he becomes, the less it feels like an experience he could really be having. Andrew takes Neil’s hand, though, knowing full well how easy it is for Neil to get lost, and Neil breathes.

“How’d it go last night?” Riley asks. Neil makes a face; Riley grimaces. “That bad, huh?”

“I mean, it wasn’t going _too_ badly,” Neil says. “And then my FBI agent showed up—”

“You have a personal FBI agent?” Clark asks, surprised into joining the conversation.

“I mean, no, but the guy who handled my case, and testimony, the whole thing, he turned up—”

“Why?” Kevin asks.

Neil realizes he’s drawing a crowd—their whole team, coming closer, listening in. Andrew doesn’t seem bothered by it. Neil may be familiar with them all, but they’re not Foxes; not all of them are his friends. They all know enough about him, sure, but he’ll never be comfortable with a crowd of people around him, listening to him talk about his life.

Well. So be it. “So when you have someone who’s been in therapy—particularly court-ordered—you need to provide a letter from your therapist indicating that you’re in the right mental space to raise a kid. You need to provide proof that you’re physically capable of handling a child, too. And we did that—Andrew got the letter, all was well. And when they did our background check, it went through the FBI, who said, sure, all’s well. But apparently, when you have people with particularly violent backgrounds, you’re supposed to really dig down deep, get into it, double-check, talk to character witnesses. And no one did that, when we registered as foster parents. And then we started looking into adoption, and someone realized that a distinctly important step had been missed, and suddenly, we’ve gotta do this whole thing, even though we’ve already got the kids.”

Riley cringes. “And?”

“And the people from the foster agency showed up, and interviewed the kids separately, and that was fine—apparently, they are much improved since their last evaluation. And then Bee showed up, which was fine, because Bee’s great. And then FBI Agent Browning showed up, and he was 20 minutes away from a long weekend, and started running his mouth, and then I had to explain some stuff, which our kids were not at all phased by, and which the foster agency was _extremely_ phased by. And the fact that the kids weren’t phased by it just made the foster agents _more_ concerned, and then they started talking about ‘Natalie’s violent past’ and Paige started yelling at them. And then they said that their official recommendation couldn’t possibly be anything but to take the kids away, and Natalie started threatening to run away.”

“I really love those kids,” Maria says. “Also, what do you mean, _some stuff_?”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t want to phase anyone.”

“So overall,” Kevin says, jumping in before Maria can insist that she can’t be phased, “ _Not great_.”

“Not great,” Neil says. “Not at all.”

“So… the kids?” Riley asks tentatively.

“We still have them,” Neil says, “and Browning is adamant that we’ll keep them. As are we. As are the kids. But we won’t know anything for at least a week.”

Clark pats Neil on the shoulder. “That sucks.”

“Thanks.”

The team drifts away, now that the story is over and has gotten awkward, but Maria sidles closer. “ _Some stuff_?”

Neil looks at her.

She looks at Andrew.

Andrew stares back.

“Yeah, I wanna know,” she says.

“A couple murders,” Neil says.

“A _couple_?”

“Two.”

“Like. You murdered two people?”

“No. Well, yes, but I only did one of the two murders discussed. And it was all self-defense.”

“Oh, are we talking about how Neil’s a killer?” Riley asks, leaning in, dropping her voice to a level that other people shouldn’t be able to hear.

“You _already knew_?” Maria asks.

“Yeah, Neil told me last week. I was very concerned.”

“You know,” Maria says thoughtfully, “You’re so concerned with not being goth—god forbid you wear some good boots—but like, you really _live_ the aesthetic, huh.”

“It’s not an aesthetic,” Neil says. “And I don’t live it by choice.”

Maria shrugs. “We all love the blood. The darkness. The death. We make it part of our aesthetics, part of our thought pattern. And then you just kinda wander out the door and actually kill people, huh.”

“Self-defense,” Neil says. “And I don’t just _go out and kill_ anyone. _They_ are trying to kill _me_. And I prevent them from doing so.”

“You know, there’s lots of ways to protect yourself that don’t involve killing,” Riley says. “Ever learned a martial art?”

“Ever had three people pointing guns at you?”

“And, what, you’re faster on the draw?”

“No, I run away, usually. Bob and weave. But yeah, sometimes I’m faster on the draw.”

“Ever thought of shooting for the hand? Somewhere survivable?”

“Why would I want them to survive?”

Maria’s expression is one of abject glee. “Ri, Ri, I think he’s beyond your help. He’s _real_. The rest of us—we _wish_ we could say we were killers. Like, look at Andrew. He’s got the goth aesthetic pretty solidly down—could be better, could have gages, could have sharpened teeth, could have more piercings, but he’s got the all-black, he’s got the boots, he’s got the armbands, he’s got the batshit crazy. But neither of us will ever hold a candle to Neil.”

Riley frowns at Neil. “You said you only committed one of the two murders. Who committed the other?”

Neil stares her down.

“Oh, jesus,” Maria gasps. “Oh, god, was it Andrew?”

“Oh, _now_ she’s horrified,” Riley says.

“Am—am _I_ the poser?”

Riley throws her hands up in the air.

“No, no, like—I’ve been sitting here, thinking I’m the most death-oriented person around, but—no.”

“Now, to be fair,” Neil says, “I don’t think Andrew’s really goth. He’s much closer to emo.”

Andrew looks at Neil, and Neil snickers. “I’m sorry, did I offend you?”

“You just took away half his identity,” Maria says.

“How? I mean—those boots aren’t goth so much as punk. You’re not decorated enough to be goth. The armbands are much closer to the bracelets emo kids wear—”

Andrew stands up.

Neil laughs. “We’re going to get coffee,” he says, standing. “Coming?”

“Nah,” Maria says, settling back into her seat. “I don’t want to be part of this fight.”

Riley looks like she might be on the verge of standing, but Neil tosses her a wink as he turns away, and she gets the hint. Takes a deep breath, throws Neil a panicked glance, and stays, sitting next to Maria.

Neil hopes and prays that they’ll talk.

He gets himself a plain coffee, and orders the excessively sweet French vanilla thing Andrew likes, and a donut. Andrew raises an eyebrow at him.

“For calling you not-goth,” Neil says.

Andrew accepts that.

They walk back slowly, Neil sipping his coffee, Andrew eating his donut. They can’t hold hands—Andrew can’t eat a donut and carry his coffee at the same time—but it’s okay. Neil knows what’s going on—knows he’s not making a mistake, by repeating an airport; knows he’s got a valid passport, and no reason to worry. And, anyway, maybe the lack of physical contact will help Andrew feel better: He’s spent the past week holding Neil and the kids up as they collectively freaked out, he had to handle a variety of strangers in their house yesterday, _and_ he’d given up his armbands. And today, he has to get on a plane. It’s no wonder he’s gone silent.

Neil understands this perfectly well. And he knows they’re out in public, and in a busy airport, and neither of those things are conducive to a talkative Andrew. And they’re about to get on a plane.

Neil isn’t used to getting the silent treatment, though.

When Andrew finishes his donut, he takes Neil’s hand again.

Neil squeezes his hand—an apology for talking Andrew into a career that regularly requires them to fly.

They don’t go back to the gate, not right away. They wander their area of the airport. Neil isn’t willing to interrupt Riley and Maria, and Andrew isn’t willing to look out the window. But they hear the call to line up at their gate, and join the team as they file onto the plane.

Neil takes his hand back, when the plane starts moving. He doesn’t need Andrew to take care of him, not when Andrew himself is so scared.

Andrew puts his hand, palm up, on the arm rest between them.

“You don’t have to,” Neil says in Russian.

Andrew looks at him, and Neil wonders if he’s fucked Andrew up—it’s so much harder, these days, for Andrew to hide himself, to hide his thoughts, hide his fear. It’s so much easier for Andrew to feel that fear. But it also means that Neil can see, clear as day, that Andrew isn’t doing this for Neil. He wants to hold Neil’s hand.

Neil wants, oh-so-badly, to just—drive. Just drive to Texas. Andrew at the wheel. Just another road trip, albeit one with a game at the end of it. The Maserati’s engine snarling at the slightest provocation, the radio blasting, the road vanishing behind them.

He takes Andrew’s hand, and Andrew squeezes it tightly, and Neil feels the privilege of being allowed to know that Andrew has to work to hold himself together. The privilege, moreover, of getting to see Andrew _scared_ —of getting to see Andrew feel anything, at all. And these days, he gets to see Andrew _happy_ , a miracle that had once felt like it would never happen. Neil’s thoughts drift backward, remembering an Andrew who at best flickered between dead and furious. The Andrew who had provided testimony at Aaron’s trial—the Andrew who, to protect his brother, had stood up in front of the court and spilled the details of his abuse, a secret he’d never so much as hinted at until it was ripped from him. That Andrew had been blank, calm. He hadn’t cared about a single word that had come out of his mouth. Neil had been sick to his stomach, but Andrew—Andrew hadn’t cared at all. Andrew had cared so little that, even when he’d seen Katelyn sitting behind Aaron, he hadn’t so much as blinked. It was the first time the two of them had been in the same room—off the court—since Aaron had moved out a year and a half before.

And Cass had been there.

She hadn’t known what to say.

Neil had kept half an eye on her, while Andrew testified. Had watched her hunch over, shoulders shaking. Had watched her look away.

Aaron had looked at her, while she’d been up on the stand—she’d never known, she’d never heard anything, never seen anything. She’d had no idea. Aaron hadn’t apologized. Asked if he felt any remorse, Aaron’s response was negatory.

After Andrew’s testimony, Cass had talked at him. Not _to_ him—that would imply that Andrew had answered. She’d apologized for never noticing. Apologized for not paying enough attention. Apologized for not being trustworthy enough that Andrew had been able to tell her. Andrew had stared at her. Neil had walked to a vending machine, inserted two dollars, and brought him a freezing cold bottle of Pepsi. Andrew had looked at Neil, and then, without so much as a glance at Cass, had turned and walked away. Neil had shrugged at her, and followed Andrew out, and had sat there with him in the car while Andrew drank the whole soda.

Aaron had been acquitted—of course he had. They’d celebrated at Eden’s. Andrew had drunk, silently, to his tolerance, and at the end of the night, he’d walked to the passenger side instead of the driver’s side, and Neil had driven them all to Nicky’s house, abiding very thoroughly by the speed limit.

Andrew hadn’t spoken about it again until four years later, on a terrible day, all rage and grief over the mother he should’ve had, the one who hadn’t even been able to look at him while he spoke about the things her son had done to him, the one who had cried more over her dead rapist son than her lost could-have-been son. The one who had apologized, years too late. The one who had been so disappointed, so angry, when he’d gotten himself thrown into juvie. Who had washed her hands of him when he’d failed to be the good kid she’d known he could be, if only he tried, a good kid who would fit in with their nice little family. She’d _known_ he was troubled. She’d _known_ he’d had problems. But she’d hoped—just maybe—he’d be willing to let her help him work through them. Her, and Richard, and Drake—all so willing to help him. And he’d thrown it all away. Andrew hadn’t been angry at her for that, not at the time—it was precisely what he’d wanted, not to mention precisely what he’d thought he’d deserved. But on that day, so long after the fact, he’d been furious. Betrayed. Abandoned. Trying so hard to protect one brother from the other, knowing full well that no one would ever appreciate it, and the woman who should’ve been his mother had dropped him like a hot potato. She’d asked why he’d done it, why he’d gotten himself put in Juvie. He hadn’t answered. She hadn’t had enough faith in him to give him so much as the benefit of the doubt, let alone to stand up for him.

Neil had watched Andrew punch their punching bag until he’d ripped all the skin off his knuckles, and then Neil had stopped him, walked him upstairs, and shoved him bodily into a cold shower.

Neither of them had slept in the bed that night—Andrew hadn’t been able to stand it, and Neil hadn’t been able to stand the idea of leaving him alone.

That had been at the beginning, the beginning of nearly an entire year of Andrew falling to pieces, shredding himself in front of Neil’s eyes, hemorrhaging terror and horror and fury and grief and hatred. _Feeling_ , for the first time in years, and every memory that popped to the front of his mind was a nightmare, one he was years too late to do anything about. Some days, he’d gone to work, gone home, and spent the whole evening curled up around a pain too enormous for Neil to comprehend; some days, he hadn’t gone to work at all. Had just sat at home, in the living room, unmoving, for hours, alone until Neil had come home and forced him to at least drink something, at least that.

By the end of the year, Neil knew things he’d never wanted to know, and Andrew had taken up baking. The next year, there were fewer memories for Andrew to dredge up. That made it all the worse when Andrew had bad days: They were almost a surprise. On the other hand, Andrew started to have _good_ days, and those days were Neil’s salvation: On those days, Neil made it his mission to give Andrew good memories. _I love you’s_ flew thick and fast. The number of pillows and blankets, soft and fuzzy, that they had in their living room grew to a breaking point. Neil had discovered Andrew’s long-buried love for Shakespeare—in spite of Andrew’s memory, it never got boring; there was always a new meaning to discover, always another layer to consider. Neil would go to the bakery a few miles away and come home with something new. Neil bought oranges—fed them to Andrew, one slice at a time. Looked up increasingly difficult recipes for Andrew to try, Neil acting as sous-chef, Andrew thrilling to the challenge. And Neil would kiss Andrew until, he hoped, he could black out every memory of every terrible kiss Andrew had ever dealt with. Andrew had slowly, oh-so-slowly, opened up, half an emotion at a time, like a kitten introduced into a new house. First, emotions were only available in the kitchen; then the living room; then, eventually, with the door locked in spite of the empty house, in the bedroom. Each step had been a surprise to Neil, who had happily set up house and home after each inch forward, fully expecting it to be the last—how could he keep expecting more from Andrew? But, somehow, Andrew had kept finding more, and Neil had done his level best to shelter him, to keep him safe while he did.

And now, Neil sits next to Andrew, a much less shielded Andrew, as the plane picks up speed. Andrew’s wrist is pressed against Neil’s, and Neil can feel Andrew’s pulse, ramping up with the plane.

Eventually, they make it into the air, and Andrew relaxes. Just slightly.

Maria, in the row in front of them, twists around, and, without preamble, starts talking to Andrew about music.

Andrew pays attention. His heartbeat slows.

Maria talks for 20 minutes, apparently unconcerned with the lack of feedback, while Neil pretends to read. Andrew isn’t tense. Isn’t bored. Is paying attention. Neil likes all of these things.

Maria ends with: “Anyway, when you’re talking again, tell me what you think,” and turns back around.

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil shrugs. Andrew knows as well as Neil does that Maria is trying to be Andrew’s friend, and that Andrew is letting her. It’s been trying to happen for two years now.

Andrew seems to find this an acceptable response.

Neil exchanges his phone for Andrew’s worn copy of _Twelfth Night_ , and, quietly—doing his level best not to disturb anyone else on the plane—and in Russian, reads it out loud. It’s slow going—Neil doesn’t necessarily know how to translate Shakespearean English into Russian—but this is the third play they’ve done this with, and Neil’s getting better at it. It keeps Andrew calm, while Neil’s voice is up for it. Neil manages a couple hours, and then he kisses the back of Andrew’s hand, puts his head against the wall of the plane, and passes out, hand still in Andrew’s.

He wakes up when the flight attendants make the rounds, asking people to put their chairs in an upright position, and pretends not to notice how tightly Andrew is holding his hand. Refrains from pulling Andrew’s head to his shoulder. Tries, as he always does, to prevent anyone else from noticing that so much is wrong.

Andrew doesn’t take a full breath until they pull to a stop at the gate.

“Planes are bullshit,” he mutters in Russian as they step off the plane. “Crimes against God. If we were meant to fly, we wouldn’t need to invent metal wings. Icarus was a very literal warning.”

Neil grins, warmed by the sound of Andrew’s voice. “Icarus died, but Daedalus didn’t. It’s not about not flying, it’s about not flying too close to the sun.”

“And who knows what kind of distance we’re talking about, there? How do we know that plane-height isn’t too close to the sun?”

“Because we’re not dead,” Neil says cheerfully.

They collect their luggage and pile onto the bus, where Maria takes the seat across the aisle from them to confront Andrew about his thoughts on her music.

He gives them to her—he’s a fan, she’s right, and he has three recommendations for her.

“Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a really good memory?” Maria asks, once he’s done.

“Yes.”

Neil avoids the glance she’s trying oh-so-hard to send his way in favor of examining the scenery. He’s been through here before; not for long, and they hadn’t stayed, but he’d paid attention, because that was what he did, and he points out with reasonable confidence what’s changed since then—it bores Maria into ignoring them, but it holds Andrew’s attention. New gas stations have popped up; there’s more Starbucks available. There was a diner Neil had noticed, over a decade ago; in its place, now, an Olive Garden. Eventually, Neil points out the exit that would put them on a different highway and take them to New Mexico; he and Mary had stayed there for three months. “I was aiming for someplace closer to here, after my mom died, someplace I’d be familiar with,” Neil says. “But I got to Millport and—it wasn’t familiar at all, actually. I mean, it was a small town, so it was just like every other small town I’ve ever been to, but—new. Different people, different places, and I actually went to _school_. For the whole year. I’d never done that before.”

“We could visit,” Andrew says. “Wasn’t much there, as I recall, but we could pass through. Not now, obviously. I don’t have my car. And that’s a longer trip than we’ve planned for. But we could visit, someday.”

“It’s not like I miss it,” Neil says. “It was a shitty little town.”

“I don’t disagree. But there’s a _but_ at the end of that sentence.”

“But,” Neil says obligingly, “it was also the first place I’d ever been, where it was just me. I didn’t think much of it at the time—mostly, I figured my mom would pull all my hair out if she could’ve seen me—but it was where I started to slip. No one to keep me in line. No one to keep me from exy. No one to keep me from smoking. No one to tell me I’d been there too long, and it was time to go, before I got too entrenched, before anyone thought too much about me. Just me and my instincts, which turned out to be pretty shitty—I shouldn’t have stayed there as long as I had. Should’ve left months before you came to see me play.

“But I’d assumed—I mean, it should’ve been at least a little difficult for anyone to get to me. It’s not like I had an address; I went to school, but it’s hard to steal me out of pre-calc. Anyone who came looking for me, I’d thought, would’ve had to sit around a couple days, and small-town gossip is _loud_. I’d hoped I’d have heard something. It had never occurred to me that my coach would _call_ people in.” Neil frowns out the window. “I can literally trace my survival back to around three decisions that should’ve been terrible, and most of them weren’t mine.”

“What decisions were those?”

“Wymack putting out a second call for strikers. Hernandez sending my file, without telling me—if he’d told me, I’d have fled, no second thoughts. New name. New face. Wymack asking me to sign, even after I tossed the file back in his face. Okay, more than three decisions—you agreeing to protect me, because that’s the only reason I stayed.”

“Is it?”

Neil looks at him.

“You’re not the runaway you like to think you are,” Andrew says knowingly.

“Not a rabbit, a raccoon?”

“That, for a start,” Andrew agrees. “You, leaving exy? You should’ve done it 80 times over the course of your senior year at Millport and your freshman year at Palmetto. But no. I’m talking about your scars.”

Neil stares at him. His scars? What did they have to do with anything?

“If you’re running away,” Andrew says slowly, and Neil remembers Andrew’s theory, “you don’t get scars on your front. You get them on your back. When you put my hand on them the first time, I didn’t think much of it—I assumed there were more on your back. And when you showed them to me, I was too distracted to think about it. But I figured it out eventually. You have no scars on your back, because you’re _very_ good at running away. You have scars on your front because there were times when you chose to get hurt instead of run.”

Neil looks back out the window for a second. And then he looks back at Andrew. “You’ve said that before. But you _were_ why I stayed. Pretty explicitly.”

Andrew gives him a look, but doesn’t press the subject. Neil puts a hand on his stomach—his shirt is thin and it fits him, because all of his clothes do these days, and if he presses hard enough, he can feel the ridges of his scars.

They drive another few miles. Neil gets a text from Abby—apparently, it’s polite to let kids know when planes land, and, perhaps, Natalie and Paige are worried. Just a suggestion.

Neil sends them a text—he and Andrew are on the ground, on their way to the stadium. All is well. He hopes they’re having a good time.

He passes his phone to Andrew, when he gets the answering text—they’re fine, of course they’re fine, only old men worry.

Andrew snorts and passes the phone back.

“I didn’t get them by being brave,” Neil says quietly. He feels he needs more privacy even than speaking Russian affords him. “I got them by being too scared of the thought of Mary dying to leave her behind, and she punished me for each and every one. I was supposed to put myself first; she hadn’t destroyed her life just so I could throw it all away by being sentimental. And I hated her so much, I agreed with her, wholeheartedly, until—until the next time. She’d stop to shoot, or she’d move just a little bit too slow. Or she’d miss something—she grew up looking over her shoulder, too, but not like I did. And every time, I’d turn back. I’d stop and grab her, or pull her out of the way, or shoot. It’s not like I stood my ground. I just couldn’t watch her die.”

Andrew stares at him. “That’s usually what’s referred to as _being brave_ , dumbass.”

Neil shakes his head. He knows what he did—he knows how close he came to leaving her behind. It occurs to him that, maybe, that was why she hadn’t told him how badly she was injured, at the end—he might have insisted on stopping.

The grief he feels at her death is an old ache, more the memory of grief than actual grief. It helps, maybe, that he can see her with clearer eyes—she had, absolutely, been unutterably cruel to him, and he can see that his hatred towards her is justified; on the other hand, she had been in an impossible situation, and he can forgive her for not knowing what she was doing, because if there’s no guidebook for raising two teenagers, there certainly isn’t a guidebook for running from the mafia with a child in tow. He’d kept her alive for as long as he could; he feels no guilt over her death. And he’d protected her to the end—when Browning had asked where she was buried, Neil had said, without blinking an eye, that he’d thrown her into the ocean. He’d given Andrew the truth, nearly a year later, on the anniversary of her death—he hadn’t wanted the FBI to go dredge her up. Even if they wouldn’t have bothered, he hadn’t wanted to risk it.

Could he find her, now? If he went back to that beach?

And then Kevin bullies Maria into giving up her seat so he can pull out his notes on Texas, which is all the distraction Neil needs. They cover their stats, their observations, for the remaining 20 minutes of the drive, and keep going when they get to the stadium—all black and gold, and familiar. It’s a little jolt of joy, the realization that he’s been playing exy for so long that the stadiums are familiar to him.

They get ready quickly, Neil and Riley using the respective bathrooms to get changed—no stalls in these changing rooms, no doors.

It occurs to Neil that, if he’s about to do a whole commercial showing off his scars, there’s not much point in changing in the bathroom. Not much point in waiting until last to shower.

The idea of showering communally is so weird to him, he doesn’t really want to do it anyway. Who decided that that was _not_ weird? How does Andrew handle it?

They have their pep talk, they do their warmups, and the crowd starts filing in, their noise rising to match the sound of Neil’s heartbeat, pounding in his ears. They take shots on Andrew, not hard, just the familiar warmups, the familiar tug of muscles Neil’s been using for years, the familiar weight of the ball in the racquet. They leave the court, Neil practically bouncing, already thrilled by the expectation of the game, and line up.

“Don’t let Becker get on your left,” Kevin reminds Neil tersely.

Neil nods. The urge to wave Kevin off, so strong usually, is nothing now, right before a game. Neil takes his place on the court, next to Riley, Charlie at his back, and he eyes Becker, his mark, ready and waiting—in all the videos they’d watched, Becker would push his mark to the outer edge of the court, forcing them to shoot at an angle. Becker’s big, and fast, and seems more concerned with preventing his mark from getting a straight shot on the goal than preventing them from taking a shot at all. Their goalie is good; likely, it makes more sense for Becker to put his energy and size to use getting in the way than shutting down strikers entirely. Management, rather than prevention. Neil can respect that. He just doesn’t care.

The game begins, and Neil immediately lets Becker get on his left.

The issue, generally speaking, with shooting at an angle is that it’s much harder to aim—harder to get the ball in the goal, harder to measure the distance. There’s a reason why penalty shots aren’t taken at an angle.

But: The time and energy it would take Neil to somehow avoid Becker would be, frankly, ridiculous. Becker would be able to force him backwards, and the distance would be—undesirable. 

Plus: Neil’s been throwing knives on an almost nightly basis for a week, now, and he’s more than capable of throwing at an angle.

So he lets Becker get on his left, and push him out. He focuses instead on staying within Riley’s field of view, and within reach of their dealer, Gemma. And when Gemma gets him the ball—

Speed is an odd thing, in exy. It’s not a requirement, first of all, although it makes the game easier. And speed without power, without aim, without footwork, is nothing; Neil may be faster than Kevin, faster than Andrew, but when he’d joined the Foxes, they’d both been able to play him into the ground, and Kevin had been working right-handed. All of Neil’s speed is useless if he’s can’t aim, if his motion isn’t fluid, if his timing is off, if he can’t put power behind his plays.

The thing is: Neil can aim. His movements, after years of practice, are second-nature; his timing is instinctive and accurate. He’s been playing with a heavy racquet for longer than he’s been playing without.

Gemma gets him the ball, and he puts it in the goal.

Becker turns, stares at the goal, lit up red, but the game doesn’t stop for him—Neil gets around him, forces Becker to catch up with Neil, and Neil refuses to let him. Riley, used to Neil’s bullshit, doesn’t bother trying to predict him—she aims for where she thinks he’ll need to be, and he gets there. She doesn’t bother positioning herself for the ideal pass; she trusts him to pass it to her, wherever she is. And she laughs, every time that trust pays off, as thrilled as Neil is to be part of such a well-oiled machine.

They dominate the first quarter.

Kevin and Maria keep it up, the second quarter; Neil paces, from Andrew to the wall and back, and Riley cheers Maria on with every fiber of her being, ignoring every knowing look Neil sends her way. There aren’t many, to be fair—Neil is mostly concentrating on the game—but maybe Riley _should_ make a move.

They have their mid-game discussion, which is nothing—they’re doing fine. Texas is good, but the Jaguars are good, too—better. And they’re going to championships. They know they are; it’s just a matter of killing time until they get there. And, god, if they’re _going_ to kill time, they may as well do it by winning every game they play.

And then it’s Andrew’s turn on the court, and the strikers Texas has brought on must be _good_ —Neil can see Frank and Athena, in their spare moments, tilting their head towards Andrew; he must be talking to them, insisting that they work harder, that they be _better_.

Andrew misses a shot, and Neil gasps. Kevin grabs Neil’s wrist.

“Oh,” Kevin says. “They’re _good_.”

Neil nods. They haven’t yet secured their spot in championships, but they’re only one game away—they’ve still got next week. They’re up against Arizona next week; Arizona won’t beat them. The Jaguars are in, one of New York’s teams are in—the Renders, Allison’s team—and Minnesota will get in, Neil’s nearly certain of it.

Day one of Championships is an annual bloodbath; out of eight teams, four get chopped. And then, every other day for the rest of the week, they play a different team. The two teams with the most points get a week to recover, and then—it’s over. One game, and done. A few months of nothing, and then spring training.

Except—not really a few months of nothing.

They’ll keep practicing, Neil and Kevin and Andrew, because it’s what they do. So, of course, there will be exy. But that’s not _all_. There’ll be days, whole days, not cleaning days, for Andrew and Neil to lie in bed and do nothing—well. This year, they’ll have kids, but surely they’ll be able to get the kids out of the house _once_ in a while. Last year, Neil had tried painting classes—he’d been terrible at it, but maybe he’ll try again. And the books they’ll have time to read, the baking Andrew will do. Maybe Neil will take up yoga again; he’d enjoyed it, when he did it.

And they travel, during the off-season. To New York, to spend Thanksgiving with Matt, Dan, Allison, and Renee; for Christmas, they go with Aaron and Katelyn to Germany. Once the season is over for the Renders, Allison is free, and Renee takes a week off—they come down to South Carolina, and usually spend the week with Neil and Andrew. They go watch the Foxes play, if they’re playing at the Foxhole Court; they have dinner at Abby’s; Allison takes it upon herself to update Neil on pop culture.

Nicky would be proud of him, Neil decides as he watches Riley score. Neil has things to do that aren’t exy, and people to do those things with.

He gets antsy, as the quarter goes on. Texas has brought their best strikers on, and Andrew’s working—hopefully he’s having fun, anyway. But they’ve also brought on their better goalie, and Maria’s point was the only one they’ve gotten in fifteen minutes; one of the backliners is Caroline Bergen, a backliner on the U.S. Court, and Neil knows full well how impossible she is to get around. He wants to be on the court. He wants to test himself against the goalie, against the backliners—is he good enough? Is he better? He’s been practicing against Andrew for years—but so have Maria and Riley. He’s fast—but Maria and Riley aren’t slow, either. He’s powerful—but Maria plays with a heavy racquet, too. He gets twitchy. Andrew jumps, twists his racquet, slams the ball away, and for a moment, Neil wishes he was a backliner, in front of Andrew, guarding him—

The third quarter comes to an end, and Neil follows Kevin onto the court, practically bouncing, the crowd giving voice to the screaming excitement in his veins, and he takes his place. Caroline grins at him—she’s ready, she knows precisely how fast Neil can move.

Neil breathes.

He eyes the goalie.

And then play starts back up and Neil moves, bursting off the line. Caroline may be able to push him back—but when Neil practices with Kevin and Andrew, he’s played backliner for Kevin. Neil can push, too.

And he pushes, one eye on Kevin, half an eye on their dealer, an ounce of attention for Caroline, and when Kevin moves, Neil breaks, whirling away, and uses Caroline’s split second of freefall to catch and pass the ball to Kevin.

“Crazy bastard,” Caroline pants, and then she’s pushing Neil again.

Neil bides his time. Caroline knows him—she knows he’s waiting. For her to slip up, or for Kevin to need him, or for Neil to get a shot—whatever the case may be—and she’s trying, she’s trying _hard_ to predict when he’s going to move and where, and Neil is grinning. It’s no fun outsmarting someone who hasn’t played him since last year; it’s _fun_ to play against a teammate, someone who knows how he plays. He just has to be smarter than she is, is all.

Neil breathes, and decides he trusts Kevin.

Kevin isn’t open; the ball is barely even in his vicinity—it’s closing in on Andrew. But Neil doesn’t have to think for a second about whether or not he trusts Andrew.

He doesn’t have a shot, doesn’t have an in. But he knows how to dance, and he feints, ducks, and waltzes away, and then he’s running across the court. The goalie is focused on him, but confused: The ball is back by Andrew, and Neil is running at nothing.

Neil hears the boom of Andrew’s racquet—but he doesn’t bother turning around, it won’t be coming from straight behind him—and it doesn’t. The goalie looks away, because Kevin’s got the ball—and then it’s in Neil’s net, and Neil smashes it into the goal from five feet away, and the goalie doesn’t even get a chance to look in his direction. Neil turns, unable to stop his momentum, and smashes shoulder-first into the wall.

It’s the most impressive shot he makes all game, but it’s not his last. He and Kevin take three points each for the two that get past Andrew.

They win the game—unstoppable, undefeatable, and Neil bumps fists with Caroline before running towards the party happening in their goal, grabs Andrew’s racquet, grinning—“Shit, Drew, they really fucking tried—” they’d taken 60 shots on goal, 37 of them during Andrew’s half. Their final score is 8; they’d gotten 3 during Andrew’s half.

Andrew, shockingly, looks disappointed. _Disappointed_. Neil thrills to that, thrills to the knowledge that Andrew cares about the game, grins so hard it hurts. Even if they’d outright lost, Andrew caring would be a victory.

They shake hands with Texas and make their way off the court; Neil and Riley shower, fast, and dress, and the rest of the team floods into the showers, and Neil and Riley head out to talk to the press.

Yes, they know they’ve made it to championships; yes, they’re thrilled about it; yes, they’re feeling good about their chances; they won’t say anything about a rematch with Texas, which would imply that they’re certain to beat Arizona next week, and that’s not nice.

“No makeup today?” Someone calls from the back.

“No,” Neil answers. “Not today.”

“No grocery shopping?” Someone else asks.

It occurs to Neil that, while he could just say _not today_ , he’s filming a whole commercial in two days about, essentially, his face. “I’ve decided I’m done hiding,” he says. “It’s not my problem if other people think my scars are weird. It’s on other people to pretend they’ve got some manners, and leave me alone.”

“That’s a new take,” says—Gianna Rosetti. It’s odd, Neil thinks for a second, that she’s here in person—but Championships are right around the corner, and Gianna and her cohosts all started out in journalism. They’re probably all out and about today, following whoever’s got good odds. And Neil is Gianna’s problem. “How tired of hiding are you, exactly?”

Neil puts a hand on Riley’s arm, preemptively silencing her. “Keep an eye out.”

That spawns a wave of questions, which Neil flatly refuses to answer; eventually, they move on, and the interview, blessedly, ends. Neil should’ve kept his mouth shut.

“Neil,” Gianna calls, pushing through the reporters as the cameras click off. There are raised eyebrows—several—at her bad behavior; she doesn’t seem to care.

Neil waves Riley off, gives Andrew an apologetic look, and turns back towards her, leaning over the table as she closes in on it.

“What did you mean, _keep an eye out_?”

“I meant _keep an eye out_ ,” Neil says.

Gianna raises a hopeful eyebrow at him.

“I’m serious,” Neil protests. “I’ll have my PR agent call you when I know something else.”

“You and I both know they wouldn’t be able to talk you into anything you weren’t willing and happy to do,” Gianna scoffs. “What is it, and do I get the exclusive?”

“I’m not saying shit without Eliana’s approval,” Neil repeats. “And yes. Of course.”

“Neil, you _are_ my favorite. Bring Andrew.”

Neil sighs. “It’s not like he’s going to talk. Wouldn’t you rather leave him out of it?”

“Abso _lute_ ly not. He drives my view count through the _roof_. It used to be the Minyard-Josten Rivalry; nowadays, it’s _will Andrew talk_? People _love_ watching me make a fool of myself, trying to get that man to acknowledge my existence. It’s bringing people into the fold.”

Neil closes his eyes for a minute.

Once, two years ago, Neil had done an interview with Gianna. As he’d gotten up to leave, once they’d gone off air, Gianna had waved to Andrew, waiting in the wings, who had tossed her an icy look—one which the cameras had caught. The show had run the look the next day, with Gianna laughing about Andrew’s protective streak.

For six months, Andrew’s PR agent had needled him. He didn’t want another Minyard-Josten Rivalry situation; he wanted Andrew to just address it, just play nice, just be _good_. Andrew had ignored all advice. It was in his contract that he didn’t have to talk to the press. He’d taken a pay cut to prove his devotion to ignoring people with cameras and microphones. But then Neil had done another interview with Gianna, and Andrew had acquiesced to sitting on the stage with Neil—but no one had thought to make him agree to _talk_ , and he hadn’t. He’d just sat there, blankly, ignoring Gianna and her cohosts utterly. She’d handled it quite well; Andrew had, too. Gianna’s cohosts had not.

And then Gianna had cemented Neil’s loyalty to her by flatly refusing to shittalk Andrew the next day, either on the show or vaguely on Twitter. She’d laughed it off. Said something about not being interesting enough. And then she’d moved on.

Twitter hadn’t, though. Twitter had had a _field_ day. Gianna must have done something, for Andrew to hate her so much; Andrew’s PR agent must be a demon, forcing Andrew to sit on stage with her. Or Andrew was a dick, and there was no call for that kind of rudeness, and Gianna was a saint for handling it.

And as the tweets had flown, Gianna’s ratings had soared, and suddenly, Andrew-and-Neil interviews were in hot demand.

Andrew didn’t understand it at all—and, to be fair, neither did Neil. But Andrew joined Neil for his interviews with Gianna anyway. Not for any other interviews—all other shows, all other interviewers, got nothing. But he’d sit in on Gianna’s show.

It only made the betting worse. Suddenly, there was a third faction: The people who decided it was all made up for the camera, and once the cameras clicked off, Andrew and Gianna must be the best of friends.

“Look. Do you _really_ want to sit there and be ignored?” Neil asks. “Isn’t it a waste of your time?”

“Neil, I have a show to keep running.”

“I realize.”

“Haven’t I said nice things about Andrew for _years_?” She wheedles. She knows precisely why Neil likes her so much. “Since before your Rivalry. During your Rivalry. After your Rivalry. The whole time. I’ve _always_ been on his side.”

“Sure, but that only works because I love him,” Neil explains patiently. “If putting him in front of the camera makes him unhappy, it defeats the purpose.”

“It doesn’t make him unhappy. He loves that shit. It’s the highlight of his week, every time. He _loves_ ignoring me.”

“You’re making it weird.”

“I’m being reassuring. He keeps coming on the show, doesn’t he? There must be _something_ about it he finds amusing. And what could I possibly do to ruin that?”

“I’ve been burned before.”

“I’m not Kathy Ferdinand.”

Neil sighs.

Gianna grins up at him winningly. “Just ask him. Bet you he’ll say yes.”

“I don’t bet. I’ll ask.”

“ _Thank_ you. I’ll be so nice. I’ll get some aromatherapy going before he gets on stage. I’ll put something fun off-stage, behind my head, so he has something fun to stare at.”

“You’re very excited about being ignored.”

“You know, I’m getting used to it. I think it’s his way of showing that he likes me. No one _else_ gets ignored. They can’t even get him in front of the camera.”

Neil shakes his head, but he’s not refuting what she’s saying. She’s _right_ , is the thing. But it is physically painful for Neil to watch her ask Andrew questions, which Andrew leaves hanging. “If you’re fine with it.”

“Don’t worry about _me_ ,” she says cheerfully. “Just keep giving me those lovely, lovely ratings.”

“Making me doubt your sincerity.”

“I’m a TV show host. Everything I do is insincere.”

“If the press wasn’t my sworn enemy, we’d probably be friends.”

She grins at him. “I’ll take that as an insult.”

Neil straightens. “See you later, Gianna.”

“Later, Neil.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow as Neil returns to him.

“Promised her an interview about the commercial,” Neil says. “She wants you to come too. You don’t have to.”

Andrew takes Neil’s hand as they head for the bus and hums. “I could.”

Neil shrugs. “It’s up to you. I told her I’d ask. I didn’t make her any promises.”

They board the bus and take their seats, and Maria and Kevin rope them into the celebration, which they can have on the bus—Kevin’s sobriety has put the whole team off alcohol, when they’re together anyway, so their celebration involves lots of back-slapping, the heady joy that comes from knowing how close they are to finals, that buzz in their veins that says: _we’re unstoppable_.

The celebration also involves celebratory toasts, but they toast with Gatorade. They’re responsible adults, these days.

And then they make it to the hotel, and—responsible adults at the end of a long day—split up and head to their individual rooms, with the exception of Neil and Andrew, who have saved the team thousands of dollars by rooming together.

They walk into their hotel room and do what every person, ever, does when they enter a hotel room: They look around.

Neil opens the first door he finds—a bathroom. “Shower looks nice,” he observes. He opens the shampoo bottle and sniffs. “Shampoo smells nice. Also, we have three rolls of toilet paper.”

“We’ve got a safe,” Andrew says from the main room. “And an ironing board.”

“We’d probably burn the hotel down if we tried to use the iron,” Neil says, passing him and heading for the window. “Nice view,” he decides, looking down—they’re on the 14th floor. “Don’t look, but I can see three parking lots, and I can see straight into the lobby—I didn’t realize they had a glass ceiling. Why would they waste that much space? I’d think it would be at a premium.”

“Then they might’ve had to make the rooms bigger,” Andrew says from the closet. “Also, we have two extra pillows and four extra blankets.”

Neil picks up the room service menu. “Oh good—we can sneak in a couple stowaways and give them proper sleeping necessities. Oh, and if we’d like to order in, a bowl of steel-cut oats with seasonal fruit is $18.”

“As is only appropriate. I’m sure the Quaker oats are very expensive in Texas.” He sits on the bed. “Reasonably bouncy.” He bounces. “Minimally squeaky.”

Neil opens the guest book. “Wifi is free. They recommend several restaurants for breakfast, but nothing for dinner—their in-hotel restaurant opens at 4. Should we call the girls?”

“They’re probably happy to have a night off,” Andrew says. “And they’re fine. They texted; we texted back.”

Neil glances at him, but the look on Andrew’s face isn’t annoyed—it’s _sweet_. Andrew thinks it’s cute, that Neil’s worrying this much. Neil raises an eyebrow at him.

Andrew shrugs. “It’s nice. That you care.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“You didn’t want to foster. I was worried.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to foster. I just wasn’t sure—I don’t know. I’m not solid parent material. Also, a bowl of Cheerios costs $8. Holy shit.”

“The kids seem to think you’re doing just fine.”

Neil glances back at him, and the naked love on Andrew’s face gets tangled in Neil’s lungs. He can’t take that for granted—neither the love itself, nor the fact that he can see it, softening Andrew’s whole face, stealing Neil’s heart away.

Well, that’s an exaggeration, at least. Neil’s heart has been Andrew’s for years.

Neil takes a seat beside him on the bed—reasonably bouncy, minimally squeaky. As advertised. He holds his hand out, and Andrew takes it. The way their hands fit together strikes Neil as a minor miracle: Isn’t it incredible, that humans have hands that can hold each other? That Andrew and Neil, as fucked up as they are, still fit together so neatly? “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, leaning in.

Maybe it’s because Neil had, just that morning, been thinking about Andrew’s year in hell; maybe it’s because he remembers how scared Andrew had been, on the plane. But Neil keeps his free hand down. Andrew’s tongue is taking him apart, but Neil just grips Andrew’s hand, skin-to-skin, good enough.

Until Andrew pulls back, far enough that he can meet Neil’s gaze. “Touch me,” he murmurs.

“Where?” Neil asks, smiling as he leans back in—he knows where his hand goes, and he tangles it in Andrew’s hair, pulls Andrew in for a kiss, lightheaded with the knowledge that Andrew _wants_ Neil’s touch.

Their lips part, giving Neil time to take the deep breath he so desperately needs, and Andrew whispers: “Anywhere you want.”

All the air leaves Neil’s lungs, and he stares at Andrew. “No.”

Andrew looks at him.

“That doesn’t mean anything, Drew. Where?”

“Want a map?”

“Yes.”

Andrew takes Neil’s wrist, removing Neil’s hand from Andrew’s hair, and puts the hand on his chest. “Here.” Puts the hand on his stomach. “Here.” His thigh. “Here. Wherever you want.”

Neil leaves his hand on Andrew’s thigh. “I won’t be like them,” he says helplessly. “I won’t let myself be.”

Andrew puts a finger to Neil’s lips. “You’re not. I’m giving you permission.”

Neil holds Andrew’s gaze for a second—he’s serious, Neil realizes. “You’ll say no if it’s a no,” Neil says. Andrew doesn’t move his finger from Neil’s lips.

“I’ll say no if it’s a no,” Andrew promises.

Neil pulls the tip of Andrew’s finger into his mouth, and watches Andrew’s eyes go dark, heavy-lidded. Removes his lips from Andrew’s finger in favor of leaning forward to plant a kiss on Andrew’s jaw, and then leans back so he can watch, just in case.

He decides that Andrew’s thigh isn’t safe enough—not to start with. Sure, Neil had given Andrew a handjob just two days ago, but his thigh still feels off-limits. He runs his hand down Andrew’s arm instead (nothing new there, but a safe place to start), listening to Andrew’s breath speed up, and then Andrew takes his arm and his hand back, and Neil pulls away, but all Andrew does is pull his shirt off. And then he holds his arms out to Neil, and Neil removes his armbands and sets them aside. Neil slides his fingernails up Andrew’s arm, watches goosebumps form, drags his hand across Andrew’s chest and down to his stomach. Neil watches Andrew’s eyes flutter shut, lips parted, and places his hand on Andrew’s chest, feeling Andrew’s heartbeat, feeling Andrew’s lungs expand. Slowly, carefully, one eye on Andrew’s face, all senses attuned to the type of tension Andrew is projecting, Neil maps Andrew’s torso: The plane of his chest, the way his stomach rolls when he sits down. Neil finds every rib. Once it becomes clear that Andrew isn’t going to stop being into this any time soon, Neil drops his mouth to Andrew’s throat, following the bob of Andrew’s Adam’s apple with his lips before moving down to take one of Andrew’s nipples into his mouth, listens as Andrew’s breath turns to a hiss.

Andrew pushes, and Neil goes, an apology already on his lips, but Andrew just tugs at Neil’s shirt—a request, which Neil happily obliges. He feels the bed bounce as he pulls his shirt off, and when it’s out of his way, he sees Andrew standing, pulling off his pants, and his heart jumps.

“Drew,” Neil says, a warning, as Andrew turns to toss his pants in the general direction of their bags. Andrew glances back at him, and Neil—slowly, giving Andrew time to see and understand and move away—reaches out and puts two fingers between Andrew’s shoulder blades. “Yes or no?”

Andrew tilts his head, thoughtful. He reaches one hand back, wiggles his fingers, and Neil takes his hand. “Yes.”

Neil considers, and decides that the _yes_ sounded sincere—there’s a new tension in Andrew’s back, but not much, and there’s none in his hand. Andrew’s back has a complex set of boundaries: with clothes, it’s fine for Neil to lean against him; without, absolutely not. If Neil is standing in front of Andrew, it’s fine for Neil to wrap a hand around the back of Andrew’s neck, to hug Andrew as tight as Neil wants; if Neil is coming up from behind Andrew, it’s—undesirable. And no one else gets to touch his back. Neil understands why—if he’s not careful, he can almost see Drake, pushing Andrew down.

Neil ignores that. Squeezes Andrew’s hand, gently—it’s just the two of them.

Neil runs his fingers down Andrew’s spine, slowly, watching Andrew’s muscles twitch as he shivers. Places his hand flat against Andrew’s lower back, right where his spine curves, Neil’s middle finger lining up with Andrew’s spine, the rest splayed out. Andrew breathes, slow and steady, and Neil traces spirals over Andrew’s skin, waves, the alphabet, mesmerized by his muscles, by the bumps of his spine, by how his shoulder blades move. Neil stands, letting the minimal squeakiness of the bed be a warning, and, when Andrew doesn’t so much as look back to see what Neil’s doing, doesn’t so much as twitch at the noise, Neil leans down to place a kiss at the base of Andrew’s neck, drags his lips a few inches down Andrew’s spine, pulls back up. Neil puts a hand on Andrew’s waist, and then he kisses a line up Andrew’s jugular, feels Andrew’s hand tighten, feels Andrew lose his breath. “I love you so much,” Neil murmurs into Andrew’s ear. “More than anything else in the entire world, I love you, Andrew Joseph Minyard, the light and love of my life, I love you more every day—”

Andrew turns and makes short work of Neil’s jeans, pulling them off with Neil’s underwear and tossing it all away. He reaches into his bag for the lube and then pulls the blanket off the bed, and then offers Neil his hand to help Neil climb back onto the sheets. Neil crawls backwards and Andrew follows him, slow, pressing Neil into the bed, fingers ghosting up Neil’s thighs, pressing into his hips, drawing figure eights on Neil’s stomach. And then there’s Andrew’s mouth, tracing Neil’s scars, moving upwards towards Neil’s chest. Neil tangles one hand in Andrew’s hair, and with the other, he makes use of his new permission to touch, running his fingers down Andrew’s arm, across his shoulders, down his back as he moves up Neil, taking his time, going slow. Neil can hear his voice— _we have time, we have time_ —but Neil isn’t known for his patience.

Neil takes a deep breath and finds patience in the dip between Andrew’s shoulder blades, in the bumps of his spine, in the muscles of his arms. And eventually, when Neil’s breath is coming in snatches, when his whole body is warm, Andrew’s lips make it to Neil’s, and Neil’s brain liquidizes.

When Neil’s whole body is buzzing, Andrew tugs away to nip at Neil’s neck, and Neil lets his hands roam again—down Andrew’s back, over his sides, noticing how he twitches when Neil curves a hand around Andrew’s waist. He puts a hand to Andrew’s chin, tilting Andrew’s head back up, so that he can kiss the tip of Andrew’s nose, kiss his cheek, kiss the corner of his mouth. Andrew doesn’t stop him, doesn’t get bored and move in for a kiss. He makes himself comfortable on top of Neil, eyes closed, trusting Neil, letting Neil kiss his whole face, letting Neil write all over Andrew’s skin, anywhere Neil can reach, writing math equations, the alphabet, the Russian alphabet, Andrew’s name, tracing hearts and stars into his skin. Neil could do this forever. Could lie here, Andrew on top of him, Andrew’s forearms crossed on Neil’s chest, Andrew’s skin against Neil’s, forever. Warm, unyielding weight; the touch of someone who doesn’t want to hurt him—who, in fact, _loves_ him. A gift.

Eventually, Andrew opens his eyes, studying Neil.

Neil understands, suddenly and without preamble, what Andrew had meant, every time he’d said _don’t look at me like that, I’m not your answer._

“How’d you do it?” Andrew murmurs.

Neil runs his hand through Andrew’s hair. “Do what?”

Andrew hums, content, as Neil kisses his temple.

“There were people before who thought they could fix me,” Andrew says, eyes half-closed.

“I didn’t _fix_ you,” Neil says. He’s too relaxed to be indignant, too comfortable to be indignant, but he sure can try.

Andrew’s face smooths out into an approximation of a smile. “No. You didn’t,” he says, amused, calm. “That’s the whole thing.”

“How’d I do what?”

Andrew slides a hand up Neil’s throat, over his cheek. “No one could fix me. It was on me to do that.”

“I don’t know that I’d have called you _broken_ ,” Neil says, accomplishing indignance on Andrew’s behalf. He feels Andrew pull in a deep breath.

“I would’ve. Most people would’ve. And they’d have tried to fix me,” Andrew repeats. “They _did_ try. Often. And were shocked when they failed. Because it wasn’t up to them. And it wasn’t up to you, either, but you didn’t care. How’d you do it? How’d you make me want to try?”

Neil shakes his head. This line of discussion, he feels, is senseless. “I didn’t do anything. You did it.”

“I did,” Andrew agrees.

“I love you,” Neil says.

“That’s how,” Andrew says. “I love you, too.”

He opens his mouth for Neil, letting Neil in, and Neil remembers how long it had taken Andrew to say the words _I love you_ , and how much he’d meant them when he finally did, when he’d finally taken to whispering them when Neil was on the verge of sleep, like he was testing them out, just to see if his voice was capable of forming the proper phenomes. Andrew shifts, pulling himself farther up Neil’s body so he can get a better angle on Neil’s mouth, and the movement pulls a groan out of Neil—one that’s quickly smothered by Andrew’s tongue, but one that Andrew hears nonetheless. And after a minute, once Neil is properly dizzy, Andrew pushes himself back down, moving faster now, until he swipes his tongue across the tip of Neil’s cock and dips his head down to pull Neil into his mouth. Neil tangles his hands in Andrew’s hair, fighting his usual battle to stay still, helped by Andrew’s hand on his hip—for as long as Andrew’s hand is _on_ his hip, because then it moves, fingertips sliding down Neil’s thigh, fingernails skimming back up to Neil’s hip, to his waist, his hand flat on Neil’s stomach—

Neil does his level best not to disturb their neighbors, turning his face sideways and pressing into the pillow at the last minute.

When Neil finally removes his face from the pillow, gasping, Andrew nips at his lower lip, lets Neil pull him in for a kiss, hums into Neil’s mouth, and Neil can feel Andrew’s dick pressing into Neil’s stomach.

Neil’s been rebuffed so often, he almost doesn’t ask. But today, the answer might actually be yes. He pulls back. “Do you need—?”

Andrew considers him, eyes hooded, and Neil waits for them to go distant, blank, flat, but they don’t. Andrew ducks back in for a kiss, which Neil falls into happily—and then Andrew rolls them, putting Neil on top, and settles back into the pillows, hands on Neil’s waist. “Yes,” he says. “I do.”

Neil presses his lips to Andrew’s temple for a moment, and then grabs the lube. It’s an awkward position—kneeling above Andrew, one elbow next to Andrew’s head on their stack of pillows, Neil’s hand between them—but Neil isn’t complaining.

He goes slow, doing his level best to be gentle—they have time, and regardless, he’s not going to rush this. Not when he’s so busy looking for the slightest hint that he needs to back off. Not when he’s so busy paying attention to every gasp he pulls out of Andrew, every twitch of Andrew’s hips, the way Andrew’s hands are tangled in Neil’s hair. And he tells Andrew this, all of this, a running stream of commentary to remind Andrew that he’s _here_ , with _Neil_ , with no one else, just Neil. To remind Andrew that his pleasure matters, to Neil. Neil whispers his love into Andrew’s skin. He’s awaiting the day when all the words he’s given Andrew reach a critical mass and become visible, wrapping Andrew in a cocoon of _I love you_ ’s.

And then Andrew’s breath hitches, and Neil presses his lips to Andrew’s jaw, and it had never occurred to Neil that giving someone a handjob could feel so _sacred_ , but kneeling there, hovering over Andrew, listening to Andrew breathe, _sacred_ is the only word coming to mind. He finds Andrew’s mouth, and it’s the only church he’s ever needed.

Andrew presses, and Neil stands and heads into the bathroom to wash his hands. Andrew follows just a minute later, eyeing Neil’s body with an appreciation that no longer surprises Neil.

They order room service for dinner. It’s expensive. It bothers Neil; the fact that they can afford it doesn’t make it any less a waste. On the other hand, how often do they order room service? Not very often at all. And instead of sitting in a restaurant, they sit in bed, shoulders pressed together and knees bumping, arguing about whether the biggest problem with time travel would be the fact that there would be no way to prevent the butterfly effect from changing the future irreparably or the fact that it would throw off how old the time traveler would be—Neil, given that he’s already got two birthdays, is somehow vastly more bothered by the idea of spending two weeks in the past and being two weeks older, forever, than his birthdays count.

“But that’s _nothing_ ,” Andrew says between bites of cake, “compared to the changes even one wrong word could make.”

“Sure, but there’s a good chance that those changes would prevent the birth or time travel of the traveler, creating a paradox and subsequent dead timeline. It wouldn’t affect the main timeline at all—”

“Assuming the existence of multiple timelines. And you’re assuming the traveler is going into the past.”

“Heading into the future makes no sense—we’re all heading into the future, and if you _go_ to the future and assume it’s set in stone, then just by traveling to the future you’re taking away people’s choices—and anyway, the traveler might bring something back, changing the timeline until the future they went to doesn’t exist. Anyway. Even if there aren’t multiple timelines _now,_ the moment we invent time travel and begin creating paradoxes like that there will be—which, of course, means that there _are_ multiple timelines now, by virtue of the fact that time is bullshit.”

“The idea of countless dead timelines is more disturbing to me than my age being off by a couple weeks.”

“Well, sure, but we’d never know. The timelines would just collapse until they disintegrated under the weight of time traveler nonsense, and the main timeline would continue on untouched. Of course, that _does_ beg the question of what happens to the time traveler—do they find themselves always on the verge of time traveling? Always just about to, but never actually doing it? Every time they actually _do_ the time traveling, it creates an offshoot timeline—so in the main timeline, they’d never actually manage it. Do you think they’d figure out the problem eventually? Or would they just be trapped in place, incapable of moving forward, with no idea why?”

“Well, _that’s_ a whole new nightmare,” Andrew says, swiping a finger across the plate, gathering the last of the icing.

Hmm. That hadn’t been Neil’s intention.

As Andrew lifts his finger from the plate, Neil leans forward and pulls it into his mouth, sucking the icing off.

Andrew stares at him. “I suck your dick and you eat the last of my icing?”

Neil laughs and leans in for a kiss, letting Andrew swipe his tongue into Neil’s mouth. The icing was chocolate. It was pretty good.

Eventually, they turn off the lights, and Neil tugs Andrew on top of him. Andrew’s weight never fails to bring Neil peace; it’s comforting, soothing. He tugs Andrew in for a kiss.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be gentle,” Andrew whispers a few minutes later, the most confusing thing he’s ever said to Neil. “Back when we met. When we started dating.”

Neil tugs on Andrew’s hair, pulling Andrew away, just enough so that Neil can frown at him in the darkness. “What are you talking about?”

Andrew taps Neil’s cheek, and Neil goes back, examines his memories, and—“Why are you apologizing for it?” Neil asks. For sure, Andrew hadn’t been gentle, after Neil had been kidnapped. It’s also been ten years.

“It was what you needed. And I couldn’t give that to you.”

“Well, sure,” Neil says. “That’s why I had other friends. And I didn’t _need_ you to be gentle, I needed you to be _you_. It’s why I was dating _you_ , and not—” he flips through his mental bank of people, and can’t think of a single person who falls under the category _gentle_ , except maybe Abby. He flicks a few fingers. “And not someone else,” he concludes lamely.

This doesn’t seem to reassure Andrew. “Well, fuck. Do you want me to be rough?”

It occurs to Neil that he’s not the only person who’s ever had a personality crisis. “I want you to be _you_.”

“And who is _that_? I keep changing.”

Neil shrugs, as best as he can, given his place under Andrew. “That’s fine, so do I. If you’d tried to be gentle with me way back when, I’d probably have freaked out. Today, I’m not complaining.”

Andrew doesn’t respond immediately, hands tense, struggling with something. Neil keeps his hands in Andrew’s hair. He’s not looking to distract Andrew.

Finally, Andrew says: “What if I become someone you can’t love?”

Neil flicks a finger, waving that off. “Then I’ll figure out how to fall in love with you again.”

“But what if you _can’t_? What if you decide, a decade from now, that actually, you want someone who is something that I’m not? You love me now—what if I’m different tomorrow?”

Neil shakes his head. “I literally don’t care. I fall in love with you every other day; tomorrow I’ll do it again. A decade from now, you’ll be someone different, and so will I, and that’ll be fine. You’ll love me, and I’ll love you, and everything else we can figure out. Anyway, we _need_ to change things up every once in a while. What if we get bored? What if _you_ get bored of _me_? Someone warned me once that you get bored pretty easily.” Neil feels Andrew take a breath to protest, and whips a finger in front of Andrew’s mouth. “If who you are tomorrow isn’t who you are today, I’ll figure out how to love the new you. I promised, didn’t I?”

“I’m not going to trap you in a marriage with someone you didn’t marry,” Andrew says viciously.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled. Don’t give me away in marriage, and I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“You can’t say in one breath that you married me because I’m me and say in the next breath that it doesn’t matter if I change.”

“But I just did. And it’s true. And it’s true on your end, too, don’t tell me it’s not. Ten years ago, the concept of fostering kids would have been flatly fucking ridiculous to me. The idea of showing someone else my scars was enough to send me running. Did you divorce me when I agreed to give up night practices? No, you didn’t, even though that’s an _enormous_ change. Did you divorce me when I picked up a knife again? No. If tomorrow I agreed to go to therapy, would you divorce me over it? _I’m_ not the person _you_ married, either. We _just_ had this conversation, like, a week ago. Andrew Minyard, be who you are, and I’ll love you.”

Andrew pulls in a breath, and Neil waits, ready. He hadn’t realized that this was a problem. He’d been under the impression that they’d solved this particular issue—on Andrew’s end, if not Neil’s—years ago.

And then Andrew sighs. “This is fucking ridiculous. You know, when I was a teenager, my problem was that people wanted me to change, and I thought I never would. And you were the answer—you didn’t need me to change, in order for you to love me. So I could try,” he explains, tracing abstract patterns on Neil’s cheek, “because if I failed, it didn’t matter. And now I got the fucking ball rolling, and it won’t stop, and I’m terrified you’ll go to sleep tonight thinking I’m in one place, and you’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll have rolled down a mountain and into a lake.”

Neil takes Andrew’s hand. “Then I’ll go find you,” he says patiently. “I don’t mind. It would probably be easier if you’d go rolling around while I’m awake, though. That way I don’t have to waste time searching for you.”

“I don’t want to go somewhere you won’t follow.”

“I’ll follow you anywhere.” Neil doesn’t even have to think about it. He knows it’s true.

Andrew studies him, looking for an ounce of doubt, a single qualifier, and finds nothing.

“Mine,” Neil murmurs, tightening his hands in Andrew’s hair. “You’re mine, as long as you want to be.” He remembers Cass, and indulges in hating her, just for a minute. “I’m not letting you go. I’m not pushing you away, I’m not giving you up. We’re going to get old together, and we’re gonna change so much we’ll _never_ get bored. And you’ll be mine, and I’ll be yours, and we’ll have a couple kids, and maybe someday we’ll have grandkids and it’ll be an absolute nightmare. God, what if Natalie and Paige have kids and ask us to _babysit_?”

Andrew’s fingers stop moving for a minute. “You can’t get me through one crisis by giving me another one. _Grandkids_.”

“Yes, I can. Stay here. Have this crisis with me.”

“Okay, Grandpa.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s too much. That’s too far.”

“What, not thinking about Sunday dinners with the grandkids?”

“Jesus, what are we _becoming_? I’ve changed my mind. We need to figure out what was going on in college, and get some of that back.”

“You killed a guy two days ago, what are you talking about?”

“Oh yeah.” Neil considers, just for a second, the idea of him being _old_. He’d always liked the thought of getting there, but he’d never actually _thought_ about it. “One day, I’m not going to look like my dad anymore.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Not worried about losing your youthful beauty?”

“What youthful beauty? One day, I’m going to have grey hair and wrinkles, and I’m _not going to look like my dad anymore_.”

“Hold on, hold on, go back. What do you mean, _what youthful beauty?_ ”

Neil twitches, aiming for a shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not good-looking.”

“Shut your mouth. What, do you think _I_ have bad taste?”

“Love is blind, of course you think I’m pretty. The _point_ —”

“Nope, I’m not done. _Love is blind_? It’s not like I thought you were _ugly_ until I fell in love with you.”

“First of all, I mean, sure, I didn’t think too much about it. Everyone’s someone’s something. Second of all, I didn’t have scars when we met, and apparently you’ve had a crush on me since day one, so—”

“Day _two_. That was day _two_. On day _one,_ I heard the door open, and watched this gorgeous man come running straight at me, and was pissed about it. _Love is blind_. Bullshit. You didn’t get ugly when your hair dye got fucked up, or when you got scarred. You’ve never been ugly. You’re _hot_.”

Neil flicks a finger. “Everybody’s someone’s something. _The point is_ ,” he says, overriding Andrew’s protest, “I’m going to be able to look in the mirror and _not_ see my dad.”

“Fuck your dad. He’s dead. You _already_ look in the mirror and see yourself.”

Neil hums. The only difference, these days, is his scarring.

“Don’t you hum at me.”

“Make me stop.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Neil studies Andrew’s face, familiar, beautiful, and slides an arm down around Andrew’s shoulders. “I got so lucky, when I found you.”

Andrew stays silent, accepting that, and it’s nice, not to be rebuffed. Not to be held at a distance. Neil hadn’t realized how much he’d cared until it had stopped.

After a minute, Andrew kisses Neil’s cheek—a good night—and rearranges himself so he can stick his head under Neil’s chin. Neil wraps his arms around Andrew, but stays awake a few more minutes. He makes his breathing deep and even, and feels Andrew’s slow to match it, and maybe he’s tired, but a calm Andrew is worth staying up for.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> knife-throwing, romeo and juliet, cute shit.

The next morning, they fly home.

Neil reads for most of the flight; Andrew doesn’t speak until they land. Maria, wordlessly, holds out a fist; Andrew considers it for a moment, and then bumps it.

Life is good.

They get home a little after noon, and the girls are in the living room, watching a movie. Alive, and fine, and the house is still standing, and Neil takes a deep breath as he decides that, yes, all is well.

“We’re home,” Neil calls, already halfway up the stairs. If they don’t bring their stuff upstairs immediately, it’ll sit in the front hall for a week, and they know it. And anyway, they have to scoop the kitty litter.

When they make it back downstairs, Natalie and Paige are waiting for them.

The TV is off.

Neil and Andrew pause in the entryway.

“Yes?” Neil asks, apprehensively.

“I want to learn how to throw knives,” Natalie says calmly.

“You’ve said that already.”

“Yeah, but I want to start today.”

Neil leans against the doorjamb. “I know you think I’ll be a good teacher.”

“You will be,” Natalie says calmly.

Neil notices that calm. “The problem is that if my teaching style doesn’t work, things will go bad. Knife throwing doesn’t leave much room for error.”

“I won’t aim at you.”

“I’m much more worried about _you_.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She must’ve spent all weekend thinking about this. Planning this. She’s prepared for him to object, and while she didn’t pin down her answers, she was prepared for rejection. She is unphased by it. Not so much as a glimpse of her temper.

“You can’t even hold a knife properly yet. If you hold on too tightly when throwing a knife, you can end up stabbing yourself in the knee. Also, there’s a lot about knife throwing that’s intuition—how hard to throw it, how much it needs to spin, how far it needs to go, how to compensate for the weight of the knife, and I can’t teach you that at all.”

Neil watches her take a deep breath. “I’ll figure it out,” she says. Calmly.

Neil debates.

He glances at Andrew.

Andrew gives Neil a shrug, a twist of the mouth, a glance towards the bathroom, a glance towards the cabinet with the whiskey hidden in it. _We’ve got a first aid kit. Better for her to get hurt when we’re ready for it than for her to get hurt when we don’t know about it. Like drinking. Better to do it here, with us to keep her safe, than alone, with no idea what she’s doing._

“Okay,” Neil agrees. “But when we’re done, you have to finish your homework.”

“We’d have done it anyway.”

“I know. Oh—did you two clean your room yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Vacuumed under the beds?”

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

Neil leads the way upstairs, Natalie and Paige on his heels. He grabs a couple knives from Andrew’s bedside table. Natalie takes one; Paige does not.

Andrew wanders in with their first aid kit.

“There’s a couple different ways of holding knives, for throwing,” Neil says. He watches Natalie repress a groan—she’s heard enough about how to hold knives, he knows. “There’s the hammer grip—” he demonstrates—“and the pinch grip—” he flips the knife around in his hand. “I’m comfortable with either. The hammer grip may be a better place to start, for you.”

He teaches her everything he can—how many times a knife should flip over, how to throw the knife weight-first, and then he demonstrates.

He looks at the knife, sitting dead center in the dartboard, and opens his mouth to tell her that he can’t teach her the rest.

He looks at his daughter, waiting patiently with knife in hand, and finds that the idea of her getting hurt because of his failure to instruct her properly is orders of magnitude worse than hauling out the knowledge that he does, in fact, have, buried so far back in Nathaniel’s brain that it’s nothing but a foggy, fearful memory.

Lola had been a good teacher. She’d taught him about momentum, and how to figure out where to let go of the knife, and how to decide whether it was necessary to bend the wrist or not. She’d only told him once or twice—it had become apparent, rather quickly, that Neil was better with intuition than logic. But there are tips and tricks, for this, little things that might help Natalie.

So Neil speaks. Lola’s words, his voice. Nathaniel’s fear and anxiety are tangible things, bubbling up in his lungs, and he shoves them down, because he has a kid to teach and things to do. Down, down, down, until he can’t feel it at all.

“Stop it,” Natalie says.

He looks at her, confused, and there’s Andrew, taking Neil’s chin, turning Neil to look at Andrew, and Andrew is worried. Gentle. Insistently, pointedly gentle. Shockingly gentle. Not because Andrew isn’t gentle—these days, he is—but because Lola never was, Nathan never was, Mary never was. It’s a surprise, all over again, to be touched by someone who doesn’t want to hurt him. 

Neil takes Andrew’s hand and smiles at him. “Sorry. I’ll stop.”

He tries again. Lola’s dead, and he doesn’t have to run from her anymore. He already did that work.

After a minute or two, he steps back, and Natalie takes a deep breath, and throws the knife directly into the wall a foot to the left of the dartboard.

She freezes.

“Not bad,” Neil says. He notices the way Paige jumps at the sound of his voice, the way Natalie’s hands are shaking. “You didn’t stab yourself, and you actually hit point-first. Hey. Natalie?”

She looks at him, eyes wide, jaw clenched. Ready. Waiting.

“You did fine. We’re not angry. We love you. The wall can be spackled. Hell, we’ll teach you how to spackle—it’s a useful thing to know. Natalie.” He extends a hand to her, slowly, palm turned up. Her nostrils flare, and Neil freezes, waiting. He glances at Paige, who looks equally terrified, and tilts his head, an invitation. “It’s fine,” he says, gently. He knows how to be gentle. He had a good teacher.

“It doesn’t _feel_ fine,” she says, voice flat.

“I know,” Neil says. “But it is.”

She steps back, and Neil retracts his hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” Neil answers. “It’s okay.”

“We’re going to our room now,” Paige says, grabbing Natalie’s hand.

“Okay,” Neil agrees, and Paige pulls Natalie into their bedroom. Neil hears the lock click and looks at Andrew.

“Well, that was fun,” Andrew says.

“I hate everyone who’s ever fostered them,” Neil says calmly.

Andrew squeezes his hand. “I hate your parents.”

“And I hate yours.”

“I want to bake.”

“Okay.” Neil heads for the knives; Andrew follows, apparently unwilling to let go of Neil’s hand, and they pull the knife out of the wall and the knife out of the dartboard.

They put the knives back in Andrew’s bedside table and wander downstairs, pausing so Neil can grab a book and Andrew can grab his headphones.

Andrew pops his headphones in once they reach the kitchen and Neil takes a seat at the table. He’s been slowly getting into sci-fi, when he has the time and inclination to read. He’s worked his way through N.K. Jemisin’s works, he’s read Terry Pratchett, he’s read Elizabeth Bear, and now he’s moving on to Ann Leckie, whom he’s quickly deciding he likes. He reads to the comforting, familiar sounds of Andrew baking—the rummaging in the pantry, the clatter of bowls, the sound flour makes when it hits the bottom of a measuring cup, the sound of the handheld mixer. Every once in a while, he hears the faint noise from Andrew’s headphones.

Eventually, there’s bread in the bread machine, a cake in the oven, and frosting in a container in the fridge. Neil looks up, but Andrew’s not done—he’s pulling out the pasta machine. Neil gets up and takes chicken out of the freezer to defrost; chicken, homemade pasta, whatever sauce goes well with mozzarella—dinner will be good. _And_ homemade bread. Very good.

A little while later, Andrew sits down at the table, and calls Renee. Neil holds his hand, contributes to the conversation when asked, and keeps reading.

The girls tiptoe downstairs, called by the smell of cake, and Neil waves them over, noting Natalie’s running clothes. “We going for a run?”

Natalie nods. “If you want.”

“I’m up for it,” Neil says easily, closing his book. He kisses Andrew on the cheek, Andrew squeezes his hand, and Neil heads upstairs to get changed.

Natalie’s waiting for him in the front hallway. “I’m sorry I stabbed your bedroom wall,” she says flatly as they walk down the driveway.

“I’m not,” Neil says. “Better a hole in the wall than in you. The first time I threw a knife, I threw it backwards. Missed my knee by a quarter inch; missed my teacher by less than that. You actually threw it forward, which isn’t half bad.”

She takes a deep breath, standing at the bottom of the driveway, feet planted. “I’m sorry I don’t trust you.”

“You don’t?”

“I keep expecting you and Andrew to—I just—I know you won’t. I know you won’t. But I keep reacting like you will. I’m sorry. I know it’s an overreaction.”

“That’s usually called _trauma_ ,” Neil says lightly, counting to ten in his head, thanking Bee from the bottom of his heart. “And I’m glad you developed those reactions, because they probably saved you before. Just because _you_ know you don’t need them anymore doesn’t mean your _body_ has figured that out yet, and your body is trying to protect you. It doesn’t bother me or Andrew. And you don’t have to apologize for it.”

She looks at him, finally, silently, shoulders tense.

“You should probably work on it, though,” Neil continues after a moment. “Survival tactics aren’t usually good for you, out of context. They fuck you up, and your relationships. Andrew and I are here, if you want to talk. And if you want therapy, we’ll get you therapy. Is there anything I can do? To help you? Is there anything you need?”

She shakes her head, and then takes off.

She sets a lighter pace than usual, and Neil lets her set the route—she picks a longer one, going farther away than normal before curving back around. They do three miles before Natalie slows to a walk, still a solid mile out.

“We started _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” she says after she catches her breath. “In English. Paige and I did the reading at Abby’s.”

“Do you like it? Oh. How was Abby’s?”

“It was nice, she’s cool. Bee and Wymack came over for dinner. Anyway, _Romeo and Juliet_ is gonna be sad, so that’s fun. But Mrs. Tanning gave us a worksheet. We’re supposed to interview adults about their relationships. Why’d you fall in love with Andrew?”

“I thought we’d established that I didn’t even know I liked him for several months?”

Natalie shrugs. “Time to do some self-examination, pops.”

“Are we settled on _pops_?”

“Maybe. Haven’t decided yet.”

“You may as well just call me _old man_.”

“I’ll call you that, if you’d like.”

Neil sighs, and does some self-examination. “I mean, it’s complicated.”

“How?”

“Well, because—there were _stages_. I had to trust him before I could love him, but I can love him so much because I can trust him. I don’t love him _because_ he makes me feel safe, but I wouldn’t have been able to love him if he didn’t.”

Natalie makes half a noise that sounds like it was supposed to be annoyed, until she cut it off. “I know we’ve had this conversation before,” she says, and, yes, that _was_ annoyance, “but I still do _not_ get how he managed to make you feel safe within a year of _drugging you._ ”

Neil sighs. He’d been furious about it, too, at the time. He’d been angrier at Nicky than Andrew, though—Andrew had been trying to protect Kevin; Nicky had been trying to make out with Neil. He’s never told anyone—let alone Andrew—about that. Being in Germany wouldn’t be enough to save Nicky. And he’d never tried it again, either on Neil or on anyone else, to Neil’s knowledge. Regardless, whereas Andrew’s motivations had made him nothing short of Neil’s savior, Nicky’s motivations were—well, it had taken Neil plenty of time to get past them.

But that’s not what Natalie’s asking about.

But it’s also not necessarily a question he’s excited to answer. “I have a question for you, first,” he says, and she waits. “Andrew told you he killed his mom; you had no trouble with that. I told you I’ve killed a bunch of people; no problems there. Andrew was mean one night a decade ago—and you seem to—have trouble getting past that. Why?”

She scrunches up her nose. “I mean, murder makes sense to me.”

Neil nods.

And then Neil freezes. “It—”

And then he shuts his mouth.

“Are _you_?” She says, face a picture of indignation, “Are _you_ — _you_ —Neil, Neil Josten, Stabby McStabFace, _you_ , are _you_ going to lecture me, child who has never killed so much as a singular person, about murder? _You_? Are _you_ going to do that? Lecture _me_?”

“Can’t be dads, can’t be dads, I told him we can’t be dads,” Neil says, laughing. “ _No_ power. The _worst_ role models. But, you know what, yes, I am, because it really shouldn’t _make sense_ to you.”

“I mean, you push someone into a corner, and then give them no way to live except to kill you? Well, you should _expect_ to die, I think. You can’t—stand there and hurt people and make them miserable and try to kill them and expect them to just _take_ it. I have as much right to live as anyone else, and someone trying to take that away should be ready to taste some of their own medicine. I’m not talking about, like, cold-blooded murder, which is the _thing_ , see, because it makes _sense_ that Andrew would kill his mom to protect his brother, because you can’t beat a couple kids for years and expect them to just take it. And even Browning said all _your_ shit was self-defense, and again, if someone wants to make you not-live, then they should be ready to do some not-living themselves. So that makes sense to me, because what else are you supposed to do? Lie down and take it?”

“Some people do,” Neil says.

“All the more reason to kill the people hurting them, _I_ say.”

“You are a bloodthirsty child.”

“I don’t _want_ to kill. I, in fact, have _never_ killed,” she says pointedly. “And the one time I tried, _I_ think was a very good reason.”

“I agree,” Neil says.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I wasn’t particularly looking to raise Dexter.”

“Well, I don’t think I have quite that level of commitment,” she says thoughtfully, and Neil thanks god for that. “ _But_ , getting back to the point, if killing someone is the only way through, so be it.” Neil stays silent. Certainly, he can’t convincingly disagree with her. “But, like, you hadn’t done anything to Andrew! Or to Kevin! Except, apparently, broken into his room. But like. Still. And it just feels like he was cruel to you for no reason, and violated your—bodily autonomy, and you had—no problem with that? It’s just—I don’t get it.”

“Consider,” Neil says, “what we’ve told you about the Moriyamas. Riko was a control freak with an inferiority complex bigger than he was. He kept Kevin’s stuff, from the day Kevin ran until the day Riko died, like he was expecting Kevin to come back. He staged absolutely crazy, unpredictable scenarios, like meeting Kevin _on national TV_ , which couldn’t have _possibly_ been approved by the main branch, just to try and get Kevin back. He and his fans were trying all the time to convince Kevin to go back there. And then consider me—the most suspicious conceivable person, practically hand-tailored to catch the attention of both Kevin and Wymack, and nothing about me added up.

“But he didn’t kill me. He wanted the truth. He wanted to know if I was a danger. He wanted to know what he was up against. He wanted to protect Kevin, from the _mafia_.

“I told him a lie,” Neil says. “I was good at that. But it was the closest thing to the truth I’d told anyone, ever. I told him enough that he could’ve gotten me killed, if he’d wanted. If I’d told anyone else even what I told him, they’d have run, or told _me_ to run. He didn’t. He told me to stay, and drove me back to the dorms.”

“And that… made you trust him?”

“Well, no, but eventually, yes.”

“ _Pops._ ”

Neil grins. And then he remembers that his daughter is asking him an actual question. “I didn’t trust Andrew for shit, but I told him my secrets, and he kept them. Found out later that he’d kept _all_ my secrets—the money, my binder full of phone numbers and news clippings, my everything. Well, that’s a lie—he told the others about my color contacts, but apparently, they knew about those already. But I gave him a chance, and he earned my trust. And my respect. And he was—a rock. I could stand next to him, and he would make sure I could stay there. He stood up to Riko for me, the same way he stood up for Kevin, and he would put the same level of dedication and light insanity into making sure he did what had to be done. How else would I have ever felt safe enough to stay? I killed a man for the four of us; Andrew was up against a lot more than that, and he handled it without the stabbing. And then he gave me a key to his house,” Neil says, tracing the shape into his palm, “and to his car. He handed me everything he cared about. He trusted me. And he told me his secrets, too.”

“And you kept them,” Natalie says.

“And I always will.”

“So then why’d you fall in love with him?”

Neil shrugs. “They used to call him soulless. He—he doesn’t abide by laws, or by anyone else’s morals, sure. But he has a moral code, and sticks to it. He’s loyal. He keeps his promises. He cares. He—” Neil waves a hand. Andrew seems like too much to fit into words. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, too _little_ —how to explain that Neil loves the way Andrew glances at himself in the mirror every morning, the squinty-eyed grimace he gives his reflection, the little nod he gives himself when he decides that, whatever he’s seeing, he’s doing all right? How to explain that Neil loves how deeply invested Andrew gets in _American Idol_? Or that Neil loves the way Andrew fidgets—how Andrew’s knives are, essentially, just very sharp fidget toys? “Most mornings, Andrew picks two knives to carry for the day. They’re almost always different ones. Sometimes, he has to dig to find the ones he wants. Some mornings, he stands there and stares at them for five minutes before he chooses.”

“How does he decide which ones he wants?”

Neil shrugs. “No clue. I asked once, and he held two up, and said _I want these today_.”

“And… that’s why you fell in love with him?”

“Some mornings, yes,” Neil says, turning onto their driveway.

Natalie frowns, confused, but goes upstairs to shower without further questioning.

Neil joins Andrew and Paige in the living room, and Andrew removes one hand from Sir so he can take Neil’s hand. Neil remembers, years ago, following Andrew with his eyes, remembers how desperately he’d wanted to touch Andrew. Now, he squeezes Andrew’s hand, bumps his shoulder against Andrew’s, leans over to place a kiss on Andrew’s temple. Andrew glances at him, soft and loving, and Neil falls in love with him again.

“What were you reading?” Paige asks.

Neil jumps into a description—to the extent to which he understands it—of his book, the plot, the characters. He understands very little of it. The more he explains, the more confused Paige looks, and the higher Andrew’s eyebrows go.

Natalie comes down eventually, carrying homework. “We’re reading _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” she tells Andrew, standing in front of the couch. “And we have a bunch of questions we’re supposed to ask adults. Why’d you fall in love with Neil?”

“Well, that’s a complicated question,” Andrew says, rubbing Neil’s thumb.

“That’s what Neil said,” Natalie says.

“Hey, why’d you start our homework without me?” Paige asks, sitting up, narrowly avoiding dislodging King.

“You should ask someone else,” Natalie suggests. “We can’t _both_ ask the same people.”

“I don’t know any other adults!”

“I’ll volunteer Matt and Dan,” Neil decides. “Matt’ll go on about Dan for hours, if you ask.”

Paige gives Natalie a glare, which is neatly returned, but settles back into her chair. She and Natalie look at Andrew. “What does _complicated_ mean?”

“It means that _being in love_ and _being able to have a relationship_ are two completely different things, so any answer to your question would be entirely without context.”

Neil takes a deep breath. Andrew glances at him. “Yes,” Neil says. “That’s it. That’s what I was trying to say.”

“Okay,” Paige says, “so then what’s the answer, and what’s the context?”

Andrew shrugs. “It’s still complicated.”

Natalie takes a seat on the floor and settles in. “I know you had a crush on him on day 2, but that’s not _love_.”

Andrew is silent.

Neil’s curiosity is going to throttle him. He’s never been so invested in a question in his life.

“I liked him from day 2,” Andrew agrees, eventually. “And loved him—now, here’s the problem. I was drugged. And sometimes, I was going through withdrawal, and regardless, I wasn’t particularly—hmm. It didn’t occur to me until after the fact. We’d just played a match—against the Terrapins. I was going through withdrawal. There was a phase, during my withdrawal, wherein I was nothing. Had nothing, felt nothing, cared about nothing. Most people didn’t see that phase. Even when it was happening right in front of them, they didn’t always realize it was withdrawal; they thought it was just me being a psychopath. Neil noticed, and was furious about it, and didn’t even bother arguing—he knew I couldn’t help it, and he hated that, too.”

“And?” Natalie prompts.

Andrew shrugs. “And, nothing. Neil cracked a door open, the second time I ever met him, and I snuck in, and found a staircase leading downwards. I took it, because it was new and interesting, and a few months later, when the door was already so far above me I couldn’t even see it, Neil showed off exactly who he was, and the stairs disappeared, and I didn’t notice until it was too late. I was already falling.”

Natalie changes tactics. “What’s the context?”

“When you were researching us, did you find out about Kathy Ferdinand?”

“We watched it,” Natalie says. “The interview with Neil and Kevin and Riko, right?”

Andrew tilts his head towards her. “Kevin was mine to protect. But I didn’t anticipate _that_ particular move, on Riko’s end. Usually, Riko was so easy to predict, so _very_ easy to predict—so much power, so little brain, such a big inferiority complex. It didn’t occur to me that he’d be happy to sit on stage and terrify Kevin on national TV. He usually wasn’t allowed to work so publicly. But there he was, and I couldn’t grab Kevin and run, or stand between them, or—” he waves a hand. Riko is dead; there’s no sense getting worked up over him. “But Neil did. Neil Josten,” he says, slowly, each syllable careful, “was so quiet. Such a pushover. So very, very passive. It didn’t add up; I was absolutely certain that the passivity was a façade. He worked very hard at it, though. I could see him getting angry, whenever we practiced, when Kevin would berate him. And every time I blocked one of his shots. It took physical effort for him to stay silent, but he put that effort in, every time. As long as I didn’t try to dig through his shit, his self-control was perfect. But when he saw Riko, he dropped the whole act.

“It was stupid. It was so, _so_ very stupid. He’d told me his father was a gopher for the Moriyamas; he’d told me Riko knew who he was. He’d told me that Riko was one of the people he was hiding from. He shouldn’t have gone on TV with Kevin in the first place, and once Riko showed up, he should have kept his mouth shut. He should have let Kevin take the hit, and saved himself. He told me, once, that in a zombie apocalypse, he’d run, and abandon everyone else—it was a lie. Given the choice between saving his own ass and saving someone else, he martyrs himself, every time.

“He defended Kevin on TV, and kept Riko off of Kevin once they got backstage long enough for me to get back there. There’s no video of it, but Neil physically put himself in Riko’s way to keep Kevin safe. Kevin was not Neil’s job; he was mine. After that, I trusted Neil with Kevin’s life. And, incidentally, with Aaron’s, and Nicky’s, although it never came up.”

“What about with _your_ life?” Paige asks.

Andrew shrugs. “I didn’t think my life mattered nearly enough to bother entrusting it to anyone. Neil took care of it anyway.”

“Isn’t that just another reason why you fell in love with him?” Natalie asks. “How is this _context_?”

“Because you can love someone, and be absolutely wrong for them. Or they could be absolutely wrong for you,” Andrew explains. “Maybe they ignore you—you tell them you love ice cream, but they never buy any. Or you give them a secret, and they give it away. Maybe they cheat on you, but you decide you love them so much you’ll give them a second chance. Maybe you love them, but they never do the dishes. If you’re going to _marry_ someone, it should be someone you can have a relationship with. Someone you can trust. Someone you respect, and who respects you. Someone you can talk to, and someone you don’t have to talk to. It’s possible to be in a very good relationship with someone you don’t love, and to have a terrible relationship with someone you love.” Andrew shrugs. “Maybe there are people who can fall in love with anyone, but I’m not one of them. If Neil had never—”

“Hang on,” Neil interrupts, sitting up straight. “Hang on, you jackass, you almost refused to go to rehab because you were worried about Kevin, and then insisted that I would run away at the first sign of trouble. You don’t get to pretend _now_ like you knew full well I wouldn’t run. Hang _on_.”

Andrew gives him an unapologetic handwave. “I was in a bad mood, and you always _did_ say you were a runaway. The point is,” he says, aiming a finger at Natalie, “I could’ve had a crush on Neil until the end of time, but if I hadn’t trusted him, I never would’ve loved him. And I could’ve loved him to death and back, but if we were incapable of having a good relationship, I’d never have married him.”

“Okay,” Natalie says after a minute. “Fine. I’ll make that into something workable. So then, the next question is, is love a choice?”

“Yes,” Neil and Andrew say together.

Natalie blinks at them, and then frowns. “Really?”

Andrew and Neil nod emphatically.

“Look,” Neil says, “I fall in love with Andrew approximately every other day, because there’s always something new to fall in love _with_.” He waits, leaving space for cries of _sappy_ or for rolled eyes, but nothing happens. “And that’s because Andrew is changing, all the time. The Andrew you know today isn’t the Andrew I fell in love with. He’s not the Andrew he was five years ago, or two years ago, or yesterday. And _I’m_ not the Neil that Andrew fell in love with, or the Neil I was five years ago, and so on. It—marriage is a lifetime commitment. And I’m not saying it always works that way, or that it always _should_ work that way. But most people don’t get married with the understanding that they’ll get divorced in a few years, yes? They get married with the intention of making the relationship last for as long as they live. But there’s no way for two people to stay exactly the same all their lives. I couldn’t ask it of Andrew. I couldn’t even ask it of myself. The point isn’t that you’re going to stay in love with the same person, forever; it’s that you’ll choose to love them, whoever they become.”

“That can’t possibly work,” Natalie scoffs. “Not forever. What if the person you marry turns out to be a _republican_?”

Neil shrugs. “Then you get a divorce. Sometimes, people become someone you hate. When you love someone, you just have to trust that they’ll never become someone you would be morally obligated to hate.”

“That’s not very romantic,” Paige says.

Neil shrugs again.

“Isn’t it?” Andrew asks, surprising Neil. “Every day, I wake up, and Neil is still here, and I know he’s chosen me again. And every day, I wake up, and I choose Neil. It’s not—” He frowns at the wall. “We’re not being held hostage by our emotions. Or by our hormones. It’s not like I would _love_ to leave Neil, except that my brain keeps giving me dopamine every time I see him. I’m not wearing rose-tinted glasses. I’m _here_. I’m married to Neil Josten, by choice, and I stay married to him, by choice, and I’m happy about that, by choice. On purpose. And so is he. What’s more romantic: Two people who get tossed in each other’s direction and get stuck there? Or two people who choose each other, repeatedly?”

“But what if _you_ change?” Natalie asks. “And then the person you love doesn’t love you anymore?”

“That’s where the trust comes in,” Andrew says.

“Where?”

“I trust,” Neil says, “that Andrew will figure out how to love me again.”

“And vice versa,” Andrew says, showing no sign of last night’s doubt. There’s not a chink in his armor. Neil squeezes his hand.

“Okay,” Natalie says, looking down at her sheet. “What does a healthy relationship require?”

“Communication,” Andrew says. “Trust, respect, and communication.”

“Also, care,” Neil adds. “And effort. Like—the more you take care of something, the more effort you put into its upkeep, the more proud you are of it. If you take care of a car, get the oil changed every however many miles, wash and vacuum it regularly, and so on—you’re going to love that car, way more than you would ever love a car you didn’t take care of. The same goes for relationships. Do you spend time with your partner? Take care of them when they’re sick? Do nice things for them, even if they haven’t asked? Like—oh, that too. Do you _like_ your partner? Not just _love_ them, but _like_ them? Do you want to know what they have to say? What they’re thinking? Are you _friends_? If your relationship is just making out, or just a piece of paper that says you’re married, it’s shitty.”

“Are _you_ friends?”

“Neil is my best friend,” Andrew says, and Neil glows. And then Andrew says—“It took him some time to get there, but he is.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Neil asks indignantly.

“It took several months for you to talk about anything that wasn’t exy,” Andrew says.

Neil opens his mouth to argue, but Andrew isn’t wrong. “Exy was the only good thing in my life for a while,” he tries.

“Downer,” Natalie says, and before Neil gets a chance to decode Andrew’s expression, it flickers and disappears. “So, like, were you dating _before_ he was your best friend?”

“Well, I wouldn’t admit to it until he was,” Andrew says. “It took half a year for me to actively admit that we were a couple.”

“How do you still think of things to _talk_ about? You spend, just, all day, every day together. It’s not like you can talk about _work,_ not if you don’t want to talk about exy.”

“We used to do other stuff,” Neil says. “I mean, it’s been a few months, because we were preparing to foster kids and then we _got_ you, but—I used to read way more often. We actually watched TV shows that _weren’t_ Mythbusters and House Hunters. Andrew baked a lot more. We went to the movies, and roller skating, and other shit—we’ve just been busy and tired, for a few months.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“For what? It’s not like you stuck a gun to our heads and insisted we foster you,” Neil scoffs. “We decided to do it. And it was worth it.”

Natalie and Paige grin. Neil grins back. It’s nice to see them happy.

“Cool,” Natalie says. “I’ll write that down, and then _my_ English homework is done.”

“ _Rude_ ,” Paige snaps.

Natalie grins at her worksheet, writing diligently.

Neil calls Dan.

“Neil! What’s up?”

“The kids are reading _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” he tells her. “They’ve got a worksheet on relationships they need to complete, and Natalie already interviewed Andrew and me.”

“Oh, cool! Are you asking if Paige can interview Matt and me? Because I’ll have to get Matt on the phone. He will be _vastly_ better at this than I will.”

“That would be great. Also, I’m putting you on speaker. And giving you to Paige.”

“Cool. Hi, Paige. Hang on. Calling Matt.”

The line goes silent for a minute, giving Paige time to dig her worksheet out of her backpack, and then they’re back.

“Hi,” Paige says. “Sorry, these questions were, like, supposed to be for us to ask our grandparents, people we—know. And also, people who like to talk.”

“We can be your grandparents,” Matt says excitedly.

“How about aunt and uncle?” Dan suggests.

“That too,” Matt agrees.

“Okay. Um. How did you fall in love?”

“Dan was the coolest woman I’d ever met,” Matt says immediately. “And, just, _so_ badass. And gorgeous. And, like, she was nice, but—no-nonsense. Like, she was never going to mother me, she was always going to expect me to deserve her, and she really made me reconsider, just, my whole life. She made me want to be a better person.”

“Matt was adorable,” Dan says. “Also, after all that reconsidering—and after Andrew got him hooked on speedballs and then put him through rehab—”

“ _What_?” Paige shrieks. “Sorry, sorry, that was loud, but— _what_?”

Andrew sits very still.

“I too did not know this,” Natalie says, moving closer to the phone.

“Oh, whoops,” Matt says. “Hey, Dan, you fucked up.”

“Thanks, hun. Look. Paige. Natalie.” She’s quiet for a second. “Ask Andrew, make him tell you—”

“Do I just _live_ under a bus now?” Andrew asks.

“Look, he got my mom’s permission,” Matt says. “I was a wreck. My dad had gotten me addicted, and I was struggling _so hard_ with sobriety—I was _trying_ to be better, and I was doing better than I had my first year in college, but—anyway, Andrew shoved me through rehab so fucking hard I literally can’t even think about drugs anymore. So, hey, it worked.”

“Question,” Paige says, looking at Andrew, “do you just—drug _everyone_?”

“No,” Andrew says. “I don’t even drug _most_ people. I’ve only ever drugged Neil and Matt, and, as stated, for Matt I got permission.”

“Hey, Matt,” Natalie says. “What’s wrong with your _mom_?”

“She knew I needed help,” Matt says.

“We’re getting off-topic,” Paige says. “Dan—you said Matt was adorable?”

“And pathetic,” she says cheerfully. Matt makes a noise of agreement in the background. “Until he wasn’t. When I met him, he was someone I’d have had to take care of. He made himself into someone better. I fell in love with him as much for the work he put in as I did for the outcome.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Paige says. “Neil just said that what makes a relationship _good_ is taking care of each other.”

“Mm. Different kinds of care,” Dan explains. “Like—Matt played pro exy for six years—”

“Five and a half,” Matt chips in.

“Five and a half,” Dan agrees. “Halfway through his last year, he tore his shoulder— _that_ was painful, and we knew the recovery was going to be worse, and we sat down for a consultation, and that went well all the way up until we asked what kind of pain meds would be prescribed and the doctor said that he wouldn’t be comfortable prescribing a former drug addict pain medication. So I did some yelling and shouting, and then spent every spare minute for the next three days researching and calling doctors until I found one willing to work with him. And then Matt admitted that he was a little nervous about it, too—nervous that he’d have trouble taking them at all, or that he’d get addicted if he did. So while he was on them, I literally kept the bottle on me at all times. I kept track of them, and spent hours each day making sure he was feeling all right mentally, and making sure he called Andrew daily—”

“Why?” Paige asks.

“They’re friends, first of all, and second of all, Andrew got him through his addiction in the first place, and _third_ of all, Andrew—and Aaron, too—both know what it’s like to be addicted, and to recover. Andrew especially knows what it’s like to not _want_ to be taking drugs, but to need them. And how to not take them regardless. Anyway. I did all of that, and I was happy to do it, and I’d do it again, but, _but_ —and this is crucial—if he gets home first, he cooks dinner. I’ll clean, but he cooks. And if _I_ cook dinner, _he_ cleans. If the sheets need to get changed, he can change them as well as I can. He knows how to fold laundry. He knows not to put my bras in the dryer, and he knows which of my shirts need to be hung up to dry. You know that Bill Cosby sketch where his wife asked him to feed the kids breakfast, so he fed them cake, and then was all proud of himself because he never had to feed the kids breakfast again? As far as I’m concerned, that’s grounds for a divorce. I’m not Matt’s mom, I’m his wife. This is a partnership. I’ll care for him, but I’m not going to spend my whole life taking care of him. Understand?”

Paige nods. “Yeah. I’m nodding.”

“I used to strip,” Dan says. “When I was a teenager, I was living with my aunt and her baby, and my Aunt didn’t work—I had to support all three of us. Stripping worked with my school and exy schedule, so I got a fake ID and made it happen. It fucked me up—I was a teenager doing sex work. _Not_ ideal. Don’t do it. And you see a lot of shitty men—some men who are just, whatever, it’s the job, but some men who were absolute pieces of shit. The bouncers were all men, too, though, and they looked after us, to an extent. But, I mean, I was _exhausted_. I was so tired, all the time, and I felt like shit, for obvious reasons, and it’s not like I was the only one there—some of my sisters worked two jobs, or had kids, or had to take care of elderly parents, or were putting themselves through grad school.

“But there was one woman there who had this boyfriend, and his job was being an aspiring musician, by which he meant he would sit in the bedroom all day and play guitar, and maybe some nights he’d go sit at a bar and hope that someone would ask him to play guitar and then give him his big break when they heard how great he was, and every night that that didn’t happen, he’d get blackout drunk. And this woman, she worked two jobs, day and night, and in the meantime, did all the laundry, and cleaned the apartment, and cooked all their food, and did the grocery shopping, and he spent her money getting drunk nightly, and can I tell you? Three nights of working with her made me hate men _vastly_ more than stripping did. So I know this has nothing to do with your homework, but look: _men ain’t shit_. Okay? They’re not worth it. That woman, she loved her boyfriend, thought the world of him, and he was a piece of shit. So go ahead and hate men until you find one who puts in the effort required to _not_ be a piece of shit. Or women? Women can be shitty, too. Or nonbinary people. Whoever you like. Assuming you like anyone.”

“Getting a little confusing, baby,” Matt says, snickering on the other end of the line.

“I know. I’m trying.”

“You’re doing fine,” Paige says absentmindedly, scribbling on her worksheet at top speed. “Next question. Is love a choice?”

Dan snorts. “Yeah.”

“Yup,” Matt agrees. “Almost entirely.”

“Okay, that’s what Neil and Andrew said, but, like, when I asked how you fell in love, not a one of you said _because I decided to_.”

“Well, sure,” Matt says. “Love is a bunch of chemicals. Ask Katelyn, she can probably tell you which ones it is. But, like, eventually those chemicals fade. You get married and realize that your spouse puts the toilet paper roll on the wrong way, or doesn’t use the twisty tie on the bread—”

“I _lost_ it,” Dan interjects, laughing. “It _disappeared_.”

“Just like the love chemicals,” Matt agrees, and Neil can hear from his voice that he’s grinning. “And eventually, you’re sitting there, realizing that your spouse doesn’t give you butterflies anymore, and you’ve got some choices. You could say, well, fuck this, I deserve someone who’ll give me butterflies until the end of time—I’m divorcing you, because you clearly can’t do that. You could say, well, shit, we’re already married, I guess I’m stuck here, and spend the next ten years hating your spouse and hating yourself and yelling about bread ties. Or you could go, what the fuck, this is _Dan Wilds_ , the _love of my life_ , so what’s up with that? And then you realize that what’s up with that is that you _forgot_. Like, straight up, I forgot that relationships take effort, sometimes. So I took five minutes to remember why I loved her, and then I couldn’t figure out why the bread ties were such a big deal. Like, she’s _Dan Wilds._ When I was younger, I literally couldn’t even _dream_ about _knowing_ someone like her, let alone dream about _marrying_ someone like her. She’s awesome. And she’s my best friend. And sometimes you just have to say, well, maybe it’s time to talk about whatever problems we’re having, and also, spend five minutes hugging each other. And then all the fun brain chemicals come back.”

“What he said,” Dan says. “Brain chemicals don’t last forever. If you want your relationship to last longer than a few months, you have to be prepared for that, and when they go away, you have to, just, double down on everything that makes the relationship _good_. You have to find something new to fall in love with, or remember something old that you’d forgotten about. You have to be willing to _look_ for that stuff, though. To decide that this relationship is worth that kind of work. That kind of effort. And I’ll tell you this: If only one of you is making that effort? It’s not worth it. It has to be both of you, every day, choosing to keep loving each other, even when it’s hard. _Especially_ when it’s hard.”

For a minute, there’s silence, except for Paige’s pen, flying across her worksheet. She flips the sheet over to keep writing on the back. “Cool. Um. What does a healthy relationship require? What’s it take to maintain a healthy relationship?”

“Communication,” Matt and Dan say at the same time.

“On every level,” Dan says. “Like, you have to talk about problems—the sooner, the better. But also, you have to keep _talking_. If _all_ you ever talk about is your problems, that’s a shitty relationship. If you talk about your problems and also your shitty day at work, talking to each other becomes a miserable thing. You have to talk about funny shit, too. And good TV shows. And things you’re excited about.

“Another good rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t put up with it from a friendship, don’t put up with it in a relationship. There’s lots of shit where people go _oh, well it’s fine that he does that, he’s her husband_. That’s bullshit. If he’s her husband, it’s _less_ fine that he’s hurting her, or yelling at her, or embarrassing her, or whatever. If you’re ever in a relationship and a friend or family member says _hey, I don’t like how they treat you, they do X Y and Z,_ and you say the words, _so what, they’re my significant other_? Just break up with them. Fuck that.”

“Also, compatibility,” Matt adds. “What’s the hallmark of a good compromise?”

“It makes everyone miserable?” Paige tries.

“Yup. So if you and your partner have to compromise a _lot_ —you’re both going to be miserable. And, I mean, you’re not going to find—like, no one will ever be _you_. You’re not going to find your clone. There’ll be compromise. Sometimes you have to learn to live with your bread being wrapped-and-tucked. But you want that compromise to be the little stuff—Crest or Colgate. Not, like, live in a desert or live on the beach. Not ten kids or none. Even if you love someone to no end, there’ll _be_ an end if you say _nope, no kids_ , and they try to convince you every day of your life to have a litter.”

Paige writes for a minute. “Nice. No more questions. Sorry I had to ask you for help.”

“It was fun,” Dan says cheerfully. “And anyway, it’s cool to have nieces.”

“Nieces?” Paige says in a small voice. Neil’s certain that Dan and Matt both caught that, but neither of them comment on it.

“Yeah. I mean, we’re both only children, but I’m _basically_ Neil’s brother,” Matt says. “And anyway, we’re not having kids, but we _are_ willing to be the really cool aunt-and-uncle everyone loves.”

“Oh,” Paige says. “Cool.”

“And we’re here, if you need anything,” Dan adds. “Whatever. Just give us a call, okay?”

“Okay,” Paige agrees.

They say their goodbyes, Paige passes the phone back to Neil, and she and Natalie look at each other. “We have an aunt and uncle,” Paige says.

“Bunches of them,” Neil corrects. “Aaron and Katelyn, Dan and Matt, Allison and Renee, Kevin and Thea, Nicky and Erik—most of the Foxes were only children, except for Andrew and Aaron, and Allison has some siblings but I don’t think they talk to her—but, anyway, they’re all fucking _thrilled_ to have nieces and nephews. John and Freddie are the most adored babies in existence, and the fact that you can actually _talk_ is a big point in your favor. Also, you have grandparents, too—Wymack, and Abby, and Bee.”

Paige wiggles around in her seat, and Natalie grins at her.

“Fuck the moon and the stars,” Natalie says. “Our dads got us, just, _reams_ of aunts and uncles.”

“Hmm?” Andrew asks, succinctly summing up Neil’s thoughts.

Paige’s eyes flicker away—she’s embarrassed. “When we were younger, there was this book called _Papa, Bring Me the Moon_ ,” Paige says. “One of our foster sisters had it, and she read it to us a bunch. We thought, maybe, our dad had given us up because he couldn’t afford us, and if we just held out a _leeeeettle_ while longer, then he’d get a really good job, and he’d get rich, and he’d come back and get us. And we’d ask him for the moon, and of course he’d give it to us, and then he’d say, _oh, but I have so much money now, and I want to make it all up to you—I’ll give you the stars, too_ , and then he _would_. But, anyway, it turns out that a gigantic fucking family is way better.”

“Sorry we can’t pull the moon down,” Neil says. “But maybe in the summer—when it’s nicer out—we could go stargazing?”

Natalie and Paige light up, and Neil feels absolutely content with his family. “That would be cool,” Natalie agrees.

And then they all move to the kitchen to do the rest of Natalie and Paige’s homework.

Neil texts Katelyn.

She must be working, because it’s Aaron who texts him a couple minutes later with the picture Neil wants—Freddie’s ceiling.

“Oh my god, that’s so cool,” Neil says, showing the pictures to Natalie and Paige, and to Andrew, who reacts like he’s never seen them before.

“Oh, is that those glow in the dark stars?” Paige asks, homework forgotten. “Those are so cool!”

“Oh, yeah,” Natalie says, peeking over Paige’s shoulder. “We wanted the _shit_ out of those when we were kids. Just, like, the idea of having a room we _knew_ was ours, to the point where we could decorate it? And put stars on it? Can’t believe I’m living vicariously through a baby.”

Neil laughs, and Andrew glances at him, and then Paige passes the phone back, and they resume homework. Neil gets the chicken going, slapping together a wine sauce from memory, and when it’s almost done, Andrew sticks water on to boil. Homemade pasta takes all of two minutes to cook. As he dumps it in a strainer, the bread machine beeps; Neil takes the bread out, still hot, and slices it.

Neil and Andrew recount the highlights of last night’s game as they eat, and Natalie and Paige detail their weekend with Abby, and they eat, and eat some more, and Andrew and Natalie snark at each other for ten minutes, Natalie grinning the whole time and Paige cheering her on, and Andrew tells them about Maria and her music, and Neil tells them about Riley and the way she looks at Maria, and Natalie and Paige talk over each other, fighting to be the first to tell Neil and Andrew about the kids in their classes, about their teachers, about school drama.

Eventually, after swatting the cats away from the leftovers on five separate occasions, they get up. Neil puts away the leftovers. Natalie washes the dishes. Paige wipes down the table and the stove. Andrew frosts the cake.

And then they eat cake.

Neil watches Paige’s eyes go wide when she tries it—Andrew has put a vast amount of time and energy into perfecting his cake recipe. And Andrew looks absolutely smug about it.

They rewatch _Pride and Prejudice_.

It is, clearly, a favorite.

And, eventually, they go to bed, and Andrew snuggles into Neil’s chest, utterly relaxed. Neil wraps his arms around Andrew. He wishes he could go back in time—wishes he could tell Mary that she’d succeed. That her sacrifice would mean something. That, one day, Neil would be reasonably safe, and endlessly happy. Wishes he could thank her. What would life have been like, if he’d been a Raven? If he’d grown up like Kevin? Would he have left? Would he have run on his own? Would he have ever made it?

Andrew reaches around, grabs Neil’s hand, and brings it to his lips. “Whatever you’re thinking about,” he murmurs, “it’s not worth the brainpower.”

Neil cards his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Andrew says.

Neil gives in—he lets Andrew hold his hand, lets Andrew’s weight calm him. He is not, after all, a Raven; he’s Neil Josten, Andrew’s husband, and, these days, father of two. His titles are as comfortingly heavy as Andrew’s unyielding weight on top of him, and they push Neil into sleep.

Someone’s knocking on their bedroom door.

Neil looks at the door, blinking blurriness out of his eyes—Andrew’s still on top of him, he can’t move, so if someone’s coming to kill them, that’ll be that.

He sees Andrew consider ignoring it, and then—and then they remember that they have kids, and that the person knocking on the door might be one of them.

Andrew stands, Neil sits up, and when Andrew opens the door, he sees a familiar silhouette—Natalie.

“Sorry,” she says, quiet, voice small, “can I come in? I had a…”

Andrew steps back, even as her words drop off, and she wanders into the room, her whole body posture betraying how awkward she feels. Andrew goes to shut the door, thinks twice, and leaves it cracked.

Neil pulls his feet up and pats the foot of the bed. “What’s up?”

She sits precariously on the edge of the bed.

Andrew climbs back into bed and leans against Neil’s shoulder.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to bother Paige.”

“It’s fine,” Neil says.

“Don’t think I’m traumatized.”

“I already do.”

Natalie’s head turns his way, presumably to shoot Neil a glare, but in the darkness, he can’t see it. He stays silent. Waits.

Finally, she turns to look at the wall again. “I have nightmares a lot. And usually, they’re about Paige, so it’s fine, because I wake up and she’s right there, you know?” She glances at Neil and Andrew, who nod. They understand this. “But I dreamed that you two left. Or died? Both? But you went to a game and then didn’t come back, and everyone kept saying you’d come back and we just had to wait, but you didn’t, and then we found out you’d both been shot, but not until, like, two months after you’d left, just, you hadn’t wanted to come home and then you couldn’t. And I just—”

Neil waits.

“Wanted to make sure we were still here,” Andrew says.

Natalie jerks her head, something approximating a nod.

“Nat,” Neil says, getting her attention. He pats the bed by his feet, intending for her to come closer so Neil can hug her, but evidently she decides that that’s too much; instead, she lies down, putting her head within Neil’s arm reach. Neil reaches out and brushes his fingers through her hair. She doesn’t object; she takes a deep breath and curls up. Andrew scoots closer so he can rub her shoulder. 

“We’re not leaving you,” Andrew says solemnly. “We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere.”

Natalie nods, but she doesn’t move, so Neil keeps it up, fighting to stay awake. Mary would slaughter him if she could see him like this—but, well, when he’s _not_ at home, he sleeps _way_ less soundly, he promises her ghost. And, sure, he _knows_ this house isn’t invulnerable, he _knows_ Andrew’s presence is no guarantee of safety, but what’s he supposed to do, be paranoid all the time? He blinks, and she’s standing in his doorway—

Nope, no she’s not. That’s Paige.

“Sorry,” Paige whispers, “do you know—”

“She’s right here,” Andrew says, beckoning Paige closer. He pats the bed, welcoming her in, and Paige pushes Natalie’s feet out of the way to climb onto the bed.

“Nightmares?” Paige asks. Natalie nods. Paige yawns.

Well, shit, it’s late, and they have the world’s biggest bed. Neil twists, Andrew gets the hint, and between them, they haul pillows and blankets out to the center of the bed, where the kids can reach them. Paige curls up, and Neil tugs at Natalie until she moves further onto the bed, away from the edge. He squeezes her hand, and she takes a deep breath, and Paige pats her head. Neil and Andrew make themselves comfortable, feet by the headboard, and Neil listens.

“Oh,” Paige mumbles, hand still making tiny patting motions, “you can call me Gigi. Or Gij.” _Jeej_. And then her hand falters, and stops moving—asleep again. It takes Natalie a couple minutes longer, but soon enough, her breathing eases up, slows down, deep and steady.

Neil reaches out, and Andrew takes his hand, and that’s good enough. It’s not the most comfortable he’s ever been, but his kids are safe, his husband is safe, and he’s safe, and sleep is right around the corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did more research on knife throwing than I have done on literally any other aspect of this story. 
> 
> neil: I've never been to therapy, I'm never going to therapy, and I don't need therapy  
> also neil: *quotes bee at every conceivable opportunity*


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skin Deep commercial!

Neil wakes up when the girls do, jolting up to the sound of their alarm in the next room.

“Nat, Paige,” he calls, as they sprint into their room. Natalie pops her head in a minute later, looking retroactively embarrassed. Neil doesn’t comment. “We’re gonna wash the windows today. Can we go in your room to wash yours?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Natalie says, twisting to, presumably, look at Paige. “Yeah? Yeah.”

She vanishes, and Andrew tugs Neil closer. “You’re making a commercial today.”

“And then we’re going out to buy some glow-in-the-dark stars to put on their ceiling,” Neil says, very determinedly not thinking about other people looking at his stomach.

And then, of course, he thinks about it, and he presses his head into Andrew’s chest, trying desperately to suppress the urge to vomit and run away. Other people shouldn’t be seeing his scars. His family—that’s one thing; they’d already seen his arms, his face, gotten used to them. More importantly, they’re _safe_. His family is _safe_. They wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t betray him, wouldn’t ask questions, wouldn’t force him to answer if they did.

He takes deep breaths. Counts to ten, twenty, thirty, switches languages and does it again. His scars can’t hurt him anymore; there’s no question anyone can ask that could feasibly get him found.

It’s the most irrational thought he’s ever had. Finding him is approximately as difficult as a single google search. Whether or not people see his scars makes no difference.

Of course, he’s got kids now. Kids who could, therefore, be taken away from him, or—

“Hey,” Andrew says. “Hey. Neil.”

Neil takes a deep breath.

“You don’t actually have to do this.”

“I do.”

“Hey, Neil? That’s bullshit. You don’t.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, though. It’s not like anyone will come after me, or will be able to find me. It’s not like people will ask the wrong questions. There are no wrong questions to _ask_. It’s just—”

“You still don’t have to do it,” Andrew says. Gently. Insistently gently. “What are they going to do if you don’t?”

Neil inhales, and knows that the answer is nothing. If he says, right now, that he doesn’t want to make this commercial, then that’ll be that. Andrew will call Renee; he’ll call Nadiya. He won’t bother explaining. Renee will understand; whether or not Nadiya will is a toss-up, but Andrew won’t care. They’ll spend the day cleaning. They’ll go buy glow-in-the-dark stars. Neil will wear his thickest sweater. If he decides to hide behind Andrew, Andrew won’t blink an eye. Never mind the fact that Neil prefers to fight his own battles; if he asks, Andrew will fight this one for him.

Running away, running away, forever running away. Neil is so tired of running away. Will he ever make it to a point where his past is nothing but marks on his skin? It’s been a decade, and he’s beginning to think the answer is no. Beginning to worry that his whole life will be spent dealing with the same shit, repeatedly, forever.

He really thought he’d gotten over this, years ago—when he’d stood, shirtless, in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror. Every day, for a month, he’d spent a few minutes there, staring at his scars, waiting for his stomach to stop twisting. He’d done some research, and had discovered that exposure therapy was rapidly going out of fashion, with regards to its use in trauma—rather, treatment involved examining the thought patterns that emerged from the trauma, and making an action plan for how to respond to a similar situation. And, well, he could do that, but he couldn’t avoid the exposure—looking at his scars might send him into a panic, but they were on his body forever.

So he’d stared himself down, waiting for his scars to lose their power over him.

He’d failed.

But he’d gotten better. Over the course of a year, he’d gotten better, until one day, he glanced at them in the mirror, and barely thought about them at all.

He sighs. _He_ might not think about them, but he thinks all the time about what _other_ people might think about them.

Andrew slides a hand under Neil’s shirt and up his back, skin against skin, holding Neil here and now, and Neil opens his eyes.

He’s getting soft in his old age. Once upon a time he’d been tortured, and he’d gone to the hospital and then been interrogated by the FBI and had only then gotten to go home, been allowed to sleep someplace he felt safe. Nowadays, he thinks about someone seeing his scars, and needs immediate comforting. “I don’t know what to wear.”

“Will they have clothes for you?”

“I have no idea. Actually, do I even _need_ clothes? I mean—isn’t the whole point of this that I’m taking them _off_?”

Andrew hates that. Neil can feel it.

“When you showed the girls your wrists, I wanted to hide you,” Neil says.

Andrew nods. He understands this.

Neil scoots up so he can kiss Andrew on the cheek. Before he can roll away, Andrew grabs his chin.

“Neil. If it’s a no, it’s a no. Just because you feel like you should, doesn’t make it a yes.”

Neil nods. He takes Andrew’s hand and kisses his knuckles. “I know. But I can’t run away forever.”

“I’d rather you run than do this if you don’t want to,” Andrew replies.

Neil can’t walk through that door.

Nonetheless, he appreciates Andrew holding it open for him. “Help me pick an outfit?”

Andrew does, and he doesn’t say another word about the possibility of walking away.

They eat breakfast.

Neil can’t believe he gave up his day off for this. They could’ve gone roller skating. They sell funnel cake at the roller rink—Andrew loves that shit. Neil does, too, but not quite to the same extent as Andrew does. And roller skating is fun.

And then they head out, a few minutes early.

As they pull into the parking lot, Andrew turning the music down, they realize Nadiya and her crew are already there. There’s three vans in the parking lot, as well as the security guards, and the people who were in the vans are milling about in the parking lot. There’s a camera crew and a variety of people—a couple missing limbs, but all, presumably, sporting some kind of scarring.

“Fuck me,” Neil mutters.

“We could turn around.”

“Nope. You don’t have to come in, if you don’t want to.”

“Fuck off.”

“Then you have to be nice to them.”

“I’ll be as nice as they deserve.”

“Drew.”

“I’ll be nice.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand.

Andrew parks five spaces away from the vans, and a woman whom Neil assumes is Nadiya walks briskly in their direction.

He gets out of the car to meet her, and, sure enough—

“Hi, Neil, Andrew! I’m Nadiya—it’s nice to meet you in person!”

“It’s good to meet you, too,” Neil says. Andrew, coming around the front of the car to stand by Neil, nods at Nadiya. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, to be honest. Usually, when I do commercials, they’re filmed in a studio.”

“We have some idea of what we want—we know what we want the end shot to be, anyway—but we’d like to keep it casual. Renee told us that if you’re comfortable, you’ll word-vomit absolute gold.”

Neil laughs. “I don’t know if that’s how I’d describe it, but sure.”

Neil gets introduced to the other people who will be in the commercial.

“Most of us are local,” a woman named Hanna tells him. Half her right cheek is melted—Neil recognizes burned skin. It goes all the way down her neck. “Betty’s from New York, but I think the rest of us are from around here—we’re not going to be in the commercial for particularly long, and Nadiya didn’t want to fly ten people down just so we could say a quick line or two.”

“Makes sense,” Neil agrees. He has no idea how to talk to new people. He’s known this, for years he’s known this, and yet—has he worked on it, at all? At _all_? No. No, he has not.

Neil is introduced to the cameraman, Sid, who glances at Neil’s arms. “Oh, good,” he says. “we’ll have a cool shot of you rolling up your sleeves—boom, scars.”

“No reveal for the face, though,” Nadiya says. “Unless he puts on makeup.”

“No need—zoom in on the eyes,” Sid says. “Zoom out to show the rest of the face. You’ve got killer eyes, dude.”

“Thanks,” Neil says. “How much of this do I have to do shirtless?”

Nadiya and Sid stare at him, confused.

Neil figures it out at the same time Andrew does.

“Oh,” Andrew says. “There’s a reason why I’m friends with Renee.”

“She keeps her mouth shut tight,” Neil agrees. “So tight she didn’t even tell me she didn’t tell anyone.”

“Didn’t tell anyone what?” Sid asks. “Is there more?”

“A lot more,” Neil says. “A bunch.”

“Oh,” Nadiya says. “Well—has _anyone_ ever seen those? Does anyone know about them, at all?”

“I mean, not publicly, no,” Neil says. “Also, not really privately, either. I could fit everyone who’s ever seen them in the front half of a bus.”

“Are you—prepared to do this, then?” Nadiya asks. “We were happy to work with your arms and face.”

“I’m ready.”

“Well, let’s get this done, then,” Nadiya says. “Sid—are you rolling?”

“Since they pulled into the parking lot,” Sid says cheerfully.

Neil eyes the camera.

“You never know what’ll make for good footage,” Sid tells him.

“Andrew’s not in this,” Neil says.

“Fine by me,” Sid agrees.

Andrew backs away.

Neil gets a microphone, Nadiya gets a microphone, someone mentions they’re grabbing Neil a different pair of pants, they test the mics, and then Neil leads the way into the stadium.

At the end of each day, the janitors turn the lights off; when Neil and Andrew arrive for practice, it’s usually to find that Kevin hasn’t bothered turning on half the lights. They wander in in the dark and make their way to the locker rooms from memory.

Which is why Neil makes it a full five feet in before he realizes he hasn’t turned on the lights. “Oh, sorry,” he says, doubling back to hit the light switch.

“You know your way around, huh,” Nadiya says drily, stepping inside, following Sid.

“Yeah. We do extra practices, sometimes,” he rambles. “We don’t generally bother turning on the lights.”

“Real quick, before I forget—look this way,” Sid says, and Neil stares at the camera for a second.

“What’s the worst part?” Nadiya asks, drawing Neil’s attention. “About having scars that are so visible?”

“The questions,” Neil answers immediately. He doesn’t even need to think about it. “The stares suck, but—the _questions_. Everyone always wants to know what happened—and, I mean, these are strangers.” He waves a hand. “People in the grocery store. At the gas station. I mean, it sucks when people I know ask, too—but the thing is, the people I’m friends with are the kinds of people who don’t mind if I tell them to fuck off. I can’t exactly pick and choose strangers like that, and they’re always the ones who ask, and who get annoyed if I won’t tell them. And even if I was comfortable telling them—there’s just not enough time in a day to tell everyone my whole life story. I’m just trying to get a gallon of milk, you know? Not chat about trauma.”

Nadiya smiles. She asks more questions. A different pair of jeans is thrust into Neil’s hands, and he heads into the bathroom to get changed. When he comes out, Sid brings the camera closer, asks Neil to roll up his sleeves; Neil acquiesces, turning his arms as he does so to make sure Sid gets a good shot. It feels a little like when he told the FBI everything, like when he told the Foxes everything—dangerous. Stupid. Freeing. He almost wants to make sure Sid got a _good_ shot; if he’s going to do this, he may as well do it right. May as well do the whole damn thing.

“What do you think about when you look at your scars?” Nadiya asks.

“Mostly,” Neil says, laughing, “I think about how annoying it is that I can’t go shirtless at the beach. Also, about my dad trying to kill me, but there’s a lot less of that, these days. Honestly, I tried to make them something I didn’t think about at all—like, when you look at your hand, you don’t have any particular thoughts, you know? It’s just—your hand. I wanted my scars to be like that. But it didn’t work. Partially, I think, it’s because it’s not just me—I mean, in my head it’s just me, but any time I leave the house I have to think about how other people are going to react when they see my scars. People don’t react any kind of way when they see hands; they react in a _bunch_ of ways when they see scars. So I could never really stop thinking about them.”

Neil examines his hands—calloused, rough, half the knife marks blending in with all the other lines on his hands. No one ever looks twice at them; no one reads these marks as scars. But he does. “But—I’m not bothered by them. I have the money to have them surgically altered—grafts, whatever. And I’m lucky I’ve got that option, I know I am, but I’ve never gone for it. Because I don’t think I want them to go away. I have the scars because I survived. I _survived._ These are just proof that I’m not dead yet.”

He looks up, and Nadiya is grinning at him. “Well, that’ll about do it,” she says. “Sid?”

“Where are your scars?” Sid asks. “Your back?”

“Front,” Neil says.

Sid twists his mouth. This was not the answer he expected. “Here’s the shot,” Sid says after a minute. “You walk onto the court. We’ve got your name, your position, the whole shebang, I know nothing about sports, all of that—written on the screen. Maybe voiceover? I like it better on the screen, maybe. As you walk, you pull off your shirt, back to us, and then you turn, and _boom_ , scar time. Are we talking your chest? Stomach?”

“Whole torso,” Neil says. “Hips to collarbone.”

“We’ll make it work,” Sid says.

“Great.”

They make him walk onto the court no fewer than five times. Apparently, he looks desperately uncomfortable. He’s not used to being so concerned with the way he walks. But how is he supposed to get comfortable with it? He has to take his shirt off, while walking, knowing full well that there’s a camera at his back. There’s no way in hell this will make a good commercial. This is going to be terrible.

Eventually, he takes a deep breath, tells himself that he’s in his own bedroom, just heading into the bathroom to get ready for bed, and walks, tugging his shirt off. No one tells him to stop, no one tells him to try again, and, unsure of what to do with his shirt—he’s not going to just toss it aside, he’s not an animal—he turns around.

Nadiya is utterly unphased. She’s barely looking. She grins and gives him a thumbs up while Sid fiddles with the camera. After a minute, Sid gives the thumbs up, and then he calls everyone else onto the court, and Nadiya immediately loses control over the situation. Unless what she _wanted_ was for everyone to immediately begin socializing, in which case, her control is perfect.

Hanna, Neil discovers, is a radio show host—he’s never listened to her radio station, but he promises to listen, and maybe to call in one day. Betty volunteers at Skin Deep. George is a cashier at a grocery store in Columbia. None of them give his stomach more than a passing glance—not, he’s certain, because they’re not interested, but because he’s not inviting them to, and Neil appreciates that more than he can say. And also—he hears their annoyance, at random people in clothing stores, at coworkers, at movies and TV shows. Elias is going back to school, at the age of 40, looking for a business degree and maybe also a quick art history class along the way, and is pissed about how hard it is to get permission to use the elevators. He’s missing his left leg; does he need to provide _more_ proof of need? He receives several recommendations for _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ , and promises to watch it. No one asks him about a single scar on his stomach. And more—Trish plays guitar by day and is an escort by night, with exceptions—her band has a show booked in a month, and Neil and Hanna agree to go, and Neil hopes and prays it’ll be something Andrew will like. Reina wrote a novel, which just got accepted by a publishing house, which Neil promises to read. He’s making lots of promises today.

After a few minutes, Sid manages to bundle them into a line, organizing them largely by height, Neil in the middle. Neil does his level best to ignore Sid—if he starts thinking about the camera again, he’ll absolutely lose it. Instead, Trish throws an arm around his shoulders, and he throws one around her, and an arm around Elias, and they’ve got an entire chain going, and Neil grins at the camera, hopes and prays for the best, and then is relieved from duty and allowed to put his shirt on, which he does with enormous relief, and to change his pants.

He returns to the sidelines, out of the spotlight, to sit on the ground next to Andrew. Neil puts a hand out; Andrew considers, and then links their pinkies.

“There’s no feeling quite like putting my shirt back on,” Neil says in Russian.

“Are you doing all right?”

“Better than expected.”

“Good.”

They wait as the others take their turns in front of the camera. It takes time; they’re telling their own stories, saying their pieces.

“This’ll all be online,” Nadiya tells him when Sid takes a bathroom break. “Your part will be the main commercial; whatever we cut, we’ll put on the website. _Go to our website to hear their stories,_ and all that.”

“Cool,” Neil says, inadequately.

Eventually, half an hour later, they say goodbye, Andrew a silent presence in the background while Neil talks to his billion new friends, all of whom are very nice. It’s very odd to talk to people who know what he looks like shirtless. He feels exposed, even now that his shirt’s back on. Like maybe they can still see all his scars, like maybe they know how he got each one, like maybe they might ask questions. Like maybe they might act on the answers. Like maybe that might still hurt him.

And then they head out.

Every muscle in Neil’s body loosens when Neil shuts the car door behind him.

Andrew pulls out of the parking lot and takes Neil’s hand.

“I promised that we’d go to a concert at the end of October.”

“What’s their band called?”

“Red December.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Rock.”

“Like, _rock_ rock? Or punk rock? Or pop rock?”

Neil shrugs. “I have no idea.”

Andrew glances at him, but it’s not judgment—he’s laughing. “I’ll look them up when we get home.”

“It’ll be a fun date night. If they’re good, cool. If they’re bad, I’ll fake a stomachache and we’ll leave early and go to the beach.” At night, when the beach is dark and there are so few people on it, the world feels different—comfortingly, familiarly dangerous. And with the water and the wind to take their words away, they can talk about anything at all.

“We should go on a date. It’s been a while.”

“Roller skating?” Neil suggests.

“Funnel cake,” Andrew says, satisfied.

Neil grins at him. “What if exy was played on roller skates? Would funnel cake spontaneously appear in our concession stands?”

Andrew lifts one finger off the steering wheel. “First of all, yes, and so would I. You wouldn’t be able to get me to play so much as five minutes. Second of all—” he raises a second finger—“it would become a death sport.”

“It would be fun,” Neil decides. “Hurtling towards an opponent, while on wheels and holding a heavy? Actually, I think even just _saying_ that makes me a sadist.”

“I was thinking more about the fact that _stopping_ would send you hurtling headfirst into the wall, but yes, you are a sadist.”

“Well, that’s what we have helmets for. Would it make your job easier? Or harder?”

“No one would be able to stop. They’d smash me into the goal at every shot.”

Neil hums. “Never mind, this would _not_ be fun.”

“Oh?”

“I am _entirely_ unwilling to watch you get hurt. You’re very small.”

Andrew shoots him a shocked look. “ _I’m_ small? At least I have _a_ muscle on my body. You’re a tall twig.”

“Your racquet is bigger than you are.”

“And your racquet is _heavier_ than you are.”

“Between the two of us, we could make a new sport, called Big Racquet Little Body.”

“That’s just regular exy.”

“False. Kevin.”

“That man is taller than god intended.”

“I’m reasonably sure he’s why I’m as short as I am. He stole a few inches from me, somewhere along the line.”

“Absolutely not—he stole them from _me_.”

“No, you have, like, your own control group. He didn’t get height from you _and_ Aaron. _Me_ , on the other hand, _I_ could have been taller.”

“Would’ve been harder to kiss you.”

“I no longer begrudge Kevin his theft.”

“You change your mind real fast, you know that?”

“I didn’t change my mind, I still think he stole it from me. I’m just not unhappy about it.”

“But are you _happy_ about it?”

“Hmm.” Neil looks at Andrew, eyes flicking across his mirrors as he changes lanes. “Yes. Yes, I think I am.”

It’s a second before Andrew speaks—Neil’s managed to fluster him. “A few extra inches makes a big difference, on the court.”

“Well, I’ve gotten by without them this long,” Neil says cheerfully. “And most anything that would make it harder to kiss you is unacceptable to me.” Flustering Andrew is one of Neil’s favorite pastimes.

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand and then releases it to make it easier for him to pull into the mall parking lot. He parks in the back of the lot, turns the car off, and leans over to kiss Neil, and Neil goes, and Andrew kisses him, deep and slow, one hand wrapping around the back of Neil’s neck, and Neil wasn’t expecting it, isn’t prepared, and he falls into it, breath snatched away by Andrew’s tongue, heart racing—

Andrew pulls back. Neil stares at him.

Andrew smiles.

Neil can’t stop staring.

“Yep,” Andrew murmurs, that smile still on his face, “still got it. Let’s go, we have glow-in-the-dark stars to buy.” He says that, but he pauses, one hand on the door handle, and Neil knows full well that it’s not just Andrew who’s wrecked Neil—Neil hasn’t lost his ability to drive Andrew out of his mind, either. That’s why Andrew decided to ruin Neil in the first place, after all.

Neil almost tells Andrew that they should skip the mall, go home—they’ve still got a few hours before the girls get home, they could make use of that time. And then he remembers that he’s an adult and he has self-control, and he takes a deep breath and gets out of the car.

Andrew meets him there, a shadow of his smile still hanging around his mouth, and they head inside.

It takes three stores, but eventually they wander into a baby store, where a sales associate directs them to the glow-in-the-dark stars, which come in a fun variety of sizes.

“Get a bunch,” Andrew says. “We can make constellations. Probably not _too_ many, I guess? It’ll be too bright, they won’t be able to sleep.”

Neil pictures it for a second—not a scattering of stars, but a map of the heavens—and grins. “Oh, I love you, you big drama queen.”

“Because of constellations?”

“Sure. Hey. Look.” Neil points. Little lamps, shaped like the moon.

“Well,” Andrew says, pleased, “they wanted the moon and the stars.”

They return home, satisfied with their hour of shopping, and head into Natalie and Paige’s room, Neil carrying a step ladder.

Andrew slices the packaging open on the stars while Neil deals with the moon lamps. He plugs them in. They glow red when they’re charging. It’s ominous.

And then Neil gets up on the step ladder, moving it around the room in a circle as Andrew directs him through a bunch of constellations.

“It’s too bad we can’t get some labels up here,” Neil says as he maps out Orion’s Belt. “This could be an _educational_ gesture of love.”

“Oh, that’s odd,” Andrew muses. “We have kids, and we love them.”

“I know, right? Anyway—where’s this next one go?”

And then they get cleaning.

It’s Monday, after all.

Neil conscientiously washes the girls’ bedroom window—he doesn’t want to have lied to them. A lie by omission is one thing, but he told them he was going to wash their window, and he doesn’t want to break their trust.

Ten minutes before the girls get home, Neil runs upstairs to take the moons off their chargers and place them in their little wooden holders. He taps them to turn them on.

And then, in a stroke of genius, he shuts the blinds and curtains. The stars glow, the moons glow—he gives the room a double thumbs up, wonders briefly if Andrew’s tendency towards drama is rubbing off or if Neil’s always been a drama queen in his own right, and then shuts the door behind him.

He puts the vacuum away and Andrew puts the Windex away and they settle on the couch, books in hand, looking perfectly innocent, totally natural.

The girls come in, practically bouncing.

“Natalie argued with half our class,” Paige announces excitedly. “Our English class. A bunch of their parents said love was a choice, too, and everyone was super annoyed about it, because they were like, _well, old people, when_ I _fall in love it’ll be_ special, and then Natalie went _off_ on them.”

“Why?” Neil asks.

“Because they were being stupid,” Natalie says scornfully. “They think once they hit 18 they’re gonna settle into their adult selves and then they’ll be the same forever. And the ones who _knew_ they were going to change were like _that’s why relationships don’t last_. So I told them all that they were stupid, and that relationships _could_ last forever, for people willing to actually put in some _effort_. And for people who aren’t terrible.”

“Well, maybe their parents are in shitty relationships,” Neil suggests. “I mean, you’re _right_. But if the only relationships they’ve ever seen are bad ones, of course they don’t believe in good ones.”

“I was repeating what you told me, why are you taking their side?” Natalie asks indignantly.

“I’m not. I’m explaining why they don’t believe their parents. You are one hundred percent correct. Marry someone you trust and respect—preferably, someone you’re compatible with—and you can make most anything else work.”

“They said that just _choosing_ to be in a relationship doesn’t make it _work_.”

Neil shrugs. “They’re not wrong. I could probably choose to be in a relationship with… I don’t know, Allison, and sure, I could do that, but I wouldn’t be _happy_ about it. _She_ would have to choose to be in that relationship, too, and then we’d both be miserable forever. But there’s a reason why arranged marriages work out so often.”

Natalie chews on her lip. “I want to go for a run.”

Neil sets his book on the coffee table and stands. “After you,” he says, following her up the stairs to get changed.

He watches her open her bedroom door.

She stops, one foot already in her room, and he watches her look up, slowly, and stare, and stare, and stare, and then down, to her bedside table, at the moon lamp, and then she turns, eyes wide, mouth open, looks at Neil, and then springs at him.

He hugs her, ignoring how wet his shirt is getting, and then she turns her head so she can yell down the stairs—“ _Paige_ , Paige, come _here_ —” and Neil almost cries, himself. She feels safe enough to yell. He feels her tense up, as she realizes what she’s done, but she doesn’t pull away, even as Paige comes running, silently, up the stairs, Andrew following at a slower pace.

Natalie points towards their room.

Neil grins at Paige, trying to be reassuring, but one glance at Natalie’s tear-streaked face is enough to make her wary as she steps into the room.

And then she comes flying out of it, speechless, looking from Neil to Andrew and back.

“You asked for the moon and the stars,” Andrew explains.

Paige blinks for a minute. Her breath hitches. And then she grabs Andrew’s sleeve. “Which constellation is which? Tell me!”

Neil nudges Natalie, and she lets go of Neil, turning to follow Andrew into the room. He wraps an arm around her shoulders when they get in there, though, and she shrinks—not discomfort, he recognizes, but like she’s removed her armor. Paige hits the floor immediately, lying on her back, pointing to each constellation, demanding names; Andrew gives names of individual stars as well as names of constellations, explains that the bigger stars are closer, and that they’d chosen the size of the stars based on how they appear in the sky.

“They all have stories, too, right? I know some Greek myths, but not most of them.”

“They do,” Andrew says, staring up at the stars. “And I’ll tell you them. But right now, Paige, you and I have an episode of _The Office_ to get through, and Neil and Natalie have a run to go on.”

“Okay,” Paige says, and with one last long look at the stars, she gets up, and they leave Natalie to get changed.

Andrew pauses, letting Paige go ahead of him. “You shut the blinds?” He asks in Russian.

“I wanted to make sure they noticed,” Neil says, in Russian, one hand on his bedroom doorknob.

“And _you_ call _me_ the drama queen.”

“You are.”

Andrew raises one eyebrow. “I am _not_ the only dramatic person in this relationship.”

“Sure, but you’ve been a drama queen since college. _I wouldn’t wish him on anyone but a mortician_.”

Andrew pauses, affronted, and Neil cringes—Andrew’s about to call him out, and he knows it, and—“ _Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time—_ ”

Neil laughs, pressing his forehead against their bedroom door. “That’s twice in a week you’ve quoted that speech. I wouldn’t have thought it would come up so often.”

“What, are you kidding? I think about it twice a day. It was the greatest thing I’d ever heard. Made my memory into a blessing.”

“Happy to help. You’re still a drama queen.”

“Neil Josten, you really are the only man in this world I ever could’ve married.”

“Only man? Not the only person?”

Andrew waves a hand at him, rolling his eyes. “The only person, too. Go get changed. I love you.”

“Love you too,” Neil says cheerily. He feels Andrew’s eyes on his back as he heads into the bedroom to get changed, and feels Andrew’s love like a blanket straight out of the dryer even after he closes the door behind him. The miracle of being loved by Andrew Minyard never becomes less extraordinary.

He meets Natalie at the front door; she looks put-together and not at all like she’d just been crying. She sets the pace, but gestures for him to take the lead; he picks a new route, changing things up a little. Eventually, they slow to a walk, and Neil waits, counts, switching languages back and forth, certain that Natalie will want to talk.

He’s not wrong.

“I’m really glad you’re our dads,” she says, mostly in German.

“We’re glad you’re our kids,” Neil says, in German, and he means it.

“No. Like. I’m glad you’re our dads, and our birth dad isn’t. Like, I wanted him to come back up until, like, around, oh, two weeks ago,” she says, slowly, fumbling through the German, messing up tenses, switching into English when she doesn’t know a word. “No matter where we went, or where _I_ went, I just wanted—a knock on the door, and he’d be standing on the doorstep, because he’d found out where we were and couldn’t wait another second to come see us, and he’d say, _oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve been searching for you for so long_ , or whatever, and he’d bring us home, wherever that is, whatever that means. And maybe he’d have a nice girlfriend who had been helping him look for us, and she’d do the whole “well I could never replace your mother but” thing and Paige would be okay and I would be okay and we would be—we’d be whoever we would’ve been, if he hadn’t given us up in the first place. It was stupid. But I’m glad he didn’t do that. I’m glad he left us there, and I’m glad we lasted long enough to get to you. I think he was an asshole. And I think I knew he was an asshole, but I just wanted him to be _good_ , and to want us.”

Neil wraps an arm around her shoulders. It makes it hard to walk, but she doesn’t protest—she just puts an arm around his shoulders, too. He’s beginning to understand that she likes hugs, and he’s willing to bet she hasn’t often had the chance to get many. “Well, maybe he wasn’t an _asshole_ ,” he says. He’s not sure why he’s arguing; certainly, he’s not unhappy about the outcome. “There are plenty of reasons why loving parents might give up their kids. You said your mom had cancer—your dad might have been bankrupt. He might _not_ have been able to feed you. Or house you.” Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want Natalie to hate her younger self for having had hope. He doesn’t want her to hate herself for wishing that her dad loved her.

“We had this foster sister for a while,” Natalie says, abandoning the German. “Sylvia. One of her moms died, and then CPS took her away because—I don’t really remember, we were little. But Sylvia had her mom’s email, and at school she’d go to the library to email back and forth. She’d been in a different house for a little while, on the other side of Colorado, closer to her mom, and her mom had visited her a bunch. After they moved her, her mom could only visit once in a while, but she managed it anyway. If our dad cared about us at all, he’d have found a way to talk to us, no matter what. You don’t have to defend him.”

Neil hums. “I’m not really defending him, though. I’m defending _you_. Younger you. Why do you think it was stupid to hope he’d come back for you? You deserved better than what you got, and you knew it, and you wanted to know that you were loved and safe and wanted. What’s wrong with that? And it might’ve been true, anyway. You didn’t have any evidence to suggest that you were _wrong_. Younger-you deserved to have that hope.”

She doesn’t answer. He can feel her shoulders twitching, like she’s fighting to keep her breathing steady, and he decides not to look.

“For what it’s worth,” he adds, “and for all that Andrew and I wish you hadn’t had to go through what you went through, we’re glad you made it to us, too. We love you, and we want you here, and we’ll do everything we can to keep you safe.”

“I tried to find him when I was ten,” she mumbles. “I spent lunch in the library every day for a month. I would search his name, and my mom’s name, and what I was pretty sure was our old address, and what I remembered him doing for a living, and everything I could think of, and all that ever came up was mom’s obituary.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “I’m sorry. Do you know where she was buried?”

She shrugs. “Probably somewhere in Colorado.”

“We could go visit her,” Neil suggests. “I’m sure we could find out where she was buried.”

Natalie nods. “Yeah. That might—that might be nice. I wonder if she’s watching. Like, does she know we’re okay now? Is that stupid?”

“It’s not stupid. I think about my mom watching me all the time. I’m sure your mom knows you’re okay. I think she’s probably proud of you for making it this far.”

“Is _your_ mom proud of you?”

“Up for debate. I pay large amounts of money to the people she was running from, so maybe not. And I disobeyed her a _lot_. Barely a year after she died I was breaking every rule she’d ever given me. But on the other hand: I’m not sure what _her_ plan was, long-term, and I don’t think she had one. I never had a chance, really, but here I am, alive, and she’d probably be okay with my choice of husband, and I think she’d like you,” he lies. She’d think kids were a _terrible_ idea, just on principle. Kids are a liability. They make you do crazy things, like run away from an international crime syndicate. The fact that Neil loves Andrew makes Andrew a liability, too. Whether or not she found Natalie and Paige and Andrew likeable would be beside the point. “So—she’d probably beat the shit out of me, because she owes me a beating for my whole senior year of high school and freshman year of college, but she’d probably also teach you how to use a gun.”

“She used to beat you?”

“All the time. Never left a scar, though, which was nice of her. I’ve got enough of those.”

“She sounds terrible.”

“She was,” Neil agrees. “She also kept me alive. And largely sane. And made sure I’d be able to take care of myself, for the most part. She made sure I’d be able to survive without her, anyway. I like to think that if I had to grab you two and run away, I wouldn’t do what she did, but you guys are 14 and smart. I was 10 and stupid. I like to think I wouldn’t hit a 10-year-old, though,” he muses. “I don’t know. I hated her, a lot, for a long time. But if she hadn’t destroyed her whole life for my sake, I’d either be dead, or I’d be—either Jean or Kevin. Maybe neither. Maybe I’d be nothing. Maybe I’d be dead, anyway. Riko nearly killed Jean; maybe he’d have _actually_ killed me. So my mom wasn’t great, but, hey, I’m alive.”

Natalie’s quiet for a minute. They navigate a branch in the middle of the sidewalk. “What about Andrew’s mom?”

“Definitely watching, both middle fingers extended, yelling and cursing,” Neil answers promptly.

Natalie snorts. “Well. At least there’s _one_ good mom in this family. I _knew_ Paige and I had something to offer.”

Neil squeezes her shoulder. “What was she like?”

“I think she was nice. I don’t remember a lot. I think she used to read to us. She made really good macaroni and cheese. She had nice perfume—I don’t remember it, but I remember liking it. She always braided our hair. Do you believe in God?”

“She sounds very nice. And no, I don’t.”

“Then how do you think your mom is watching you?”

“Superstition?”

“Are you superstitious?”

“No.”

Natalie glares at him.

Neil shrugs. “My mom watching me never felt like a good thing, so I never had any trouble believing it.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah.”

“My mom watching me is probably a good thing, I think.”

“I agree.”

Natalie pulls away and picks up speed, falling into a comfortable jog. Neil keeps up. He hopes she feels better. He hopes she feels comfortable. He hopes she feels safe. He hopes she feels loved. He feels horribly unprepared for the reality of being a parent. He’d been thoroughly prepared for the _physical_ side of things—making sure there’s a bed, and food, and a lock on the front door; making sure the child doesn’t get their hands on a gun, or on a hot stovetop; making sure the child goes to school daily. Hell, if either Natalie or Paige got a cold right now, he could probably make a solid chicken soup. And if he couldn’t do it, Andrew could. He knows how to use a thermometer. Were the kids to get a cold, they’d immediately receive a barrage of the best cold meds money could buy.

But every time they ask him a question, it’s a minefield. Tell the truth or lie? How to phrase what needs to be said? How to reassure without lying? _Should_ he be reassuring? Maybe it’s better that they be scared, sometimes. And then there’s the problems he hasn’t come up against yet—if he gets _really_ angry at them, how does he handle that? How does he stay calm? How does he avoid opening his mouth and saying the things he knows will hurt? Sure, he’s doing just fine in that arena these days—but it only takes one slipup. Neil can barely talk to adults; talking to children, children who rely on him, feels like he’s two words away from disaster at all times.

But they go home, and Natalie doesn’t seem the worse for wear. They do homework, and Paige and Natalie laugh and talk and get loud, so Neil and Andrew must be doing something right. They make dinner, and Natalie and Paige get interested, ask questions, follow along. They help clean up. On the off chance their mother is watching, Neil thinks _we’ll take care of them_ at top volume.

Possibly, he’s losing his mind. He’ll just call it _covering all his bases_.

“What?” Andrew asks, watching Neil make a face while brushing his teeth.

“I just thought a _baseball_ metaphor,” Neil says sadly.

Andrew shakes his head. “We’re losing you. Oh. Speaking of. Tomorrow I’m going to go buy a bunch of deadbolts.”

“For?”

“Installation on every door in this house. Recent events have made me paranoid.”

“Fine by me. Also, when you said _speaking of_ two minutes ago, what were we talking about that reminded you about deadbolts?”

“Losing you.”

“Oh. Well. You can probably pick me up in the lost and found.”

“You’re just going to sit there?”

“Surrounded by coats and umbrellas.”

“That’s good to know. Let’s go. Bed time.”

“Want me to sing you a lullaby?”

“Would be appreciated.”

“ _Go to sleeeeep, go to sleeeeeep, go to sleeeeep liiiiiittle baaybeeeee—_ ”

Andrew puts a hand over Neil’s mouth. “I was lying.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s palm, and, still grinning, allows Andrew to wrap himself taco-style around Neil. Neil takes Andrew’s hand, and Andrew lets him, and Neil snuggles back into Andrew’s chest, absolutely content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> miscellaneous things: 
> 
> [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuy5qNDKKkY) is neil @ andrew and I have been laughing about this since I thought of it two days ago
> 
> [this](https://lubricates.tumblr.com/post/624813138653609984/julianbashirlesbian-i-fucking-love-this-little) is essentially the plot of the sports half of this story
> 
> that's all


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parent's Day! 
> 
> Andrew has a son.

Leaving practice early the next day is a harrowing experience.

Not because Kevin or Clark are angry—they’re not. But because every single person on the team is living vicariously through Neil. No one else on the team has kids as old as Natalie and Paige, and half the team is childless.

“Make a good impression,” Athena calls as Neil heads off the court.

“Dominate the conversation,” Maria barks. “Don’t let those preps get a word in.”

“No, be _nice_ ,” Riley contradicts. “Let them talk. Then they’ll like you.”

“Oh, _hell_ yes,” Maria says. “And then you stab ‘em in the back.”

“No,” Riley says, horrified. “Then how will your kids make friends? And anyway, Maria, he might take that _literally_.”

“Don’t stab anybody,” Andrew calls. “Do you want to take one of my knives, though?”

“Take one of his knives,” Kevin advises. “You never know who these people are.”

“Don’t take a knife,” Frank says. “They have metal detectors, these schools. And then they’ll kick your kids out.”

Neil lifts a middle finger into the air, waves it around, and leaves the court. 

And then he has a decision to make. Makeup or no makeup?

He’s just done a whole commercial about his scars. He shouldn’t bother with makeup.

But then, no one’s seen the commercial yet. And anyway, he’s not worried about running from his dad, but this isn’t that—he’s running from a bunch of preps, apparently. He’s not entirely sure what preps are. He knows, vaguely, the difference between a goth and an emo; where preps fit in is beyond him. 

He _does_ want to make a good first impression. For Natalie and Paige’s sake.

He puts on the makeup, checks himself over in the mirror, and heads out, but the dithering about makeup has cost him: He arrives at the school ten minutes early, instead of the required 15.

Oh well.

He’s directed to the correct classroom, where he joins a crowd of moms.

He doesn’t want to talk to any of them.

Couldn’t they have done this on a Monday? Then Andrew could’ve come with him, and they could’ve suffered together.

Neil finds himself a stretch of wall to lean against, and pulls out his phone. Nicky’s texted him—it’s a picture of a store called Neil’s Shoes. Nicky’s caption: _is it just the one pair or do u have more now_

“Hi!”

Neil looks up, and finds a smiling woman standing in front of him, hand outstretched. He shakes her hand. 

“I’m Lorna Rhone,” she says. “Head of the PTA. Arnie’s mom. I don’t recognize you!”

“Neil Josten,” Neil says. Is he supposed to know who Arnie is? “I’m Natalie and Paige Gray’s dad. They’re new here, so I am, too.”

“Different last names? What’s going on there?”

“We’re fostering them,” Neil says. Is it common for parents here to interrogate strangers? Well, maybe this isn’t interrogation. Maybe he’s too used to his family, and the communal Fox habit of not prodding. At least, not prodding while wearing a smile that’s got as many expectations as it does teeth. “We’re in the process of adopting them. The paperwork just hasn’t gone through yet.”

“Oh, that’s so nice,” Lorna says. “How long have you been fostering them?”

“Three weeks.” Is he supposed to be asking her questions, too? Is it appropriate etiquette to walk away from a conversation in order to google how to have a conversation?

“Were you looking to adopt, when you fostered?”

How is he supposed to think of any questions to ask, when she won’t give him half a second and, also, he doesn’t care? “We’d considered the possibility, but we didn’t realize we’d get such great kids. They really fit right in with us. How does this Parent Day thing work? I’ve never done this before.”

“Oh!” She says. “We go class by class, so we can find out what our kids are learning, and ask questions. There’s a few parents who have to have one-on-ones with the teacher—maybe their kid is struggling, or—“ she waves a hand. 

“What do you mean, _find out what they’re learning_?” Neil asks.

“Well, you know, not just math and science and history, but _what_ math, _what_ science, _what_ history. That way, we know if they’re behind or not—behind where we were at this age, anyway,” she says with a laugh. “Not that they ever _have_ been, in these schools; they’re always so far ahead—even the _good_ schools weren’t this good when we were young.” She smiles at him, and he realizes that she expects him to understand what she just said. _These schools_? Does she just mean—private schools, in general?

“Why do we need the teachers to tell us, though?”

“How else would we ever find out?” She asks. “Even the best kids will lie to get out of some hard work.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “We help Natalie and Paige with their homework every night. And I’ve never noticed either of them to be particularly lazy.”

“Really? That’s impressive,” she says. “I’d _never_ have the patience for that—but then, I’ve raised Arnie from birth, and that constant contact gets tiring after a while. Maybe there’s something to be said for the foster system.”

“Not particularly,” Neil says drily. “It’s known for being pretty terrible.”

“Well, clearly, your girls got lucky with you and your wife! Why are you here, instead of her? Not that it’s a problem, of course, it’s just that dads aren’t very common at these things.”

Neil opens his mouth to respond that it would’ve been a dad either way, thank you very much, when—

“ _Neil Josten_?”

And then there’s another woman in front of him, hand held out. He shakes it. “Sorry,” he says, “do I know you?”

“No,” she says, “but I’m a _huge_ fan—I’ve been following you since you were in college. My name’s Sandra Campagna. Oh my god, I didn’t know you had a kid? How—a kid old enough to be here?”

He can see her trying to do the math, and he cuts her off before she can suggest that he might have had a kid at the age of 15. “Foster,” he says. “Foster kids.”

“Oh—Natalie and Paige?” She says.

“Yeah.”

“My daughter—Sandy— _loves_ them. She thinks Natalie is the coolest.”

Neil smiles. Sandy. He’s heard of Sandy before. Yes—she sits with Natalie and Paige at lunch. She stood up for Natalie when Justin tried to approach her. “Natalie and Paige like Sandy, too.” Is that how human beings talk? Neil is reasonably certain that all of his friends assume he’s an alien, desperately trying to appear human, and they’re all just taking pity on him.

“Oh. _That_ Natalie?” Lorna laughs, startled. “I can’t believe I didn’t put it together!”

Oh boy. “That Natalie?” Neil asks carefully. “What’s she known for?”

“Assaulting Justin Warren-Pagano,” Lorna says, a hint of disapproval in her voice.

“Oh,” Neil says.

“You’re their dad?” Asks another woman, leaning in to listen. She doesn’t bother putting her hand out, for which Neil is grateful. “I’m Noriko. Is it true that that’s why Henry pulled Justin from the school?”

“I have no idea,” Neil lies.

Noriko shrugs. “It was very sudden—Marianna hadn’t mentioned wanting to move back to Florida, and it’s not like the business prospects are much better down there. The only thing we can think of is that Henry couldn’t handle having someone finally put that horrible boy in his place.”

“ _Noriko_ ,” Lorna says. “Justin’s just a child.”

“A horrible one,” Noriko says unrepentantly. Neil likes her immediately. “There’s no shame in calling a pig a pig, and there’s no shame in calling a horrible boy just that. I should shake that girl’s hand—she did all our kids a favor.”

“I’ll miss Marianna’s lasagna, though,” Sandra says wistfully. “She brings—well, used to bring—this huge homemade lasagna to every party and PTA meeting,” she tells Neil. “Pasta made from scratch and everything. It was delicious.”

“Oh,” Neil says. Maybe Andrew would make lasagna from scratch. Neil thinks about that, and feels, unaccountably, a desperate surge of love for his husband. Wants very badly to exchange some glances with him.

“So what do you do, Neil?” Lorna asks, a smile on her face that Neil doesn’t entirely believe. “Sandra’s been following you since college?”

Neil hesitates.

He doesn’t particularly want to have a conversation with her.

And then someone calls her name from across the hallway, saving Neil. “I’m so sorry to cut this short,” Lorna says, placing one hand on his elbow. “I’m sure we’ll chat again soon?”

“Sure,” Neil lies. Absolutely _not_. 

“How often do we have to do this?” He asks quietly.

“Once a semester,” Sandra says. “I’m sorry about her. She hates her husband.”

“Okay?”

“Wrong way around,” Noriko says. “Her husband hates her, and cheats on her all the time. She decided it was time to get even, and takes it upon herself to make every man within a ten-mile radius feel uncomfortable, unless _they’re_ looking to cheat on their wives with her. There’s a reason it’s all women here.”

“Send Andrew,” Sandra suggests. “I would pay _money_ to see that.”

Neil grins, and then imagines it, and stops grinning. “I am _never_ sending Andrew. I don’t hate him.”

“Who’s Andrew?” Noriko asks.

“My husband.”

“Oh. _Oh_.” Noriko laughs. “Well, that’s Lorna done for. Who wants to tell her?”

“Don’t bother,” Neil says. “I don’t particularly intend to be in the same room with her after today.” The concept of telling her about Andrew feels oddly slimy—he doesn’t want Lorna thinking about or looking at Andrew. At all. _Andrew_ and _cheating_ don’t seem to belong anywhere near each other.

“Why would it be funny to send that poor man in?” Noriko asks Sandra.

“He doesn’t talk to people,” Sandra says. “Or smile. Ever. Well, maybe he does, at home or something, but for sure not on camera.”

“I’m picturing Lorna talking to a wall,” Noriko says.

“If you can make that wall vaguely annoyed,” Neil says, “you’ll have it about right. How many people here are into exy?” He needs, suddenly, to know the answer to that question. It’s a popular sport; how popular is it, here?

“Not many,” Sandra says. “I get to talk to approximately nobody about it. Exy is new money; football is old money. Exy is violent and uncultured; football is regimented and measured. Exy is co-ed; football is good ol’ boys getting muddy and playing in the rain.”

“Oh, thank god,” Neil says.

“Oh, is that what you do?” Noriko asks. “Exy? Are you any good? Does Andrew play too? Is that why he’s on camera so often? Why don’t you want anyone to know?”

She looks at him, bright-eyed and heavily interested, and Neil doesn’t want her to know. There’s a knot in his gut that says that, maybe, putting his kids in a fancy, expensive private school wasn’t a great idea. There’s a knot in his gut that says that fostering kids at all was probably a bad idea. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Why?”

Neil settles on the truth. “I don’t want people like Lorna taking it out on my kids.”

“I’m happy to protect some kids.”

He glances at Sandra.

She shrugs. “I’m not telling anyone anything.”

“I’m a striker for South Carolina. Andrew’s a goalie. We’re both members of the U.S. Court. Don’t look us up.”

“I don’t think playing sports is going to hurt your kids,” Noriko says. “You’re not that famous.”

“As it should be,” Neil says, and then he sees Sandra’s face pale as she understands. It’s not the fame he’s worried about. He tilts his head to one side in acknowledgment.

“Noriko!” Lorna calls. “We need to discuss the party!”

Noriko sighs, but turns a smile on Neil. “Nice to meet you, Olympian.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” he says, and he mostly means it.

She walks away.

“I forgot,” Sandra says, waving a hand to indicate Neil and Andrew’s pasts. “How crazy is that?”

“Pretty crazy,” Neil agrees. He, himself, can’t. Can never forget who his father was, or the cycles during which his past was a hot topic on sports news sites. Can’t forget the coverage from when Kevin joined the Foxes, and the papers took a deep dive into Andrew’s crimes. Can’t forget the coverage of Aaron’s trial. 

“Anyway, are we on a first name basis now?” Sandra asks.

“Sure.”

“ _Hell_ yes. My husband was a big Fox fan, too,” she says. “We moved up here from Georgia a year or two before you joined the team, and NCAA tickets are cheaper than pro tickets. And, well, you were such a rising star—you know—we were cheering you on the whole way, anyway, and I got into the habit of referring to you and Andrew by first name. Is that creepy? Anyway, Rick makes fun of me for it, but now I’ve met you and he hasn’t, so he can get fucked, y’know?”

“Sure,” Neil says. “So, do you hate your husband, too? Is that—a thing? Or—”

“Oh, no,” she says, snorting. “No, it is not. Well, there’s a couple. But not many. Rick’s my best friend. And also husband. But that doesn’t mean I _can’t_ hold this above his head.”

“Oh, thank god,” Neil says. “I was really about to pull the kids just so they wouldn’t learn bad relationship practices.”

“I mean, set a good example and kids will follow it, right? How long have you had them?”

“Three weeks.”

“Oh. Is that how fostering usually works? You—enroll them in a private school and call them your kids?”

“We’re adopting them as soon as the paperwork goes through. And no, I don’t think it is, but Andrew and I don’t do _temporary_ very well.”

“Two teenagers. Jesus. I mean, hey, do they think you’re cool? You’re both sports players, does that give you any clout?”

“They call us weird and old, so no,” Neil says, grinning. “We have no clout.”

“Well—I mean, they’re teenagers, right? Teenagers are all the same. Tell them not to do drugs and hope and pray that they don’t.”

“Is that what you’re doing with Sandy?”

“Pretty much. She’s a good kid, though. We’re not particularly worried.”

“We’ll try it,” Neil says dubiously. “Thanks.” God, he really hopes they won’t do drugs. Andrew isn’t exactly known for his kind, caring approach to addiction recovery. Well, maybe he’d be better about it these days.

He’s saved from further conversation by the classroom door opening; students stream out, finding parents in the hall, wielding backpacks like weapons in the attempt to get through the crowd of adults. Neil holds a hand up, and Natalie and Paige make a beeline for him.

“You’re here,” Paige says.

“I said I would be.”

“Yeah, but still,” she says with a shrug.

A girl who must be Sandy appears from behind them, with a “Hi, mom—oh my _god_ , you’re _Neil Josten_.”

“Hi,” Neil says.

“My parents are both obsessed with you,” she says, wide-eyed.

“I already told him,” Sandra says cheerfully. “You can’t embarrass me any more than I’ve already embarrassed myself.”

“He’s not that cool,” Natalie says.

“Mom,” Sandy says, “We have a test next Wednesday. Can Natalie and Paige come over on Tuesday? We want to study.”

“Sure,” Sandra says.

“We’ll go home on her bus,” Natalie tells Neil, “we just need a note from you saying we’re allowed. You’d have to pick us up, though. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, trying desperately not to sound excited. “Of course that’s okay.” His kids have a friend! They’re going over someone’s house to hang out! They’re having study sessions! He can’t tell if he’s excited because his kids are doing well or because he never actually got to hang out with anyone, as a teenager, let alone have study sessions.

“Cool,” Paige says.

“Let Sandy know if you have any allergies,” Sandra says. “I’ll make dinner.”

“We can eat whatever,” Natalie says.

Neil keeps his mouth shut. He’s not going to air their dirty laundry and pretend it’s for their benefit. Regardless, it looks like they’re about out of time—kids are starting to abandon their parents. “You guys have your keys?”

“Yeah,” they chorus.

“Cool. Don’t burn the house down.”

They give him offended glances. “We won’t,” Natalie says.

“If you go for a run, don’t go on the highway,” Neil says. “Look both ways before you cross the road.”

“I know how to go outside,” Natalie says.

“If one of the cats scratches you, wash it,” Neil says.

“They don’t scratch,” Paige objects. She’s wrong—they don’t scratch _her_ ; Neil and Andrew are fair game—but Neil doesn’t bother correcting her.

“If you stub your toe, call an ambulance—”

“Are you _joking_?” Natalie asks. “That’s not a sarcastic question. Are you making a joke?”

“Yup.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I think I am.”

“Oh, hey,” Sandra says, “You’ve already got the most important rule of parenting down: If your kids aren’t annoyed at you, you’re doing something wrong.”

“That is _not_ kid-approved,” Sandy says.

“But it _is_ parent-approved. Go home.”

“Already out the door,” Sandy says, heading out.

Natalie and Paige look at Neil, the three of them shrug, Neil gives them Andrew’s two fingered salute, and the girls head out.

And then Neil wanders into a high school classroom, and shuts himself in with a bunch of people he doesn’t know.

It’s hell.

Lorna had lied. Or, at least, she’d decided that her experience went for the majority. There are certainly parents in there who have no idea what’s going on—they’re the minority, but god, they’re loud. A parent will ask a reasonable question— _how do you plan to broach x difficult topic—_ and another parent will gasp, loudly, and ask: “They’re _learning_ about that?” It’s as frustrating for the teachers as it is for the parents. Neil almost begins to see the value in Parent’s Day—it triggers a deep feeling of camaraderie amongst the parents and teachers who know what’s going on.

On the other hand, it’s also deeply reassuring. The teachers know what they’re talking about. Even their boring history teacher knows his topic like the back of his hand. And they’ve all been teaching for years, whether at this school or another; they all know what they’re doing.

It’s also wreaking havoc on Neil’s survival instincts. He doesn’t feel safe here; it’s not like being in the Jaguars’ stadium, where even if there were unknown people, he knew he was in a safe place. He doesn’t have Andrew at his side. He can sit at the back of the classroom, but there are windows everywhere. And he’s just _surrounded_ by unknown people. He takes in faces; no one strikes him as dangerous. He’s also expected to remember names, and to remember who has which kid, which he never had to give a shit about when _he_ was in school. And because Paige was registered late, she ended up in a different science class—his “third period” is split half-and-half, and when he walks into Paige’s science classroom, he doesn’t get the option of sticking his back to a wall. Also, for safety, there’s only one entrance; all the others are fire exits—he wouldn’t be able to get out one without alerting the whole school to his exit. The windows open top-down, to prevent kids from falling out—he’s not sure why the precaution would need to be taken for high schoolers, but what concerns him more is that it would be actively difficult for him to get out in an emergency.

Andrew texts him halfway through— _hope it’s going well. If you need me to save you I’ll go grab a white horse and come riding in—_ and Neil survives on the knowledge that if he doesn’t text Andrew as soon as this is over, Andrew will start a manhunt. This isn’t like when he goes out with Riley; there’s not a chance here of Neil _wanting_ to stay here late.

So, of course, he gets roped into staying late—the English teacher, Mrs. Tanning, asks Neil to double back around at the end of the day.

Neil is so worried about that that when the end of the day comes and Lorna shoves a letter into his hand, he almost forgets to care.

“It’s our annual Fall Party,” she tells him. “I’ve hosted it since Arnie started going to school—it was _such_ a great way to get to know his classmates and their parents. It’s been the same people for the past two years—we’re _so_ excited to have you and your wife join us! New perspectives, a new point of view, new gossip—we’re _always_ looking for new gossip.” Her eyes twinkle, a thing which Neil had thought was only possible in books.

“Oh, thanks,” Neil says automatically, glancing at the letter. It’s in a week and a half. She squeezes his shoulder, and Neil opens his mouth—maybe he should let her know that there _is_ no wife—but then a woman named Harry calls Lorna over, and she gives him one last smile and marches off.

“Oh, good, you’re invited,” Sandra says. “That’ll make things fun, anyway.”

“Are we—are we supposed to bring anything?” Neil asks helplessly. He’s not used to parties. Fox parties aren’t fancy; he’ll bring something, sure, but they usually work it all out ahead of time. He could ask Lorna. He so desperately does not want to ask Lorna.

“Oh, don’t,” Sandra says. “It’s _so_ nice of you to bring that,” she continues in a higher voice, albeit quiet enough that Lorna can’t overhear it. “ _So_ nice. Really. Oh? Brownies? Oh no—as it turns out, I _also_ made brownies! And, of course,” she continues in her regular voice, “ _her_ brownies were homemade, using Swiss chocolate and Dutch sugar and local cream. The only person whose offerings ever went without comment was Marianna, and _that’s_ because her lasagna was, seriously, the best food I’ve ever eaten. If that woman would sell her recipe I’d trade her my house for it. Might finally be able to make a lasagna that my mom wouldn’t be able to find fault with.”

It occurs to Neil that Andrew could _absolutely_ bake something beyond reproach.

Well, he’s not going to say anything about it. “I can turn up empty-handed. No problem. I _do_ now have to go find out why Tanning wanted to talk to me.”

“Sandy told me your kids put up a bit of a fight,” Sandra says cheerfully, wandering towards the English classroom with him.

Is this a friend? Has he made a friend? He does that sometimes. He’s still bad at figuring it out. “About what?”

“What love is. Apparently their classmates felt very strongly that love-as-a-choice couldn’t be as strong as love-as-hormones.”

“Paige says that Natalie had a good argument about that.”

“With Paige backing her up the whole way, Sandy says.”

Neil hums. Paige hadn’t mentioned that, but it makes sense—he remembers Paige barreling out of her bedroom, insisting that Natalie had been on her way to stab Paige in the middle of the night; she wouldn’t leave Natalie hanging. And of course, neither Natalie nor Paige would mention it—Paige because omission isn’t a lie, as far as she’s concerned, and anyway she doesn’t think of herself as a fighter; and Natalie because if she was going to get in trouble for it, she wanted to take the fall for it, and anyway, she doesn’t think of Paige as a fighter. “Sounds like my kids.”

“How much do they argue with you? We’ve been told Sandy’s a good kid. Possibly, because she’s an only child—but Arnie and Justin are only children, too, and they’re both monsters.”

“Natalie likes to argue. Paige does not. That’ll change, though. They’re getting comfortable with us.”

“Good luck,” Sandra says cheerfully.

“Did you name Sandy after yourself?”

“Men do it all the time.”

“Oh, no, I think it was a good idea. But did you used to go by Sandy?”

“It’s the curse of giving someone else your name,” she says morosely. “Suddenly, I can’t be Sandy anymore, there has to be something to differentiate between the two of us. I tried calling her _junior_ for a little while. She hated it.”

“Understandable,” Neil says, picking Lola’s voice out of his head like a cobweb. “Do you still _want_ to be Sandy?”

“Eh. Now that’s just my daughter’s name, you know? Why?”

“Big believer in calling people by the names they choose.”

They pause five feet away from Mrs. Tanning’s classroom. “Makes sense. Anyway, go find out why you’re in trouble.” 

“Why _I’m_ in trouble?”

Sandra shrugs. “See you next week!”

“See you next week,” Neil says, waving as she turns toward the exit. And then he steels himself and walks into the classroom.

“Mr. Josten,” Mrs. Tanning says. “Thanks for coming back.”

“Do people often not?”

“They forget.”

Neil takes a seat. It helps that he’s the size of an average high schooler, and fits. And then he waits.

“This may be none of my business,” she begins. Neil immediately agrees with her. “But do Natalie and Paige know who you are?”

Neil could play dumb. Posed to anyone else, the question is a nonsensical one. But that would drag this on longer than it needs to go. He has a husband to get home to, and the promise of beef bourguignon for dinner. “Yes.”

“They worship you and your husband. And they play dumb any time I try to ask if they’re safe.”

Well, neither of those were questions. They’re each surprising—Neil doubts that Natalie and Paige worship him and Andrew, and neither of them have mentioned attempted interrogations—but they’re not questions. So he stays silent.

“I’m not going to put up with another Henry Warren. Or a Mariana Pagano, for that matter.”

Well, those aren’t questions either, but they’re interesting. Neil will bite. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“We know well enough what Henry Warren was into, and Mariana wasn’t much better. They let their kid know he could do whatever he wanted, and they had money, but I’m not dealing with that again. If Natalie and Paige try to pull that kind of shit, I’ll stop them.”

She’s treating Henry Warren like the threat. Neil is almost entirely certain she’s wrong. For one thing—the Moriyama employee who had paid him a visit had been much more interested in Mariana. For another—as Neil had told Natalie and Paige, people who are into something really bad don’t often wander around letting everyone know about it. But someone only peripherally involved might be happy to blow that up to seem like something more.

But that’s beside the point. “I’m not sure what you’ve been reading, but if you’ve done any kind of research—”

“I’m an exy fan. I remember when you got famous.”

Neil nods, waves a hand. “No one seems to mind who my dad was when I’m on the court,” he observes.

“You’ve got two kids, now.”

“I agree. Look. I ran away. And I didn’t go back. They wanted to kill me for a reason. My kids know who my parents were; they also know who I am. I made sure they knew who the Butcher’s son was before we agreed to adopt them.

“Beyond that, I’m not sure what you’re worried about. I know who my dad was, but I am not him. I’m not in a gang. I’m not in anything. I play a sport. I don’t have gang-level money.” In fact, he has _less_ money than he’s assumed to have, but that’s beside the point. “I’m sure as hell not encouraging them to grope or assault their classmates. Have you seen any evidence that they’re hurting their classmates?”

“No,” Mrs. Tanning says begrudgingly.

“Are they doing well in class?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem is that acting out in class—being loud, argumentative, and so on—is often a sign of trouble at home.”

“And you think that we’re hurting them,” Neil concludes. “I have a history. So does Andrew. And now we have two kids.” Well, Mrs. Tanning is the only one who’s brought it up, so Neil should count his blessings, he supposes. “I appreciate your concern. And I’m glad you care about your students. But this is a terrible way to go about this. If we _were_ beating them, and you told me you could tell, what do you think I’d do? I’d go home and beat them for misbehaving in class. Fortunately, I have a general policy against hitting children, so it doesn’t matter.

“I’m not in a gang. I haven’t been since I was 10. Andrew’s protective streak is as wide as this country, and the kids are sitting somewhere in Nebraska. I’m sorry they’re acting out in class. If it gets above a reasonable level, feel free to tell them to stop, I won’t yell at you for it. We’re hoping they’ll calm down a little. They’re improving every day, now that they know they can actually stay in one place for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping it’ll turn up in their class behavior. Feel free to let me know if they get worse. Is that all?”

It’s not. He can tell it’s not. So he sits, patiently, and waits.

“You sit very still,” she says abruptly.

That’s not what’s bothering her, and it’s not a question, and it’s not interesting, so he waits. Of course he sits still. It took a hot iron, but he learned how to do it.

“I saw how you looked at me, the day you pulled them out early. I am… unconvinced of your sparkling-clean persona.”

She’s not wrong.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. “In my senior year of college, we got a new kid on the team. He had just bought his first car. An old, cheap piece of shit. He had a habit of taking the keys out of the ignition and putting them in the cupholder. The first time he did it, he called a guy, who came and unlocked his car for him. The second time he did it, he watched a youtube video about breaking into cars, and broke into his own car. By September, he shimmed the window open out of habit, even if he’d remembered his keys. He wasn’t a _bad_ kid—I mean, he was a Fox, he wasn’t great. But he wasn’t in the habit of breaking into cars. But he _could_.

“A few years ago, he bought an expensive car—we all got pictures of it. A camaro. A week later, it got stolen, because he’d left his keys in the car. Nowadays, he remembers his goddamn keys, but when his friend locked her keys in her car last year, she called him, and he broke into her car for her.

“The point of this story is: I learned some skills, when I was a kid, and then I learned more when I was on the run. One of those skills was how to sit still. One of those skills was how to look threatening. I don’t need them anymore, and I like it that way, and I’d like it to stay that way. But I have them. And when a guy stands there and threatens my family and scares my kid, I’ll use them. I _am_ sorry I turned it on you. But I’m not particularly bothered by being capable of being scary, and neither are my kids. I ran away from a gang, and kept running, and I put myself to sleep every night with the knowledge that I escaped. I’m not particularly willing to sit here and argue with you about the fact that I managed to get away.”

She’s not particularly fidgety herself, he notices. “Then that’s all. You hurt those kids, and I’ll call CPS on you so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

Neil shrugs. “Again, if I was abusive, it would be a bad idea to tell me that.” He stands. He’s torn between being glad that she cares, and being annoyed that he’s had to do this. “See you this time next year, hopefully. We don’t have to do this _twice_ a year, do we? Oh, god, they have different classes second semester, right? Wait. Will they have you again next year?”

“Parent’s Day is twice a year,” she says, giving him an odd look. “I teach freshmen and seniors. They probably won’t have me again until senior year.”

“See you in three years, then.”

“See you in three years,” she agrees, frowning at him.

He pauses halfway out the door. “Oh—I really liked the project you gave them. For _Romeo and Juliet_. They seemed to get a lot out of it.”

“Thanks,” she says, still frowning. “It’s something I like to do with my freshmen—this is when they’re all starting to think about dating, and it’s easy to get trapped, looking for the ideal romance. And there’s lots of kids who don’t get to see healthy relationships, so once they give up on _ideal_ , they end up modeling their parents’ relationships, or their friends’ relationships, because they think that those are good. I do my best to point them in the right direction.”

“Does it work?”

She pauses for a minute, mouth half-open, searching for the diplomatic answer. “Some years are better than others.”

“I can imagine,” Neil says drily. “Well, helping one kid is better than helping none.”

“I agree.”

Neil doesn’t know how to end conversations. “Good luck with the rest of the semester, then,” he says, offering her Andrew’s two fingered salute and wandering out of the classroom.

He gets in his car, puts his forehead against the steering wheel, lets out a two-minute-long sigh, and drives home.

Walking through the front door is a relief, as is the smell of the beef that’s been in the slow cooker all day, and the sight of his kids playing with the cats, and the sight of his husband in the kitchen doorway.

“I was starting to worry,” Andrew says. “You’d been there a little longer than expected.”

Neil takes Andrew’s hand, kisses his cheek. Andrew is just—very solid, and so easy to lean on, and Neil loves him so much. “I was raked over the coals. Don’t I know I’m scary? Don’t I know my husband is scary? Our kids act out in class. Maybe they’re being abused at home.”

“Next time, I’ll go.”

“We act out in class?” Paige asks.

“I guess you have opinions. And, Drew, next time, we’re _both_ going. We’ll stand around and look scary.”

“Counterproductive,” Andrew says.

“Fuck. Anyway—hey, what’s that?” Neil asks, distracted. There’s a bag from Lowe’s on the counter, filled with deadbolts—that’s fine, he understands that. Next to it, though, is a pot containing a small cactus.

Andrew glances at it. “My son.”

Neil chooses to withhold comment. “Ah. Does he have a name?”

A split second later, Andrew says “Andrunior.”

Paige chokes on her water, coughs it up, and makes a face at her glass. “Eugh.”

“What, not gonna drink it?” Natalie says immediately. “You’re going to waste a whole glass of water just because you spit in it? It’s your own spit, isn’t it? It’s already in your mouth.”

“Nat, stop bullying your sister,” Neil says as Paige eyes the glass with a thoughtful look in her eye. “Gij, just get another glass of water, if you don’t want to waste it go pour it on the grass or something, water the dirt. Drew, you could’ve just said you didn’t have a name for the boy. Is that a combination of Andrew and Junior? Why not just call him Andrew Junior?”

“No comment on the first question,” Andrew says as Paige tosses her water down the sink. “Second of all, yes, it is, and it’s way better than Andrew Junior.”

Neil considers this. It’s bad—it’s pretty bad—but it’s also flatly hilarious. “I’ll accept it. We’ll paint his name on his pot. Is he my son too?”

“He can be,” Andrew allows, apparently pleased by the question.

“Wonderful. I’ll be sure to make time to talk to him about his trauma.”

Natalie snorts. Paige laughs outright.

“Anyway,” Neil says, “we have to go to hell in a couple weeks.” He passes Andrew Lorna’s invitation. “I’ve met Lorna Rhone, and she’s my own personal nightmare.”

Andrew glances at the invitation while Neil pulls him towards the kitchen table and places him in a chair. Neil scoots his own chair away so he can stick his feet in Andrew’s lap. And then Andrew looks at Neil, and it’s all the prompting Neil needs to spill every detail. No one interrupts him.

“Arnie’s a douche,” Natalie opines once Neil’s done. “Makes sense that his mom is, too.”

“So basically,” Andrew says, “this woman thinks you’re married to a woman, wants badly to know if you’re up for a quickie—”

“Gross,” Paige says.

“—and, also, wants you to bring your wife to a party in a week and a half?”

“It’s a whole thing. We’re the newest people attending.”

“Do you know anyone who’s going to be there, or is this going to be us standing in a corner begging for it to end?”

“I know Sandra, so we’ve got an in.” Neil and Andrew look at Natalie and Paige. “It’s up to you guys, really. If you want to go, we’ll go. If you don’t want to go, we’re not going.”

“If you don’t want to go, we don’t have to,” Paige says.

“That’s not what I asked. Do _you_ want to go? We’re your parents. We knew when we decided to grab a kid that it would sometimes be unpleasant. We signed up for this. Do you want to go or not?”

“I mean, even if _we_ go, _you_ guys could probably skip,” Natalie suggests.

She and Paige haven’t had to do any communication—silent or otherwise—about this. They knew about it. They want to go, and they knew Andrew and Neil wouldn’t want to, and they’d decided not to broach the topic. Neil shakes his head. “We’re not going to make you sit there and listen to Lorna go on about how your parents dropped you off but were too rude to stay themselves.”

Paige and Natalie glance at each other, and sure enough—that’s not a conversation about whether or not they want to go, it’s a conversation about whether or not they should admit to it.

“We’ll go,” Andrew says, before they can decide one way or the other. “It’ll be fun, even. Minyard-Josten Rivalry, part two.”

“Oh, are we actually going to pretend to hate each other this time?”

Andrew pats Neil’s shins. “You know, I’d remarry you once a week if I could. You are _absolutely_ onboard with this, huh.”

Neil shrugs, grinning. “Sounds like fun. Should I bring my wife? Maybe Riley? Nah, she’d break down after five minutes. I could probably talk Maria into it, she’d have fun. You could third-wheel. Or _Maria_ could third-wheel—she’d love that shit.”

“Are you suggesting a full-on fight at this party? In that case, better make it Renee—she can’t act, but we could _actually_ fight.”

“No,” Paige says, putting her palm to the table. “I’m _forbidding_ this.”

“Well, sure, but hang on—Drew, are you suggesting that if we called Renee up, she’d fly down from New York in order to attend a party as my wife and start a fight?”

“Absolutely,” Andrew says staunchly. “I know how to pick my friends. Would I be friends with someone who _wouldn’t_ start a fight at a party in order to alleviate some boredom?”

“Renee doesn’t _start_ fights, she _ends_ them.”

Andrew shrugs. “I’d start the fight, then.”

“She’d take you out back and have a long conversation about the virtues of nonviolence.”

Andrew pulls out his phone and calls Renee.

“Hello?”

“Argument I need you to settle.”

“I don’t like playing tiebreaker.”

“It’s about you.”

“Go on.”

“We have to go to this school party next week. The host of said party thinks Neil has a wife, and doesn’t know anything about me—”

“Al would be better suited to playing a fake wife than I would.”

“Well, wait. Because _then_ the fun would be that _I_ would come along, too, and would pick a fight with you—”

“Over what? Over _Neil_? You can have him. No offense, Neil.”

“None taken,” Neil says breezily. “I don’t want you, either. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Renee. Listen. _If_ you played fake wife, and _if_ you lied for two minutes, _would_ you spar with me in the name of drama.”

Renee hesitates.

Neil crosses his fingers and toes. Andrew notices the toe movement and shoots him a raised eyebrow.

Renee sighs. “It would set a bad precedent for the kids in attendance.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Neil says triumphantly.

“That’s not why you said she wouldn’t do it, so you don’t _really_ get to win. Renee. If there weren’t kids there?”

She sighs again, more deeply this time. “Violence isn’t for show. It’s a necessity. Minimizing it to a show—”

“Do you watch _movies_?”

“Sure, but that’s _actors_ , not _me_.”

Neil holds his hands in the air. “Sounds like victory to me.”

“Renee, you have abandoned me, your real-life friend, for the sake of morals in a hypothetical situation.”

“ _Have_ I? Are you married to Neil?”

Andrew looks like he’s just bitten into what he’d thought was an apple, only to find out it was actually an onion. “Yes.”

“And what is yours, is his? And what is his, is yours?”

“Yes.”

“And the two of you are joined as one?”

“Also correct.”

“So then, by asking me to choose between you and Neil, you have asked for the impossible, have you not?”

“You’re the worst.”

Renee laughs. “And still your best friend.”

“And still my best friend,” Andrew agrees. “Next time you come down, we’ll actually go out.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Renee says cheerfully, and then Andrew hangs up. Renee won’t be offended by it. When he has the last word, she hangs up on him.

“Fine,” Andrew says. “No fake wife and no fighting.”

“No!” Paige exclaims. “No, there won’t be! I already said that!”

“But I also don’t see why we have to tell her we’re married,” Andrew continues.

“We don’t,” Neil says, grinning.

“You’ll have to not be mushy,” Natalie says, like she’s played some kind of trump card. “Or else you’ll be caught.”

“We’re going to be in a strange house and surrounded by strangers,” Andrew points out. “It won’t be a problem.”

“Is it _fun_ for you to pretend you’re not married?” Paige asks.

“I mean. It’s dramatic,” Neil says. “I wouldn’t want to do it _forever_ , but like, Lorna didn’t ask me anything about my wife! If she had, I’d have told her, but she was just like, why are you here instead of your wife? Bring your wife to this party. Like, fuck, if she wants to make assumptions and then be dismissive towards my wife, then—”

“Hang on,” Natalie says, leaning forward, “Are you—are you feeling _defensive_ about your wife, who does not exist?”

“A little,” Neil realizes, “but more defensive about _Andrew_. Do you _know_ how many people act like he doesn’t exist? Just—ignore him completely? It’s bullshit! And then if they _do_ pay attention to him it’s because they want to be dicks. Fuck that. If Lorna wants to make assumptions, let her. She doesn’t need to know. Fucking—straight people.”

“Once a week if I could,” Andrew murmurs.

“We’d even have flower girls this time around,” Neil says.

“You can’t just change the conversation,” Paige accuses. “What about straight people?”

“They always assume everyone else is straight,” Andrew says. “And are shocked to find out otherwise. Idiots.”

“We’re talking about the wrong part of this conversation,” Natalie says. “Why does _wishing people would pay attention to Andrew_ translate to _pretending you have a wife_?”

“It doesn’t. It translates to us having fun at her expense.”

“You guys are weird.”

“Never pretended otherwise,” Andrew says cheerfully. “Also, I was too busy trying to win earlier to point it out, but can we appreciate—”

“Renee immediately grasping the point—” Neil says.

“And volunteering her wife,” Andrew completes. “She may not have sided with me, but I _am_ very happy that she is my friend.”

“God may have offered up his one and only son,” Neil says solemnly, “but Renee offered up her one and only wife.”

“It’s how we know the difference between humans and God,” Andrew agrees. “Humans make greater sacrifices, and make them with less forethought.”

“Weird,” Paige and Natalie say.

“It’s like having a Greek chorus,” Neil observes.

“Quoth the Raven, _fucking weird_ ,” Andrew intones.

“Can we eat now?” Paige asks desperately.

They eat.

Neil isn’t sure why Paige thought it would make him and Andrew shut up, though, because it doesn’t. They’re just not talking about Lorna anymore. The conversation turns to time travel, because Neil and Andrew hadn’t settled that one.

“Well, but why would you assume the splinter timelines would break?” Natalie asks. “The real issue would be that the time traveler would never make it back home. You go back in time two weeks, speak to the wrong person, and now you’re in a splinter timeline. And there’s no way to make it back to the original timeline. You can go forward again, but you’d just go forward in your _existing_ timeline. So, then, you’d go forward two weeks, try to pick up a conversation you’d just been having, and the person you were talking to might not remember it, because in this timeline, you might not have _had_ it. Also, would there be an _extra_ you? Like, you go back two weeks, and suddenly there’s a new path, and you go forward two weeks. Were you _in_ that timeline for the two weeks you’ve now—like—skipped?”

“ _What_?” Paige puts her fork down.

“I understand the not-making-it-back part,” Neil says. “horrifying, but yes, I see that. But—no, I think the answer has to be no. Those two weeks have been rewritten, that’s what makes it a splinter timeline—unless—”

“Unless you _were_ there,” Andrew picks up. “But would this _new_ you have wanted to time travel? Is _that_ the paradox? You can go back in time and create a splinter timeline in which you never did the time traveling in the first place? If that’s a different you, is that even a paradox? Or are there just two of you now?”

“I am _eating dinner_ ,” Paige says. “We’re not allowed to talk about this anymore.”

So they move on.

And then Natalie gets up the courage to ask to throw a knife again. This time, Neil decides to be smart about it, and just takes her into the backyard and has her aim at a tree. She only hits it once, and out of the five times she throws the knife it only lands point-first three of the times, but she doesn’t stab herself or anyone else, and instead of being cut off by Natalie’s fear, they’re cut off by the sun setting. Neil counts it as a success, and tells her so.

And then they do homework.

And then, after Neil and Andrew lock up, pledging to install the deadbolts soon, Andrew scoops up Andrunior, scoops up a yelling King, and carries them all upstairs, Sir following at a safe distance.

Neil pulls up the Fox group chat and sends: _Andrew has a son_. And then he puts the group chat on mute and pulls up an incognito window in Safari. Turns on his VPN. Googles Trent Franklin. There must be _something_ Neil can pick at until it opens up.

Two minutes later, Andrew pulls out his phone, glances at it, and then shoots Neil a look of such pure, unadulterated _ugh_ that Neil gives in and checks the group chat, patting Sir absentmindedly with the other hand.

Nicky: _with u, neil? Or. Someone else/_

Nicky: _*?_

Dan: 👀👀👀👀

Renee: 👁👁👁👁

Matt: _from where????_

Matt: _*////_

Aaron: _…..foster? Or like. what’s up there. like a baby? or a whole person?_

Allison: _aaron you are a PEDIATRICIAN what the FUCK are you talking about_

Allison: _but also. like a baby or a whole person or what_

Kevin: _you’re fucking shitting and also kidding me, right? where did andrew get a CHILD. Who gave him one of those. what the fuck. You already have two??????_

Andrew sighs, takes a picture of the cactus, and sends it out into the world.

Andrew: _His name is Andrunior._

Nicky: _AHHAHUHRJHGKJFHGLHADKGHGLF_

Aaron: _OH THANK GOD_

Matt: _omgomgomgomg neil you son of a bitch dick_

Allison: _YEAH neil holy shit you had me gearing up to be a whole new aunt all over again_

Renee: _andrew I was about to revoke your best friend status for having a whole entire son and not telling me_

Kevin: _not to copy aaron but OH THANK GOD_

Kevin: _also, andrunior? you named your cactus andrew junior?_

Andrew: _He’s my son. And no. I named him Andrunior._

Neil: _He’s also my son, because I did request co-parenting privileges. I did not help choose his name._

Allison: _you’d probably have named him Juneil or some shit don’t act like King and Sir are examples of a good naming convention and don’t sit here and act like you’re so much better at this whole naming thing than andrew is_

“Juneil is pretty good,” Andrew mutters. “I’ll need to get a second cactus.”

Neil cackles. “Roony and June for short?”

“They’re already short, they don’t need short names, too.”

Kevin: _what happens if the cats eat it???_

Andrew: _death._

Kevin: _to the cats or the cactus?_

Andrew: _Uncertain as yet._

Neil: _The cactus and the cats are in one room together. Looks like Andrunior will be living in our bedroom?_

Andrew: _The light is better in here than it is downstairs. He can sit on our windowsill._

Aaron: _are you guys in a room together? Why are you discussing this in the group chat_

Neil: _None of your business_.

Aaron: _I mean you’re making it my business by virtue of it being in the group chat_

Dan: _don’t complain boy this is gold. Hw often does Andrunior get fed_

Dan: _*How. Can’t believe I can spell Andrunior with no typos but not the word how_

Andrew: _Not at all, for a couple weeks. He has to acclimate to his surroundings._

Matt: _that’ll go well, with two cats in the room_

Neil: _It’s just occurring to me that it’s a very good thing that Natalie and Paige came to us pre-named. We’d have ruined them._

Allison: _you’d have named them beevis & butthead _

Neil: _No, that’s our names. They’d have to be deevis & dutthead_.

Allison: _that’s literally not funny at all and I don’t know why you thought it was_

Aaron: _no, no it IS funny, it’s funny that neil immediately decided that he and his husband are beevis and butthead and that their children would have no choice but to be named the same thing but two letters to the right_

Andrew: _am I beevis or am I butthead_

Neil: _I’m both beevis AND butthead. You’re the &._

Kevin: _why are you flirting via group chat. I’d tell you to get a room but you’re literally in one_

Neil: _Hey, we only know each other because of you, this is your fault._

Nicky: _FAJGKH SHOTS FIRED_

Aaron: _Kevin, never thought I’d say this, but thank god for you. I think this means you’re the reason I was allowed to get married_

Renee:😬😬😬😬

Dan:😬😬😬😬

Matt:😬😬😬😬

Nicky:😬😬😬😬

Kevin:😬😬😬😬

Allison: 😬😬😬😬

Neil: 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

Andrew puts his face in his hands. “He’s not even wrong,” he mumbles.

Neil snickers. “Yeah, I know. You’re welcome.”

Andrew leans against Neil.

Andrew: _Every answer I could type out right now would be terrible_

Aaron: _:D PENANCE_

Neil: _Tell Katelyn we said hi._

Aaron: _she says hi_

Neil: _You definitely did not have time to tell her in the .2 seconds between receiving that text and answering me._

Aaron: _literally sitting next to her right now_

Dan: _this is getting awks_

Matt: _I’m going to bed now. Gnight_

Nicky: _I literally woke up for this, like some alarm went off in my brain that said time to check the group chat_

Neil: _Tell Erik we said hi._

Nicky: _if I wake him up he will slaughter me_

Allison: _DO IT DO IT DO IT_

Kevin: _DO IT DO IT DO IT_

Kevin: _hey isn’t anyone going to tell me to say hi to my wife_

Renee: _I’m literally smacking Allie right now, in case anyone was wondering._

Renee: _someone needs to telepathically smack Kevin. Kevin, tell your wife I said to smack you_.

Neil: _we’re going to bed, now_.

Kevin: _YOU STARTED THIS WHOLE THING._

Neil: _Tell Thea we said hi._

Kevin: _THANK you. Good night._

Neil: _Did Thea say hi back???_

Kevin: _Oh, I have no idea, I’m in the living room fuckin perambulating John, trying to get him to fall asleep. She’s in bed._

Allison: _WHY DID YOU WANT US TO SAY HI TO HER THEN_

Nicky: _going to bed!!! Night!!!!!_

Neil puts his phone away. It buzzes another couple times, and falls silent.

Neil watches Andrew place the cactus gently in the middle of their windowsill, taking a moment to center it before letting the curtains down so the sun doesn’t wake them up in the morning, and Neil falls so deeply in love with him he can’t breathe for a minute.

“What?” Andrew asks, glancing at Neil.

“You are the gentlest, kindest, most compassionate, most wonderful person I know,” Neil says. “And, incidentally, beautiful.”

“You don’t know many people,” Andrew says.

“Don’t need to.” Neil holds out a hand, and Andrew climbs into bed and crawls to meet him in the middle. Andrew takes his hand, lets Neil pull him in for a kiss, lets Neil wrap a hand around the back of his neck. Puts his forehead against Neil’s, so Neil can listen to him breathe. It’s a reassuring sound.

“We should hang out with Kevin more,” Neil says after a minute.

“He’s feeling left out,” Andrew agrees.

“We should go on a date.”

“The beach at night.”

“We should figure out time travel so we can solve that argument.”

“For all you know, we already did, and this is the result.”

“Then I’d like to thank us for doing such a great job. Andrunior is a very good addition to the family.”

“Thank you, I thought so too.” Andrew pulls Neil down to the bed with him. Neil curls in close. “When would you go? If we could time travel. When?”

“Really early,” Neil decides. “Like, the hundreds.”

“BC or AD?”

“BC. _Way_ back. I want to come back and tell Kevin shit.”

Andrew snorts. “To rub it in, or so he can nerd out?”

“Both. You?”

“Fifty years from now. I want to know what’s up.”

“Probably the sky.”

“ _Good_ night.”

Neil snickers as Andrew pulls Neil closer, and Neil tucks himself in against Andrew and listens to his heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so andrew's son is shamelessly stolen from [here](https://side-effect-of-the-meds.tumblr.com/post/621857342612471809/he-refers-to-it-as-his-son-but-only-in-front-of)


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> riley talks, maria talks, andrew talks. nicky apologism. makeup.

On Wednesday, Riley decides she’s bored; she informs Neil, across the locker room, that they’re going to the arcade in Columbia tonight.

Neil turns to Andrew. “If you don’t want me to leave you alone with—”

Andrew waves Neil off. “It’s been weeks since you went out.”

“You haven’t gotten to leave the house in weeks, either.”

Andrew nods. “Last I checked, we weren’t in the habit of holding each other hostage, though.”

Neil feels vaguely guilty about it anyway.

But he ekes a promise out of Andrew to get out and do something soon, kisses Andrew on the cheek, and goes to the arcade.

“How long do you think Maria will wait before she asks me out?” Riley asks abruptly, trying desperately to edge Neil’s car off the screen.

“You could ask her,” Neil suggests, hitting the breaks to let her zoom ahead, swerving dangerously as she tries to avoid the edge of the road. He pushes the joystick forward as far as it’ll go and passes her.

“That seems difficult.”

“Yeah.”

“I wanna ask you for help, but I feel like however you and Andrew figured shit out will be useless.”

“Yup.”

“I need better friends. Do you ever think about how much bullshit life is? Like, what if I fall in love with people forever, and they never love me back?”

Neil shrugs, skirting an obstacle. “Not the end of the world.”

“You can say that. You’ve got Andrew.”

“Sure, but it still isn’t the end of the world. Like. You’ve got friends, don’t you? Romantic love isn’t the only thing in the world. If it was, we wouldn’t be standing here. I’d be back at home with my husband.”

“But it’s a _big_ thing.”

“Only because it’s _good_ , though. Like, it would be better to have no one than to be in a relationship just for the hell of it, you know?” Neil edges over the finish line three seconds before Riley does.

“Fuck. Again, or a different game?”

They move on.

Twenty minutes later, over a basket of fries, Riley says: “Feels like relationships shouldn’t be as important as they are.”

“The world shouldn’t revolve around them, you mean.”

“Like, the only reason they _are_ as important as they are is because of inheritance laws. And then everything else codified around that. Tax laws and whatnot.”

“Capitalism,” Neil agrees. “Two families in two houses need two hammers. Two families in one house need one hammer. Insist that the nuclear family is the standard, and you sell more hammers.”

“Exactly,” Riley says, dipping two fries in the ketchup at once. “But then again. I also want a little house with the love of my life. So what do I care if I have to buy a hammer?”

“Probably you’d care if you weren’t an exy superstar with lots of money.”

“Capitalism,” Riley agrees. “Makes you want the nuclear family and prevents you from attaining it unless you’re rich.”

“It’s fun, having money. Like, sometimes I’m surprised that we keep getting _more_ of it. When I was 10 we ran away with a shitting ton of money, and still less than I make in a year. And we made it last _nine_ years, and I still hadn’t run out of it, and that was even though I had to buy a new name and face twice a year. Like, the end of the year comes, and Andrew and I just have this charity bonanza—like, hey, shit, we’ve got savings, we’ve got the house, the cars, the whatever, what the fuck are we going to do with the rest of this? And in the back of my mind, the answer is always to take the money out of the bank altogether. I have a safe full of cash in our closet. Just, stuffed. On the off chance that we have to run away, I don’t want to leave the paper trail of pulling money out of the bank, and I don’t know that we’ll have that kind of time. So even as we’re sitting there picking charities out of a hat, I’m fighting the urge to just, like, go buy us fake identities, just to have on-hand.”

“Downer. How’s Andrew feel about running?”

“You’re the one who brought up capitalism, why am _I_ the downer? But I mean, it’s not like we’re _going_ to run. We don’t have any reason to run, or anyone to run from. So it’s not like we sit there and argue about whether or not to run away. It’s more like we have this box full of cash that I check on every once in a while, and then Andrew bakes a cake. He doesn’t want to run. I’m not a runaway anymore. But, shit, what if?”

“Yeah. I still have my overnight bag in my car. Like, just in case I wake up tomorrow and I’m married to Tyler again, and need to stay the night somewhere else. I mean, I guess it’ll come in handy, if I actually _do_ have to spend the night somewhere else, but every once in a while I get really paranoid and check my phone and my car for trackers, just in case. Like, maybe he’s out of jail now, and got ahold of my phone, and I didn’t notice. And it’s _weird_ , right? Like—I’m not obsessively checking to make sure he’s _in_ jail. I’m not bothering to hide my HRT—although, really, I never did that anyway, it sat on our bathroom counter for a year, the man was just an imbecile—like, none of this is actually _useful_. It’s not like I check my car before I get in it. It’s not like I’m taking any actual precautions against him actually finding me. I just have a bag of clothes in the car. Like that’ll be what helps, if I ever need help again.”

“Exactly,” Neil says. “If anyone actually wants to find me, they can, it’s not like my address is a secret. And I don’t take any real security precautions. But if we have to run? We’ll be able to do that. I made sure I got over the big stuff, the big traumas, the stuff that might actually keep me safe if I'm ever in danger again, but I forgot to get over all the little stuff. Also, if Tyler ever comes back, let me know, I’ll kill him for you.”

“You know, people have said that before, and usually I laugh and thank them for the offer. I’m a little worried, though, that you’re being literal.”

“Of course I am. I don’t offer to kill people as a joke.”

She glances at him. “For someone who insists that he’s a peace-loving, non-threatening kinda guy in good legal standing with the government, you’re really very violent.”

Neil shrugs, glances around. It’s a Wednesday night. There’s not many people here, and the people who _are_ here are all absorbed in games and food. No one’s anywhere near them. “Give Andrew and me a couple weeks, we’ll figure out how to make it happen so it’ll look like an accident. Unless we need to fly somewhere. If you could get him within a couple blocks of us, no one’ll ever know. It’s really more about the paper trail, you know? If our EZ Pass shows us on the highway heading his way, and then heading back, we’re suspects. If he happens to vanish a couple blocks away, we’re not implicated.” Neil stops chewing for a second—could Uncle Stewart get to Colorado without being noticed? He’s got money, he’s got power. If he’s smart, he’s got something over the FBI, and they’ll let it pass—or, at least, he’ll have a fake ID.

“Sometimes I forget you two are scariest when no one’s looking.”

Neil grins. “It’s a talent.” Uncle Stewart isn’t a valid option, here. It’s been three years since they last spoke. He doesn’t really want Stewart in his kids’ lives. Could Neil, himself, get a fake ID that would get him to Colorado? This is a much more actionable line of thought, and he can’t believe he hadn’t considered it before.

“This has been a depressing conversation.”

Oh. He hadn't considered it before because he has no contacts anymore, and if the FBI finds him while he fumbles around looking for people to make him a fake ID, they'll take his kids away and then take _him_ away. “DDR?”

“Right after fries? God, you’re the worst, do you _want_ me to die?”

“If we’ve both got cramps, it’ll be fair.”

Neil loses.

He gets in late, and just in time for Andrew to finalize plans with Roland and a couple other Eden’s personnel for tomorrow—short notice, but Thursday is Roland’s day off, and Andrew is easily absorbed into his existing plans. Neil breathes a little easier, heart a little lighter. Neil seems to make friends, regardless of how he behaves—people take him in like a weird homeless dog, and suddenly he’s got friends, whereas people look at Andrew and then look away. And with Matt and Renee in New York, Andrew’s closest friend is Kevin—and Andrew sees him every day at work. It’s not that Neil minds being Andrew’s support system, it’s that he doesn’t want Andrew to have no one else. Neil texts Kevin and asks for a ride home, on Thursday.

Neil has his own car. He could just drive to work separately, drive himself home.

Kevin knows this.

Kevin answers in the affirmative after barely enough time to run the plan by Thea.

Thursday morning, Neil wakes up to sunlight and a shift in Andrew’s weight. He feels Andrew’s lips on the back of his neck, and then he feels Andrew move away. Neil rolls over to see Andrew getting out of bed to tend to Andrunior, turning the plant a quarter turn to catch the sunlight at a different angle. Andrew fusses with it, rearranging the rocks. Neil pulls himself out of bed and pads over to him.

“Good morning,” Neil says softly, letting his voice and a gentle touch be the warning before he wraps his arms around Andrew’s waist and rests his chin on Andrew’s shoulder.

“Morning.” Andrew leans back into Neil, and Neil accepts that as the sign of absolute trust that it is.

Andrew keeps rearranging the rocks, gently, hesitating sometimes before placing a stone, arranging them with the bigger rocks towards the center, supporting the cactus, and a thought floats slowly to the surface of Neil’s mind.

“Drew?”

“Mm?”

“Did you— _want_ a baby?”

“ _What_?”

“I mean—did you? Like—like that. Like, is the cactus a stand-in for a baby?”

Andrew looks from the cactus to Neil and back again, Neil’s cheek pressed against Andrew’s so he can feel Andrew’s facial expressions. Neil cringes in preparation for the dressing down he _knows_ he’s about to get, and, sure enough—“Neil, this is a cactus. Human babies are not cacti, Neil, you know that, right? I mean—you know that, right? Cacti and human babies are _not_ the same thing?”

Neil tries desperately to defend himself through a grin. “I’m just saying—something small that you want to care for, I mean—”

“Human babies _grow up_ , Neil, they get _big_ , and they grow _fast_ , you’ve got something small for—like—two years, maybe, _max_ , like, you know that, right? Babies _get bigger_. This cactus will _never_ get big. It will be small until it _dies_. It is _not_ comparable to a human baby, Neil—”

“Just, I mean, I know I didn’t want a baby, but you’re so good with them,” Neil says, doing his level best not to laugh as he talks, “and I don’t know, maybe you haven’t broached the topic just because you knew _I_ didn’t want a baby, and this was, like, your compromise—”

“Again, I have to point out, this is a _cactus_ , and not a _human baby_ , and if I _wanted_ a human baby I’d have kidnapped John, or I’d play with Freddie even a little bit when he comes over, this isn’t some _parental instinct_ coming out—”

Neil presses his forehead into Andrew’s shoulder, giving in, his whole body shaking with laughter.

“—whereas this is a _cactus_ , and extremely small, and when we have to fly to a different state for an overnight for work I don’t have to find a babysitter for it, and I don’t need to take parental leave for it, and I don’t need to worry about it missing a meal, like, it’s _different_ , Neil Josten, it is _extremely different_ from a _human baby_ —”

Neil, in his struggle not to break the morning peace, finds himself making odd squeaking noises as he laughs.

“—I will never have to wake up in the middle of the night to _perambulate_ a cactus, I will never have to worry about whether or not it’s having trouble falling asleep, Neil, it will never be _colicky_ , Neil, you see how that’s different from a human baby, right? I don’t have to wipe its ass or change its diaper, I don’t have to worry about it vomiting, I don’t have to figure out which position is best for it to sleep in, I don’t have to buy it a stroller and new clothes every month and a half and worry about introducing it to new foods and expanding its palate. Like, you see how that’s different, right, Neil? Right?”

“I just didn’t want you to abandon a desire to have a baby just because I keep saying I don’t want one, I mean, if you want one, we can talk—”

“A _cactus_ , love, a _cactus_.”

“Was that a pet name?” Neil asks, glowing a little, immediately abandoning whatever argument he was trying to make.

“No, my pets’ names are King and Sir and Andrunior.”

“I thought Andrunior was your son?”

“My pet who is my son.”

“All right, _love_ , all right.”

“Backtracking on that _immediately_.”

“What? The pet name, darling? Is it the pet name you’re backtracking on?”

“Jesus, you try to be heartfelt—”

“I like it, Drew, I like it,” Neil insists, planting a kiss on Andrew’s cheek. “And I love you. And also Andrunior. And our non-baby kids. And our cats. We have an extremely big family.”

“All right. Look. I have a plan.”

“Hmm?”

“We go to Lorna’s thing. Yes? And we show off pictures of our cats and cactus, and talk about them like they’re our children, and rant about how the school wouldn’t let them attend, and how _horrible_ it is that some people act like these _aren’t_ our kids, and how _rude_ it is that some people say cacti aren’t even _sentient_ , and _then_ we never get invited back. Thoughts?

“They’d probably take our kids away, but it might be worth it.”

Andrew sighs. “I guess so. Could we get Browning to override that?”

“Fuck, we could probably get Browning to come to the party and tell everyone our life stories.”

Andrew grimaces. “Fine. We won’t do that. We’ll just pretend to hate each other.”

“Sounds like a good time,” Neil agrees cheerfully. “Darling.”

Andrew flicks his hand. “ _Dear._ ”

“ _Dove_.”

“ _Sweetling._ ”

“ _Cabbage_.”

“Cabbage?”

“I guess that’s more for kids.”

“No, wait, _cabbage_?”

Neil hums a little. "See, it’s occurring to me that I’ve never heard anyone say that in English, but I kinda figured that that was just because I don’t know many people. _Mon petit chou_? My little cabbage?”

Andrew very nearly laughs; he _does_ smile. “No, that’s not something people say in English.”

“Perfect, I’ll call you Cabbage.”

“Fine, Bok Choy.”

“Oh, eat me, I spent a lot of time in Europe.”

“You know, out of context, we’re very Prince and the Pauper. One of us spent time conquering the continent of Europe, one of us spent time in juvie.”

“You are welcome to call me _prince_.”

“Okay, prince.”

“Nope, I take it back. That’s bad.”

“All right, love, I won’t.”

“And _that_ is good.”

Andrew twists to kiss Neil on the cheek. “Ready to get ready?”

Neil squeezes Andrew, just for a second, putting off the moment when he’ll have to let go, and then he gives in. “If I must.”

At the end of the day, Andrew goes straight from work to Eden’s, and Kevin drives Neil home. They try to discuss North Carolina, the team they’re facing on Saturday.

The conversation is repetitive and boring. The best player on the team is Thea. If North Carolina beats them, they don’t deserve to go to finals, and since they’re already going to finals, it barely matters. But Kevin and Neil know full well what happens when good teams get complacent.

They still only last ten minutes. They spend the rest of the ride discussing the championships lineup—the schedule is tentative yet, with the final two spots to be decided on Saturday, but Denver is in, as are the New York Renders, California, and Texas.

“If we face Denver round one, we’re fucked,” Kevin says. They’d faced Denver back in July. Denver had scored seven points on Andrew, and won the game. Round one of finals chops half the teams out in one night; round two, the remaining four teams play each other, and round three consists of one game, played by the two teams who come out of round two with the most points.

“Don’t say that,” Neil says. “Fatalism isn’t encouraging.”

“Denial is a bad look on you.”

“It’s gotten me through so far. We’ll get—” Neil shuts his mouth.

Kevin tosses him a look, after a minute. “Figured out that night practices are gonna be real difficult, huh,” he snarks. “Sucks to have kids.”

“Fuck. How’d you do it, last year? Oh. Wait. You and Thea have parents.”

“We’re anomalies in the Fox family, I know.”

“You know, now would be a _great_ time for Andrew’s dad to pop out of the woodwork and turn out to be really loving and kind and selfless, and desperate to make up lost time to his son in the form of babysitting.”

“I mean, they’re teenagers. How helpless can they be?”

“I mean, I’m sure they’re _not_ ,” Neil says. “But—I don’t want to just, leave them alone, for days on end. Oh, by the way, we won’t be able to night practice the night before round one, anyway. We have to go to a party.”

“You _absolutely_ do not.”

“It’s for our kids. You’ll see, when John’s older. You’ll have to play nice with parents.”

“Don’t you go acting all high-and-mighty, like you’ve been a parent for longer than I have.”

“Just imagine, Kev. Imagine it. Hordes of parents, all with their own problems and lives, all hoping to keep their kids safe and reasonably happy. All hoping their kids will make good friends. All trying to be friends with their kids’ friends’ parents. Sit in that room.”

Kevin shudders. “John will never appreciate the sacrifices I make for him.”

“I was informed, very pointedly on Parent’s Day, that I am mean and threatening.”

“ _You_? You’re, like, _happy_.”

Neil snorts. “The day I went to grab the kids after Natalie punched the boy, I happened to smile at their English teacher, who has not forgotten the experience and did not care for it.”

“Well, that’s on _you_. I’ll just—look non-threatening.”

“You always look non-threatening. You also look aloof, and rude, and—”

“I’ll pretend there’s cameras.”

“You’ll put me to shame. You’ll make me look like a serial killer.”

Kevin helps the kids with their history homework while Neil makes dinner, and then Neil broaches the subject of night practices. And Sunday practices. And Monday practices. Two weeks straight of intense, self-imposed training. The shit Neil, Kevin, and Andrew come up with at 10 at night, after a full day of practice, is unmatched. And it’s always new enough that it takes their opponents by surprise, which they’ll need, if they’re going to face Denver. 

It’s decided that Neil and Andrew will be expected home for dinner every day, which Neil agrees to; Kevin agrees eagerly—that way, he gets to go home, too. He’s got a kid. And a wife.

After that, there’s much consideration. Could Natalie and Paige come hang out at the stadium? Sure. Could they go over a friend’s house? Of course. Could they just stay home? If they promise to learn the Heimlich. What about Abby? She can’t babysit for a full two weeks, and Neil would have to ask very nicely, but—even as he says it, he knows she’d do it. Abby, Wymack, and Bee are Neil and Andrew’s unofficial parents. They’d been at Neil and Andrew’s wedding. Neil had expected the relationship to end once he’d graduated. Instead, Abby and Wymack had barged ahead, Bee popping up where allowed. They’d come to his games. Wymack had gone apartment hunting with him. Neil had been invited to monthly dinners, which he’d excused himself from on the assumption that Abby and Wymack were being polite, until Kevin had called him and asked why he was being such an asshole. When Andrew was playing in the vicinity—before he’d signed with South Carolina—Wymack and Abby and Bee had gone to see him play.

Neil loves them more than he could ever tell them.

And then it’s Friday, and a blur of training and homework. Natalie and Neil run, and then they throw knives, and Natalie does better—aim still imperfect, but she’s hitting point-first most of the time, and her aim is improving. And then it’s Saturday. They don’t have to fly to North Carolina; the stadium is so close they don’t even bother taking the team bus. Natalie and Paige come to watch.

They destroy North Carolina.

Thea gives Kevin two middle fingers and a kiss as the crowd roars. 

North Carolina wasn’t going to championships, even if they’d won, so the fans aren’t particularly upset—they’re upset that the season couldn’t end on a better note, sure, but they’d expected this. Everyone had.

Sunday, Neil and Andrew spend the morning training—round one is a week away, and it’s crunch time. Kevin is there, of course. The rest of the Jaguars will stream in, joining in to learn new footwork and practice new plays, probably on Tuesday; it takes a couple days for Neil, Andrew, and Kevin to get bored enough to start inventing stuff.

And then Neil and Andrew take the kids out. They see a movie. They go for dinner, hauling the kids out to Andrew and Neil’s favorite Chinese place in Columbia—real Chinese food, not Americanized, and delicious. They pass nearly an hour discussing the movie, during which they absorb a ridiculous quantity of noodles, and then Natalie leans back in her chair with a heavy sigh and puts down her chopsticks.

“I have a question,” she announces, looking at Neil. “You told us you were grey-ace. Google says you’re demi. What’s up with that?”

Neil shrugs. “Either or. Demi is—you can’t feel attraction unless you already know the person. Grey is you rarely feel attraction at all, or only to a few people over the course of your life. I’ve only ever liked Andrew, so I don’t really know. It could be that I’m demi, and maybe one day I’ll get to know someone and find out I’m attracted to them. Or it could be that I’m grey. Or maybe both. Or maybe neither—I mean, it’s not like I figured out of my own accord that I liked Andrew. Andrew had to say _hey, I am attracted to you_ , and then I was like— _oh, well, now that you’ve_ said _that, I like you too_ , so maybe I’m just gay and really stupid.”

Andrew smiles. Just for a heartbeat. Neil catches it, though, and grins. It’s always nice to see Andrew smile. Nicer still to see him smile at a joke.

“You can _smile_?” Paige asks, shocked.

“Of course I can,” Andrew says.

“It’s been _four weeks_ since we moved in and this is the _first_ time I’ve seen you smile,” Paige accuses. “We watch _The Office_ just about every day and I have _never_ seen you smile. Oh, god, you hate it, don’t you. You don’t think it’s funny at all. I’ve been forcing you to watch something you hate.”

“It _is_ funny,” Andrew protests. “I just don’t smile very often.”

“Or at all,” Natalie suggests. “Pops, how often does dad smile?”

Neil shrugs. “Every once in a while.”

“Since we got here, how many times?”

“Three times?” Neil guesses. “I think three. This is the fourth time.”

“Is that more or less than usual?”

Neil makes a face. “Less, but he’s been stressed. Also, you could ask Andrew, and get a mathematically correct answer.”

“You can’t ask me to do math,” Andrew says. “I’m gay.”

“Alan Turing.”

“He took all the math skills.”

“Who’s Alan Turing?” Paige asks as the waiter delivers the check.

So Andrew and Neil explain as Andrew pays. 

They wander around Columbia a bit—it’s not like New York City, but it’s a city nonetheless, and Neil takes the chance to point out useful things like bus stops, landmarks, the route to Eden’s. It’s always possible that the girls will come here, and—well, he’s not sure. It was always his habit to check a city out: How could he leave, in an emergency? Where would he meet up with Mary, if they got separated? If he was running from pursuers, where could he go, how could he lose them without getting lost himself? Where were the safe places? It occurs to Neil that Eden’s might not be ideal, as a safe place—but Andrew tells them how to get to the back door, what to say if they need help.

“If we need help, why would we go to a bar?” Paige asks.

“Where are you going to go, otherwise? The police station?” Andrew asks.

Natalie and Paige make noises of distaste, and Andrew turns a palm upwards. “Eden’s isn’t the safest place in the world, but if you go there and tell them you’re my kids, they’ll stick you in the kitchen and call me. I know every bartender and every bouncer. Hell, if you go to the front of the VIP line and tell them you need them to call me, they won’t blink an eye. It’ll just be harder to get you inside, given that you’re pretty obviously underage.”

“Why Eden’s? Like, why do you know everyone there?”

“Used to work there. Nicky worked at this restaurant called Sweetie’s, and then found out about Eden’s, and then got a night job there, and then got Aaron and me in.”

“Why?”

“Needed the money.”

“No, why were you three all working together?”

“We lived together. And we only had one car.”

“Why did you live together?”

“After my mom died, we should’ve gone to Nicky’s parents, whom I hated. And they were homophobic—they’d nearly killed Nicky with it. Nicky knew they wouldn’t handle us well. So he left Germany and Erik, and with Erik’s help, got a house. And then pushed us through high school. And then got us into college.”

“Nicky didn’t strike me as being that— _responsible_ ,” Natalie says.

Andrew snorts. “He did it nonetheless.”

"Was he—a _good_ guardian?" Paige asks.

"Short answer, no. Also short answer, yes."

"What about the long answer?" Paige asks. She waits hopefully as Andrew considers.

“Can’t do that wandering around,” Andrew decides. He stops wandering and moves, purposefully, down an alley and then hanging a left, and they wander into an art gallery. There’s plenty of people in there, but Andrew leads them to a cafe—the only cafe open so late—and they find a corner table. Order some iced teas, some dessert, whatever will justify their presence there. And as they eat cake, Andrew tries his level best.

“Nicky…” Andrew starts, trailing off. Half a minute later, he tries a different tack. “A year ago, I brought up the idea of fostering to my wonderful, loving, supportive husband, and he didn’t say yes. We talked about it for two weeks—what it would mean for my health, what it would mean for _us_ , how we’d make kids work with our exy schedules, what we’d do if it turned out we couldn’t handle it—if it turned out _I_ couldn’t handle it, really, but Neil always said _we_. He gave in—I was insistent—and then we spent a couple months researching parenting, reading up on different parenting styles, discussing how we’d react to your failures, your successes, what we’d do if we got violent kids, druggies, alcohol addicts, how we’d react if you lashed out, if you hurt other people. We made sure we were on exactly the same page before we even began applying to be foster parents for one kid, just one. And then—and remember, Neil is 29, I’m 30—we went and picked up one kid and a surprise bonus kid, and the two of you turned out to be the best kids we could’ve conceivably gotten. So, to recap: Long after finishing college, when we’ve both got stable, kid-friendly jobs and incomes and a house and two cars and a support system literally spanning the country and spilling into Germany if we need babysitters or help, we decided to get a kid, and then got very lucky and have had the easiest possible parenting job.

“Nicky—Nicky has horrible parents. They sent him to conversion camp. They prayed over the sin of his existence nightly. Nicky started dating girls to get them off his back, and wished that conversion camp had worked. He was on the verge of suicide when he went to Germany, and Erik saved him. By the end of the year, Nicky was—he was going to go to college with Erik, going to marry Erik, going to go home for high school graduation and then go back to Germany and stay. It was literally life-or-death for him. He’d just barely clawed his way back to sanity and something resembling mental health, he’d found himself something that looked like a future, he’d found some kind of happiness there, and then, a continent away—

“Nicky had barely met me,” Andrew says, interrupting himself. “When I moved back in with my mom, he was about to head out for Germany, and he didn’t look back. He knew Aaron, and knew Aaron was into some shit. And then, when I was 14, I killed my mom. I didn’t have much of a plan past that, except to figure out how long we could stay in the house before anyone thought to take us out of it. I’d told Nicky’s dad I’d been raped, a while before that—he told me I hadn’t been. So he wasn’t an ideal option, but Aaron didn’t seem to mind him, so he’d have been acceptable. Preferable to more years in foster care, anyway, _especially_ given I’d have had Aaron in there with me. So that’s what I was looking forward to when Nicky found out Tilda was dead, and Nicky knew we’d go to his parents, and Nicky didn’t know shit about me being raped—let alone about me being gay—but he knew that his parents wouldn’t raise us well.

“Nicky was 18, unprepared, with a support system consisting of a single family in Germany, and he dropped everything, came back here, got Erik to help him get a house, and moved us into it. No college. No boyfriend. No family. Barely a high school degree, and he had to get a job that would support himself, two miserable pissy teenagers, and his house, and he managed to get us jobs washing dishes where he could keep an eye on us and know that, if we were drinking and getting into trouble, at least we were doing it where he could help out. And then when we went to college, and could have conceivably moved into dorms and maybe rented an apartment during the summer—or, hell, we ended up staying with Abby anyway, didn’t even need to pay rent—Nicky stayed, and went to college _with_ us, and did his best to hold the two of us together and keep us alive while we fought him every step of the way.

“Neil and I built a life and a home and then figured out how to fit kids into it and everything’s worked out perfectly. Nicky took everything he’d been hoping for, dropped it down a well, and came running to save Aaron and me. And we were terrible, to him, to each other, to everyone, and he never once gave up on us. He was young, and stupid, and he said shit that was absolutely unbearable. He wasn’t the greatest parent. He wasn’t prepared. He’s never been the most responsible, or the most mature, or the most paternal, or the most _anything_ , but, fuck, he was still miles better than his own dad. He put his whole entire life on hold for _years_ to make sure Aaron and I didn’t have to go through what he went through. And if he ever had any fun breakdowns like the one I had the first few days you were here, I never saw it. Aaron and I owe him more than we could ever pay back.

“So that’s why I know my way around Columbia, that’s why I know everyone at Eden’s, that’s why I spend Christmas in Germany every year, that’s why I spoil the shit out of Angela, and that’s why if Nicky whines enough about me not being able to FaceTime him, I’ll get a fucking smartphone and FaceTime him.” Andrew takes a very decisive bite of cake.

“So he kind of did with you what you’re doing with us,” Paige says.

“Essentially. I hope we’re a little better than he was, though, given he was barely 18 at the time.”

They eat for a few minutes, and then Natalie says: “Nicky sounds like a good person.”

“He tries,” Neil agrees. “And, now that he doesn’t have to defend Andrew and Aaron, he mostly succeeds.”

And then they finish their cake, head for the car, and Neil makes them memorize the route home.

“It’s not like we can _drive_ ,” Natalie complains.

“Sure. And if you’re in Columbia, and call a taxi to get home, how do you know if he’s actually _taking_ you home?”

“I have a GPS on my phone.”

Andrew huffs out a breath. “Neil, 0. Kids, 1.”

“We’re not being chased by the mafia,” Natalie says.

“Survival instincts aren’t _only_ useful when running from the mafia. And it’s a good idea to know where you live, regardless.”

“We know where we live.”

“But do you know well enough that you could drive it?”

“Probably.”

“Make that a _definitely_ , and then I’ll be happy.”

“Paranoia isn’t a desirable quality in a dad.”

Neil shrugs. “A sense of direction is a desirable quality in a kid.”

“And what’s the worst that could happen?” Andrew asks the kids. “What, you have the immensely useless knowledge of _how to get home_ rattling around in your brain?”

Natalie and Paige grumble for a minute, but when they get home, they’ve got half the route down. Neil is satisfied.

He wakes up the next morning with his head on Andrew’s shoulder and the knowledge that: It’s the end of the season. Exciting, in many ways—facing the best teams, exy for hours on end, and maximum pressure at every single game. No more throwaways, like North California; no more games where the outcome doesn’t make a difference.

On the other hand, in three weeks, the season will be over.

Neil is 29. He’s waiting, now—waiting for his body to start slowing down, to start deteriorating, to stop healing as well. He’s waiting for the day when someone knocks him down and it hurts more to get back up than it does to stay down. Thea’s still going; Riley’s still going—and he’s watching them both, waiting for them to retire. Waiting for them to take a shorter contract, unwilling to commit to a five-year contract, just in case they can’t make it that long.

He’s not even 30. He’s got plenty of time left. It’s a shock, that he’s got so much time; he feels that there should be less. He keeps waiting to tear a shoulder, or a tendon, or something that just won’t ever heal right. Something that’ll take a season away from him, if not his whole career.

Andrew strokes Neil’s arm, thrown across Andrew’s stomach, and Neil exercises a skill he’s been honing: The ability to look on the bright side. Because one exists, these days. The bright side: Andrew will be there. The bright side: Neil has friends. The bright side: Neil has other hobbies. Regarding a job, Neil isn’t sure what he’ll do. He could probably get something as a commentator, or a coach. He’s not sure he’d want to.

Well, he’s got time. He doesn’t have to figure out his retirement plan just yet.

He hugs Andrew, wordlessly. They get up. They brush their teeth. They get dressed. They eat breakfast—Neil gets annoying about it, spooning scrambled eggs into Andrew’s mouth, just to watch Andrew get annoyed at him. And Andrew does, smacking Neil’s hand away, scooting his chair halfway across the kitchen—precisely the distance necessary for Neil to swing his feet up into Andrew’s lap, fulfilling Neil’s goal in the first place. Andrew performs an impressive eye-roll—Natalie could learn a thing or two from him—but eats using Neil’s shins as a table, eyes soft, gaze resting comfortably on Neil’s face. He knows how long Neil’s legs are. He could’ve pushed farther away.

And then they train.

They go home for dinner.

Natalie and Paige come with them back to the stadium.

They train some more.

By 8:00, they’re bored out of their minds, and that’s when Neil starts.

He turns to face Kevin. “I’m backliner now. Get past me.”

The problem with Kevin is this: He’s not particularly imaginative, when it comes to fancy footwork. Not until he’s driven to desperation by his own failure.

Kevin doesn’t play against other people; he plays against himself. If he’s failing to get past a backliner, it’s not because the backliner is better—it’s because Kevin isn’t good enough. A tiny difference, but one that matters, because he’s terrible at foreseeing his own failure. Can he put the ball where he wants to put it? Then if he gets the ball, it will go where he wants it to go. If the dealer won’t get him the ball, then his failure to put the ball where he wants it to go is not his fault.

Neil, on the other hand, sees his failure everywhere. He’s never good enough. He’s also not _bad_. As far as Neil is concerned, there are people who are better than he is and people who are worse than he is, but—and this is crucial—no one is perfect. So it’s not a matter of whether or not Neil is good, or even good enough—it’s a matter of how different he is from his opponent. Is his mark fast? Then Neil has to be a bear, tramping forward. Is his mark fast? Neil has to be faster, and better able to turn on a dime. Is his mark a tank? Then Neil has to be nimble. And what matters, always, is footwork. Neil can’t turn on a dime if his feet are tangled. He can’t push his backliner towards the goal if his feet aren’t planted. He can’t run if his mark can trip him. So—new footwork. Footwork for every situation. So—Neil plays backliner, and Kevin tries his level best to get past Neil, and if Neil can stop him, Neil figures out what Kevin could’ve done better, and how.

Kevin’s plenty good and coming up with new plays, though. He’s _extremely_ good at figuring out how his teammates could do better.

And, once Andrew gets bored enough, he’ll do just about anything to have some fun. If that means picking at footwork and plays until Kevin’s red in the face, well, Andrew’s a very calm and competent adult, he didn’t _mean_ anything by it, Kev, so what’s the issue here? Really, Andrew was under the impression that Kevin _wanted_ him to care, and isn’t that what he’s doing?

At 10:30, they unanimously call it a night. Neil and Andrew gather Paige and Natalie and head home.

And when they topple into bed, absolutely exhausted, Andrew picks up his phone.

Neil glances at him.

“I’m getting old,” Andrew gripes. “I can’t be expected to keep this up. _And_ I have therapy tomorrow. _And_ the kids are going out, and we’ll need to pick them up. Tomorrow, night practice is going to be _real_ night practice. I want the goddamn afternoon off.”

And then he pauses.

And then he snorts. “Check your phone.”

Neil does, and discovers that he’s part of a group text.

_Dinner with Thea’s parents tomorrow. Sry but heading out after practice, be back around 8?_

Neil lets a peaceful smile curve across his face. Sweet, sweet victory. “Don’t you love it when he does the work for you?”

“I love that I can save _my_ excuses for a later date. I can’t do two straight weeks of exy anymore. I have a life to live.”

“I understand precisely why the world’s first exy players insisted on a schoolday schedule.”

“I thank them daily.”

Neil texts an affirmation, and pokes Andrew until he does too. Clark follows them up. And once the four of them have agreed, the rest of the Jaguars answer— _oh no, we have to take a break from training?_ —and Neil and Andrew settle in for the night, legs thrown over legs, arms over stomachs and under heads.

They wake up the next morning sore. Neil rolls away so Andrew can stretch; Neil appreciates the opportunities this offers, with regard to Neil’s ongoing appreciation for Andrew’s body. Andrew kisses the back of Neil’s hand, and they get up, ready to pop ibuprofen and grumble about the perils of aging. Neil used to be able to do this, this and much worse. He used to be capable of getting tortured for two weeks, absolutely trashing his circadian rhythm, and still training all day. Now, he gets dinner breaks and everything, and he’s _still_ sore.

But they train. Just regular daytime training. They don’t experiment during the day.

And then it’s the end of the day, and Neil gets changed, looking happily forward to an afternoon spent on the couch. There’s still three videogames they haven’t opened yet—this might be a good time to try those out.

“Neil, come here,” Maria calls from the bathroom.

Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil, who shrugs. He kisses Andrew, and Andrew heads out for therapy, and Neil wanders over to Maria, doing her makeup with a practiced hand.

“What are you doing today?”

“Going home. Coming back for night training. Why?”

She stops what she’s doing so she can turn to look directly at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t think that actually answers the question.”

“What, do you want a step-by-step breakdown of my plans?”

“Yeah.”

Neil shrugs. “Kids aren’t home—they’re having a study session with a friend—so probably this horror game we haven’t been able to play—”

“I’m taking you shopping.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“For—what?”

“Clothes.”

“I don’t need clothes,” Neil asserts, doing his level best to ward off a freshman year-esque clothes shopping bonanza.

“I’m sure. And, actually, your shirts are fine, I’m just going to get you pants.”

Riley leans against the sink next to the one Maria’s using, grinning. “Why are we taking Neil shopping, now?”

“Not _we_ ,” Maria says. “ _I_.”

“Oh, thanks,” Riley says, disappointment crouching behind every word. Neil tries to fade away.

“My turn to bond with Neil,” Maria responds.

Riley glances at Neil, and Neil gives her a confused look. He has no idea what’s going on, either. He’s very sorry about this. Certainly, at least, there’s no danger of Maria and Neil ending up in a relationship. Neil is no threat to Riley’s hopes.

Maria finishes up, and puts away her makeup. “Ready?” She asks him.

“I guess? For—you’re serious about this? I really don’t need clothes.”

“Great. Meet me at the mall.”

“That didn’t answer a single one of my questions,” Neil protests.

Maria just shrugs at him and heads for her purse.

Neil looks at Riley.

Riley shrugs and gives him a look that says she _desperately_ wants to be in his shoes.

Well.

Okay. He doesn’t really know what to do with that—Neil also wants Riley to be in his shoes—but she waves him off, and then he heads out the door, gets in the car, and considers just going straight home anyway. He didn’t wake up this morning prepared to go pants shopping with a sort-of friend.

He trusts Maria, he decides.

He follows her to the mall.

She meets him at the entrance, and, wordlessly, walks briskly inside, bypassing every store Neil’s ever gone shopping at and heading to one more expensive than he’d ever consider.

“What are we doing here?”

“Getting you pants.” She looks him over. “I stand by my earlier assessment of your shirt. It’s very good. Open a couple buttons, though.”

“Why?” He puts a hand to his chest, feeling oddly like an old woman clutching her pearls, knowing full well that undoing one button is enough to allow the scar by his collarbone to show.

“No kids at home? And you think I’m going to let you go home and play a video game? Absolutely not. No worries. Andrew’s going to take one look at you and go absolutely crazy. What size are you?”

“What?”

“Size? Pants?”

“No, I heard that, it’s the rest of what you said that I’m having a problem with.”

“Sorry, do you not know what most parents do when their kids aren’t home?”

“Nap, I assumed.”

“Neil. I’m going to get you laid.”

“I don’t particularly need your help.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“Also, we’re in a public place. This can’t possibly be an appropriate topic of conversation.”

She gestures around her at the few people browsing, all upwards of twenty feet away. “It’s 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. What size are you?”

Neil digs through the rack she’s standing in front of and finds his size.

“Great. Not that pair, though.”

“Why not?”

“Light wash. How old are you?”

“29?”

“Great, so stop dressing like you’re 50.”

“In… light wash jeans?”

“Unless they are faded and ripped, you shouldn’t be wearing them. They’re awful. Dark wash.”

“All my jeans are light wash.”

“When’d you buy them?”

“A few years ago.”

“I—all your pants are multiple years old?”

Neil shuts his mouth. Maybe that’s the wrong answer.

“Neil!”

“I’m not in the habit of buying clothes,” he mumbles. “We only used to buy new ones when I bled on the old ones beyond cleaning. Andrew tried to drag me out again a year ago, but I threatened him with no ice cream for a week. All my clothes _fit_ ,” he says, and now he’s almost definitely whining.

She points at him. “Downer. You’re being a downer. And Andrew’s weak.”

“You sound like Riley. And Andrew isn’t weak.”

“She’s right. Speaking of.” She busies herself searching the racks around them.

“Speaking of?”

She digs, and he realizes she’s fidgeting.

“What about Andrew being weak?”

“Okay. Look.”

He sticks a hand between her face and the pants she’s looking at, and she sighs.

“Not Andrew. I mean, I’m his friend, _obviously_ , but I don't need your help there, I'm _already_ there. I. Ah. I need you to help me ask Riley out.”

He laughs, and then realizes—“You’re serious? Oh, is that why we’re here?” Oh, jesus, should he _tell_ her that Riley likes her? He can’t, can he? It would make things easier. But maybe Riley would be angry about it?

“Well, _now_ we’re here because you haven’t bought new pants in multiple years. You are a _multi-millionaire_. Don’t tell me you can’t afford this. Are your shirts at least sort of new? Also, why are you laughing? If you tell me she hates me I’m going to jump off a roof.” She pushes his hand aside and pulls out two pairs of pants. Plain, dark wash, skinnier than Neil is used to.

He takes them when she hands them to her, but he doesn’t move. “She doesn’t hate you. But, I mean, probably a great start would be _not_ offending her.”

“I didn’t offend her. When did I offend her?”

“She was ready and willing to come shopping with us, and you shot her down.”

Maria blushes to her hairline. “That’s—that isn’t what I meant to do.”

“Well.”

“Okay, but, look, you’re like, her best friend, and I’m just—she’s very pretty.”

“You’ve been on the same team as her for _years_.”

“So what?”

“So, I mean, you know her just fine.”

“But how do I _talk_ to her?”

“You’ve been talking to her for years.”

“Yeah, but, lately, it’s just—hard. Come on. You _have_ to know what I’m talking about.”

“Not really. I am _absolutely_ the wrong person to talk to about this.”

“I mean, what, you’re telling me you never got butterflies when you looked at Andrew?”

Neil frowns. “I mean, no.” He remembers sitting on the roof, his stomach knotting as he looked over the side, but not much else. He also remembers Andrew kissing him breathless on a regular basis. And, actually, he also remembers staring at Andrew, and the feeling after they’d kissed, when Neil hadn’t even been able to look at him for fear of it showing on his face. “Well, maybe. But that wasn’t usually because we were _talking_. If anything, it was like—when we were talking, Andrew made me—calm. If I was panicking, he could bring me down. If I was nervous, he could ground me.”

She stares at him for a minute. “Okay, so you two are adorable, _this isn’t helpful_. I just—what if she’s still all fucked up, you know? From her ex?”

“I’m sure she is,” Neil says, doing his level best to be tactful. “I mean, I don’t think she’s _forgotten_. I also don’t think that means she’s not up for a relationship at all.”

“She hasn’t had one since!”

“No, she hasn’t.”

“I just want—” She takes a deep breath. “What would she like? Like, what kind of date could we go on? What does she _like_?”

“You’ve known her as long as I have.”

“Yeah, but, have I?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not helpful!”

“Like I said—I’m the wrong person to talk to about this.”

“Yeah, but you’re one of the only people I know who’s in, like, a happy relationship.”

“Yes,” Neil says patiently, “but I don’t think it’ll be helpful to you. Andrew and I didn’t ask each other out. We also didn’t really date. Unless you’re looking to go straight to life-or-death, I don’t think our experience will be useful.”

“You had to have asked each other out, at least. Something.”

“Nope.”

She crosses her arms. “How’d you get together, then?”

Neil considers her.

“I want the full story.”

Well, that might be a bit much. “It’s personal.”

“Sure.”

“It won’t help you. It might, actually, be _un_ helpful.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“He said, and I quote: _I do hate you. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you_.”

Maria throws her head back and laughs. “ _What_?”

Neil shrugs.

“And that— _worked_?”

“Yup.”

“I’ve been going about this all wrong. I always thought I needed to be nice. Or to say something nice. Or at least say something _sexy_. That’s the kind of thing where if I got a sext saying that, I’d block the texter. And it _worked_?”

“Eventually. Am I trying these on?”

“Yes, yes, yes. Holy shit. I feel like I know a whole new side of Andrew. He hated you? I thought that was the press?”

“He did, but only because he loved me. The press embellished.” Neil escapes into the dressing room, but he can still hear Maria giggling at the entranceway.

“And _show them to me_ ,” she calls. “You don’t get to put them on and decide for yourself.”

“I’m not a child,” he calls back, shimmying the pants on. But once they’re on, he goes out to meet her at the door. “Won’t these dye my legs blue?”

“Would I do that to you? They’re pre-washed, so they won’t. Turn around.”

“Turn around?”

“Yeah.”

Neil has done a lot, in his life. A lot has been done to him. He’s been in lots of terrible situations. He’s never felt as awkward as he does now, turning around.

“Yup. _That_ is how your butt should look. God, I know what I’m doing.”

Neil turns back around to face her. “What’s my butt supposed to look like?”

“ _That_. You can thank me later,” she says. “Now. You owe me.”

“I really don’t think I do.”

“Video games? Movies? TV shows? Spill the beans, boy.”

Neil sighs. “Take out your phone.”

She does.

“Open it.”

She does, entering a passcode at top speed.

He holds out his hand.

She hands it over.

He pulls open her texts, finds Riley’s, and types out: _Hey, are you doing anything after training tomorrow? Do you want to grab coffee at the Barnes and Noble?_ He hands the phone back to Maria. “Hit send or don’t.”

“Why do you text like an old man?”

“I text like I know how to write,” Neil says.

Maria stares at it. “She likes books?”

“If you ever tell her I told you, I’ll kill you. She’s a Nora Roberts fan.”

“Really?”

“You’ve already forgotten.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“ _Yes, you have_.”

“Oh. Okay. I have. I’ve never read a Nora Roberts book.”

“Well, maybe she can recommend one.”

“Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. Is Nora Roberts any good? Do I care? Probably not. What does she write?”

“Romance novels. Do I need to show you the other pair, too?”

“Yes,” she says absentmindedly, editing the text, presumably to read less like an old man.

Neil tries on the other pair of pants, receives approval, and purchases them, all while Maria stares at her phone, like she can will a response from it.

Neil’s phone vibrates, and he tugs it out of his pocket.

Riley.

He opens the text.

It’s a screenshot of the text Maria sent, captioned: _NEIL?? NEIL IS THIS A REQUEST FOR A DATE?? NEIL I KNOW YOU’RE WITH HER IS SHE ASKING ME OUT ON A DATE???_

Neil debates for half a second, but, really, there’s nothing else for it. He texts back: _She is._

“Shit, is Andrew already out of therapy?” Maria says. “We have to get you _home_.”

“No,” Neil says, glancing at the clock. “He’s still got 30 minutes.”

“Oh. Oh, shit, the kids are out, aren’t they? Are they okay?” She gestures at his phone.

“Yeah, but it’s not them. It’s Riley.”

She stops dead in her tracks in the middle of the mall. “ _What_!”

Neil ushers her off to the side so they’re not blocking traffic. “What about what?”

“Neil Josten, I’m going to _murder_ you.”

“She asked if you were asking her out on a date.”

“In, like, a _bad_ way? What did she _say_?”

“I don’t know if it was a bad way or a good way,” Neil says noncommittally. He’s not going to spill Riley’s secrets. “She just asked for clarification. I told her yes.”

Maria stares at her phone. “Maybe I’m not receiving texts? Text me. Neil. Neil, what if my phone’s broken?”

Neil texts her.

“It came through,” Maria says, sounding surprisingly dejected for someone whose phone is not, in fact, broken. “So why isn’t—” Her phone buzzes.

She shoves it at him. “You need to read it. Neil. I need you to read it _now._ ”

Neil opens the text. “Do you want to know what it says?”

“Is it—good or bad?”

“Good,” Neil says, grinning.

_yes!! I thought you’d never ask!! looking forward to it!!!_

Maria grabs the phone, reads the text three times, punches the air, and spins in a circle. “Neil, she’s so pretty,” she says. “Neil, do you get it? She’s _so pretty_.”

“She’s a lot more than that,” Neil answers.

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, she’s so cool, and so optimistic, and she makes me feel _happy_ , which is batshit crazy, I’m not exactly predisposed to feeling happy, but she makes me feel like I could be? But like, that’s a lot, you know? So, anyway, she’s so pretty, and _tall_ , I’m going to _fall over_.”

“Don’t, I don’t know if I could catch you.”

“Thanks for your support.”

“No problem. Are you going to text her back?”

“I don’t know what to say! I could just wait until I see her tonight?”

“Sure, then I’ll get a text in five minutes asking if you got her text. Great idea.”

“Well, shit, help! Neil!”

“I can’t tell you what to say,” Neil says, hands in the air. “Then she’s dating _me_ , and none of us want that.”

Maria grumbles, but Neil can’t make out any words. “ _Me too_? Is that a good response? Is that something humans say?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t _sound_ sure.”

“I _feel_ sure,” Neil lies. What do humans say? Neil has no goddamn clue. Talking to people isn’t his main area of expertise.

“Emojis? Should I use some? She didn’t.”

“I have no idea.”

“Useless.”

“I got you the date, didn’t I?” Never mind that the answer would’ve been yes, whether Neil had written out the text or not.

Maria slings an arm around his shoulders. “Yes! Yes, you did, thank you! How about: _Me too, smiley emoji_.”

“Sounds good,” Neil says.

“Okay. We have to get you home. Hang on.” She twists in a circle. “There’s a bathroom—there. Go change.”

“Here? Why?”

“So you don’t risk getting home late and having to get changed and ruining the surprise.”

“I’ve got time.”

“Yeah, but I’m not done with you, so _go_.”

Neil gets changed. He’s had years of practice changing in bathrooms, which comes in handy.

He finds Maria on a bench just outside the bathroom.

“So I know you said you didn’t want to look like a corpse.” She pats the open spot next to her, and he takes it.

“I’ve spent lots of time trying very hard not to be one.”

“Yes, yes, you’re a fake reverse goth, I know. But listen. You’d look _very_ good with makeup on.”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t like makeup. I don’t like wearing it. I don’t like putting it on. And Andrew doesn’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s hiding. People who don’t regret their past don’t hide it.”

“That explains plenty about you, but also, I don’t think you understand the kind of makeup I’m suggesting here.” She turns to face him. “You usually go for a _natural_ look. You want to look like you don’t have any makeup on. This is not what I’m suggesting. I am, in fact, specifically _not_ suggesting that. I’m just saying. Some eyeliner. Some eyeshadow. I think Andrew would like it.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Have you _seen_ the way he looks at you?”

“Yes,” Neil says slowly. “I didn’t think other people noticed.” Very specifically, he _knows_ other people don’t notice.

Maria rolls her eyes. “It’s been six years, Neil. I’m not blind. Anyway, that boy _loves_ your eyes. And all I’m saying is that I could make them pop.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my friend, and I am going to do this for you, and later you’re going to come in and thank me.”

“Why?”

She puts her hands on his face. “Because you are going to go home and Andrew is going to jump you.”

Neil stares at her.

“Cool. So. Yes?”

“I don’t want to—freak him out.”

“Neil Josten. He will not. He will climb you like a tree.”

“Probably not.”

“Then you can come in tonight and say you told me so. Is your argument _no_? Or is it that you think I’m wrong? Because I’m right.”

“Better question,” Neil says, tugging free of her hands. “Why are you so _interested_?”

“I’m sitting at home lonely and dying. You are helping spare me. The least I can do is return the favor. Also, I used to do my friends’ makeup, and I got really good at figuring out what would look good, and it is _killing_ me that I can _see_ your eye makeup and you won’t let me _put it on you_. Also, I _like_ doing makeup, and I _want_ to. Also, it’s what friends do. Just let me.”

“I don’t want to look goth.”

“Got it. You won’t.”

“I don’t want to look dead.”

“Again. I know. You won’t.”

Neil sighs. “Go at it.”

She opens her purse and hauls out makeup.

“Have you been _planning this_?”

“I couldn’t ask you for help for _free_.”

“You could have.”

“I don’t need your charity.”

“Usually, it’s called friendship.”

“Neil? You’re sweet. Close your eyes.”

He obediently closes his eyes.

He hears snapping as she opens cases. “See, natural makeup is fun,” Maria muses. “But it’s like—what’d that shit-bitch Picasso say? It took him a month and a half to paint like an expert, and 80 years to paint like a child? Like, it takes skill, of course it does, but it’s just—there’s no imagination there. It’s not _art_.” Is that a _pencil_? Oh Neil, doesn’t like _that_ at all. “I mean, sure, I could cover up my acne scars and also my pimples, and I could contour my face and whatnot. I’d argue that using makeup at all automatically makes a face _un_ natural, but whatever.” Her voice is calming, peaceful. “But like. That’s all _technique_. Not _imagination_. There’s no creativity there. It’s the difference between knowing the rules of exy, and putting in the time and effort to come up with new footwork and whatnot, so you can be _the best_. Like, makeup is an _art_. It’s painting. Could Picasso paint a person? Sure. Could he put on makeup? Maybe not." More snapping; she's switching tools. There’s the gentle tug of a brush across his eyelids. "And there’s no one way—like—skin color changes the way makeup looks, blush on a white person won’t look the same as blush on me. Red lipstick on a white person doesn’t look the same as red lipstick on a black person. So you have to keep that in mind, if you’re putting makeup on people, particularly people with darker skin. And even _then_ , like, what about undertones? What about eye color? The shape of the face? It’s art and no one will give it its due. Open your eyes,” she instructs. He does. “Now look at the ceiling, but just your eyes, and _hold still_.”

He rolls his eyes upwards.

And then she has a very spiky brush right next to his eyes, and it’s actually all he can do to hold still. His heart kicks into overdrive—he remembers a lighter and a knife, oh-so-close, and draws in a careful breath. Maria is not Lola.

“And, like, I know I could just do acrylic painting or whatever, but honestly, makeup appeals to me, cause it’s all about the impermanence.” Neil focuses on her voice. He has an odd feeling that she knows full well that if she stops talking, all Neil will be able to think about is the fact that this is likely a bad idea. “When Leonardo Da Vinci did Mona Lisa, he never gave the painting back, he kept it until the day he died, kept changing it, but—what’s the point? Nothing’s ever done, sometimes you just have to let go. And sometimes you have to say, that’s the best makeup I’ve ever done, and tonight this person is going to go home and wash it off and it’ll be gone forever. It’ll never be in an art gallery, or even in the basement of an art gallery. When I die, no one will find it in the attic. I can’t pass it down to my progeny, if I have any. It’s just _gone_. And honestly, I think that’s pretty goth. An appreciation for the fact that shit ends. Cultivating the ability to let go.” She leans back, and Neil unclenches his fists, breathes a little easier.

She examines him critically, and then nods, producing a little mirror. “Good. Look.” Neil finds some courage and peeks at his reflection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone's curious about how I felt while writing that whole scene where neil is just kinda wrapped around andrew and andrew is ranting about cacti... the answer is very Soft


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the porn is in the beginning/middle of this one, for a change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> realizing it's not showing up at the end of the work/each chapter BUT zombiesbecrazy [wrote a fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641922) about jean and jeremy handling the aftermath of jean hitting their son and it's VERY good and you should all go read it!!

“Oh,” Neil says.

He’s looking at his reflection in Maria’s little makeup mirror, and—

His eyes are the only thing he can see.

His heart and stomach don’t seem to know how to feel. It’s a bright blue, ice blue, piercing blue, brighter than he’s used to, and they’re his eyes, his own eyes. The ghost of his father is still there, and his body isn’t happy about it, but Nathan’s eyes were never surrounded by lashes this thick, or lined with bronze eyeshadow.

He gives Maria back the mirror.

“Yes?”

He nods. “You’re right. Not that I know shit about makeup or art, but I think you’re right."

She grins at him. “Of course I am. Now let’s go. Get you home.”

He follows her out to the parking lot, feeling—odd. The word _seduction_ keeps popping into his head. It’s an art he was never trained in.

Maria hugs him goodbye, which he barely notices, and then he’s on the road.

He feels more certain by the minute that Andrew’s going to walk through the door and ask what’s going on with his eyes.

The new jeans—Andrew might not even notice. Well, that’s a lie; he _will_ , they’re so different from Neil’s other jeans, but they probably won’t draw comment. The makeup, though? Andrew won’t like it. Neil pulls into the driveway wondering how long it’ll take Andrew to offer him a makeup wipe. He wonders how annoying it’ll be to get this stuff off his eyes. He shouldn’t have let Maria put the makeup on.

He’s still got five minutes until Andrew gets home.

He could just—stay in the car. Maybe he could leave.

There’s enough time to run inside and put his old jeans on. Maybe not enough to get all the makeup off, but probably time to get the eyeshadow off, anyway, and that’s something.

He walks inside and catches sight of himself in the hallway mirror.

A stray thought hits him and runs away, and Neil chases it, frowns at himself in the mirror, and thinks that, well, maybe he looks hot.

He turns that thought sideways and upside down, seeking qualifiers, and finds: Neil looks different than he ever has before; this is still his face; maybe he has nice eyes; maybe he doesn’t look as much like his father as he thought; maybe he looks _good_.

Maybe Andrew won’t like it, but Neil isn’t ready to take it off yet.

It’s just so _different_ from how he’s looked before, ever.

He looks like himself, and no one else. And he looks _hot_. 

He shrugs at himself, drops the bag with the second new pair of pants and his old pair of pants on the stairs, and heads into the kitchen. The dishes in the dishwasher are clean; he starts putting them away, if only to calm his nerves. He tries not to think about how his butt looks in these pants. He hadn’t checked, when he’d gone back into the dressing room. He doesn’t really know what a butt is supposed to look like. What’s the difference between these pants and his old ones? These are definitely tighter, sure, but so what?

He hears the key in the lock, hears the front door open. “In the kitchen,” he calls, bending to grab a couple more plates.

He hears nothing.

He turns—Andrew is standing in the doorway. Andrew’s eyes flick up to meet Neil’s, and Neil forgets every thought he’s ever had—Andrew’s eyes are dark and heavy, and Neil _wants_ him, wants to touch him, every inch of Neil’s skin is buzzing—

Andrew’s holding flowers.

Neil notices, because noticing is what he does, and the thought worms its way into Neil’s brain, and he grins. “What are those for?” He sets the plates on the counter and heads over to Andrew. The flowers are roses, and they smell so nice, and Neil feels much the same way as he does when he heads out onto the court for the fourth quarter—hyperaware of his heartbeat, the blood in his veins, Andrew, everything. Andrew reaches out, fingertips touching Neil’s cheek, pulling Neil’s face up and around so Andrew can look at him.

Andrew taps a finger to the corner of Neil’s eye, a wordless question.

Neil shrugs, self-conscious. “Maria,” he says, in explanation. “She said you’d like it. It’s too much, though, right? But I’m leaving it on. I think I like it. I finally found a look I haven’t worn before. And I don’t look like my dad.”

Andrew just stares at him.

He hasn’t said anything since he walked through the door.

“Was it a bad day at therapy?” Neil asks.

Andrew shakes his head.

Neil opens his mouth, decides against pressing the matter, dips his head to sniff the roses, and crosses the kitchen to haul a vase out of a cabinet. Andrew meets him at the sink, taking the flowers and vase out of Neil’s hands, leaving goosebumps everywhere his fingers brush Neil’s.

Well. Okay, then.

Neil wants to touch Andrew so bad his fingers hurt.

He takes a deep breath. Andrew isn’t even speaking, let alone consenting to anything. If therapy isn’t the issue, then what? Did something happen on the way home? Is it the makeup?

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just one of those days.

Neil takes his mounting self-consciousness and shoves it down. He takes his worry and shoves that down, too. He puts away more dishes. Bends, grabs the utensil bin, stands, turns, sees Andrew’s eyes flick up and away, and—“Are you looking at my butt?”

Andrew looks at him.

Neil sets the utensil bin on the counter, trying and failing to suppress a grin. He crosses his arms over his chest and waits. He pretends he can’t see how hard Andrew’s trying to keep his gaze blank. He begins to suspect that Andrew isn’t being silent because of something bad.

“New pants?” Andrew asks blandly.

“Maria took me shopping. Avoiding the question?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you’re avoiding the question?”

“Yes, I’m staring at your ass,” Andrew corrects. “Why did Maria take you shopping?”

“She decided to bribe me into helping her get a date with Riley. Thus, the pants, and the makeup. She seemed to think you would, and I quote, _jump me_.”

Andrew snips the end off a rose with more force than Neil thinks it really requires. “Did she, now.”

“That’s not a denial.”

Andrew snips more roses.

Neil puts away the utensils, grinning. He glances at Andrew, arranging the flowers, and accidentally-on-purpose smacks the bin against the counter, which may or may not make a nice, loud noise, as he turns and bends to replace it in the dishwasher.

When he straightens, Andrew is looking at him, and he’s not bothering with a mask. He’s staring, blatantly, gaze hotter than the sun, and Neil stops breathing for a minute, desperate for Andrew’s hands.

“Yes or no?” Neil asks, already reaching out, and Andrew responds by crossing the two feet between them and pulling Neil down for a bruising kiss. Neil works his fingers into Andrew’s hair, pulling Andrew closer, pressing his hips against Andrew’s body, gasping as Andrew traces the waistband of Neil’s jeans. Andrew pulls back, just a little, and Neil reluctantly lets him go, opening his eyes to see Andrew staring at him, hungry, pupils dilated.

“Fuck, Neil,” Andrew breathes, looping a finger through one of Neil’s belt loops to hold him in place, pressed against Andrew, heart beating a mile a minute. “Your _eyes_.”

Neil laughs, as best he can when there’s no air left in his lungs. “Maria said you’d like it.”

“I’ll have to thank her,” Andrew says, pulling Neil back down.

And then he pulls away, steps back, and crosses his arms over his chest.

Neil runs a hand through his own hair, hands already missing Andrew, and awaits an explanation. This isn’t a rejection, per se—there’s something like wariness in Andrew’s eyes, but he’s not pushing Neil away.

Andrew inhales, once, like he’s about to speak, and then he lets it out, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. Neil wants to reach forward and smooth it out. He keeps his hands to himself.

Within two seconds, Neil’s about to go out of his goddamn mind. The way Andrew is looking at him is driving him crazy, and he’s reasonably certain this isn’t a _no_ , or a _stop_ —Neil could just shut his whole deal down and be done with it if that were the case, but no, Andrew’s looking at him like—

“What are your thoughts on me fingering you?”

To call that _unexpected_ would be the world’s greatest understatement.

Neil’s thoughts start running at double-time—is Andrew sure? He wouldn’t have asked if he wasn’t. Was this brought on by the pants? Neil doesn’t want Andrew to decide to do this on the fly, doesn’t want to risk setting Andrew back.

But Neil can’t bring himself to say no. He’s so hard his jeans hurt—he wants nothing more than to be out of them, and in Andrew’s hands, and the thought of Andrew’s _hands_ is killing him. “Yes.”

“You answered that too fast.”

Neil shrugs. “If you don’t want the answer, don’t ask the question.” He reins in the impulse to reach out. Andrew still has his arms crossed. And it’s not like Andrew can’t see how ready Neil is.

“I just don’t think you’ve thought it through, in the point-two seconds it took you to answer.”

“You’re assuming that this is my first time thinking about it.”

Andrew stops moving. It’s an odd thing on him—he always _seems_ still, until he actually _goes_ still, and Neil realizes that he’s been tapping a foot, or a finger, a muscle somewhere twitching.

Andrew raises one eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Oh?” Neil says back. He’s not sure what Andrew is asking, which is also odd, because Neil almost always knows what Andrew’s trying to say.

“Go on,” Andrew says.

“Go on, with what?”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this?”

Neil isn’t in the habit of looking at Andrew’s cock, either clothed or not—it’s off-limits, and Andrew’s penchant for black pants hides just about everything anyway. And he isn’t breaking that habit now, but the urge almost takes him off his feet. He wants to know if Andrew is as hard as Neil himself is. “Do you want a timeline?”

“Sure.”

Neil’s going to die. He’s going to die here, and it’s going to be because Andrew made Neil think about Andrew’s fingers and then decided to make Neil chat. Neil can feel every centimeter of his skin, and it all feels too untouched. “After I graduated. You were in Oregon, and I missed you, and I looked up some porn, and it was horrifying, so I looked up how anal was _actually_ supposed to happen, thought about it for a week, forgot about it, thought about it again three years ago—don’t ask me why, I don’t remember—and then, um, two weeks ago? When we came back from Abby’s? And we were in the backyard—”

“And you had the problem with the armrest,” Andrew says.

“That wasn’t a _lie_ , per se,” Neil says. “It _was_ digging in. It just wasn’t the distraction in question. Anyway, the point is, I’ve thought about it, plenty, and yes, the answer is yes. Also, it’s my turn to ask questions. First of all: What brought this on? Was it just the pants?”

Andrew drums his fingers against his elbow. “The pants were the breaking point, but no, this isn’t the first time it’s occurred to me.”

“Why didn’t you bring it up?” Neil asks, feeling slightly cheated.

“I didn’t think you’d be into it.”

“I mean, with you? I’m down for pretty much whatever. Second question: Will this be an issue? For you? Because—” He lets the rest go unsaid.

“You’re not the first man I’ve ever had sex with,” Andrew says.

“I’m aware. That doesn’t answer the question.”

“The answer is I’ve done it before. One of my partners,” he continues, correctly interpreting Neil’s raised eyebrow as a request for further explanation, “wanted anal. He had to settle for fingers, but it was fine by me. To be performed on him, obviously, not me. Why?” Confusion crosses his face. “Are you jealous?”

Neil reaches out a hand. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Andrew takes Neil’s hand, and allows himself to be tugged forward. “You won’t.”

“But no,” Neil says. “I’m not jealous. You’re mine, not theirs. It doesn’t bother me that they came first. And, actually, it’s a little reassuring. At least one of us knows what we’re doing.”

“Was your research not enough?”

“It was all very theoretical.”

“Are you ready to put it into practice?”

“Yes. Is this dirty talk?”

“Almost certainly not.” Andrew pulls Neil bodily against him, and Neil knows Andrew can feel his hard on through his pants, but Andrew just nips at Neil’s bottom lip, pulls Neil down for a kiss that Neil feels down to his toes.

But even Andrew has to lose patience at some point, and he does, rapidly, giving in and moving towards the stairs, Neil following impatiently all the way into the bedroom, where he stands, confused, as Andrew heads into the bathroom. He raises an eyebrow when Andrew comes out with a box of condoms and a towel.

“Is that the box Allison got us when we got married?”

“Yeah.”

“If those aren’t expired yet, I’m calling bullshit.”

“I’m not trying to protect you from all the STDs on my fingers,” Andrew says, ripping the box open. “I’m trying to protect you from my fingernails. And protect my fingers from getting gross.” He rips open a condom. “They’ll do the job.”

Neil hadn’t even thought of that. “I am very, _very_ glad you know what you’re doing.”

Andrew tugs the blankets out of the way and lays the towel down. 

Neil hadn’t thought of that, either.

And now everything he’d read, years ago, about _initial discomfort_ and _can take some getting used to_ is flashing in his brain while Andrew grabs lube out of his bedside table, and maybe Neil should have thought this through a little better.

Andrew turns to look at him, though, and then it’s all gone. Neil has an inordinate amount of trust in Andrew. But he must not have cleared his face fast enough, because Andrew says, “We don’t have to do this.”

“No,” Neil says, “we don’t.” His phone buzzes; he ignores it. “But I want to. I don’t want to ignore it just because it’s new and I have no idea what I’m doing.” It buzzes again. He continues to ignore it. If Andrew’s buzzes, he’ll be concerned—that’s the kids, and worthy of concern.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I trust you,” Neil says.

“Irrelevant.”

“ _Highly_ relevant. Why is it that you don’t bother cuffing my hands when we have sex?”

Andrew growls, which serves no purpose except to make Neil more desperate. “Tell me you’ll say no if it’s a no. Don’t give me any of that _always a yes_ bullshit.”

“I’ll say no if it’s a no,” Neil says obediently. “Am I allowed to take these pants off now? They’re tight and it feels like my dick is in a cage.”

Andrew steps forward and presses his lips to Neil’s jaw while his hands work at the button on Neil’s pants, Neil trying desperately to keep his hips still, and then Andrew is shoving at Neil’s pants, pushing those _very_ good jeans down so Neil can kick them out of the way, and then Andrew lifts Neil bodily onto the bed, and Neil can’t breathe for a second. He pulls his shirt off and tosses it out of the way in time to see Andrew remove his own shirt. Andrew holds his arms out, hands fisted, and Neil pulls Andrew’s armbands off—just cloth, today, no knives, and that’s reassuring, too, to know that it’s a good day for Andrew. Neil sets the bands aside, and Andrew puts a hand on Neil’s chest and pushes him backwards. Neil pulls Andrew after him, happy to go as long as Andrew stays close, feeling relieved now that the pants are off. Andrew runs a hand down Neil’s torso, fingers pressing against scars and tracing muscles, and Neil feels a rising desperation, wanting so badly to touch Andrew but unwilling to make an already difficult situation any harder for Andrew, mind almost entirely occupied by Andrew’s fingers, his _fingers_ , and eventually Andrew takes heed of Neil’s helpless gasping and moves his mouth down over burning hot skin, Neil’s back arching, pressing himself closer to Andrew’s lips, Neil’s hands twisting in Andrew’s hair, and then Andrew pulls Neil’s cock into his mouth. Neil tries, desperately, to inhale—

And is immediately distracted by a finger pressing at his asshole.

He frowns at the ceiling.

Andrew removes his mouth, and Neil remembers what’s going on, stops gripping Andrew’s hair quite so tightly, and relaxes.

“Neil.”

“I didn’t say to stop,” Neil says. “I just—have never done this.”

“Neil, if—”

“If I want you to stop, I’ll say something,” Neil says. “Until then, I’m just—adjusting.”

Nothing happens.

“Keep going,” Neil says. “I’m good.”

Andrew lowers his mouth, and Neil is again grateful that at least one of them knows what they’re doing—the _highly_ odd feeling of something going _the wrong_ _way_ is countered by the very familiar, _very_ nice feeling of Andrew’s lips around Neil’s cock, and eventually, Andrew gets one finger inside Neil, which is odd, and then Andrew _turns_ his finger, which is weirder, and then—

“What was _that_?” Neil asks, when he finds the ability to think again.

Andrew just nips at the inside of Neil’s thigh, making Neil jump. But, no, Neil knows what the prostate is, he just—hadn’t thought about it.

“Are you still good?” Andrew asks.

“Are you— _smug_?” Neil tugs at Andrew’s hair, looking down, and Andrew looks up at him, and yes, that is blatant self-satisfaction on Andrew’s face.

“Are you still good?” Andrew says.

It’s an odd thing to hear from someone with one finger in Neil’s ass. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

Neil relaxes his grip, and Andrew tips his head back down, and a minute or two later he works a second finger into Neil’s ass, and at least this time when Andrew crooks his fingers Neil is prepared for it—but all that really means is that he hears the noises he’s making, which should be embarrassing except that they don’t stop Andrew from mouthing up the length of his cock, and not long after that Neil comes, twitching and gasping, toes curling, hands clenched in Andrew’s hair, Andrew’s name on his lips, the ceiling above him invisible in spite of the fact that Neil’s eyes are wide open.

Neil isn’t prepared for feeling _empty_ when Andrew pulls his fingers out, and he almost forgets to let go of Andrew’s hair—doesn’t forget, but almost does. He blinks lazily at Andrew as Andrew removes the condom, pulling it off his fingers inside out, tossing it at the trash can. Andrew crawls up to kiss Neil, holding himself up on his knees—Neil reaches out blindly until he’s collected enough pillows to prop himself up, to put his face within easier reaching distance for Andrew.

“Are you okay?” Andrew whispers.

“I’m great,” Neil says, trailing fingernails down Andrew’s neck, rejoicing in the gasp he elicits, the full-body shudder. “You?”

Andrew hums. “All present and accounted for.”

“Can I?” Neil asks, holding one hand between them.

“Yes,” Andrew decides, and Neil hums his happiness.

He lets his mouth roam, lips touching familiar skin, and lets his mouth run, the _I love you’s_ and _are you doing okay’s_ and _I’m so happy you’re mine’s_ flying thick and fast, all the words Neil can’t hold in when he’s nothing but a satisfied, exhausted puddle of nothing, warm and safe underneath Andrew’s unyielding body. Neil moves his hand, up and down, twisting, ears catching every hitch in Andrew’s breath, every sharp inhale, every little noise, his other hand roaming wherever it’s allowed, until Andrew makes a sound low in his throat and goes searching for Neil’s mouth, which Neil offers up for him. Andrew orgasms with Neil’s breath in his mouth, and Neil keeps his eyes open, because Andrew’s having a good day, and maybe, and yes—Andrew’s face is, momentarily, at peace, a shock and a miracle Neil wouldn’t have missed for the world.

Andrew opens his eyes, meets Neil’s gaze, and sighs. “You’re so _pretty_ ,” he murmurs.

Neil laughs. Andrew doesn’t take his eyes off of Neil’s face. Neil decides that that’s fair, because he can’t stop looking at Andrew, and hasn’t unwrapped his free arm from around Andrew’s shoulders.

Neil wipes his hand on the towel. “This is very convenient. We should keep one of those around.”

“Mm. Can I say how grateful I am that you wash your ass?”

Neil cackles. “I am too! I am too.”

Andrew leans down to kiss him.

A few minutes later, once Neil is thoroughly dizzy, Andrew pulls back. Neil follows him to the bathroom, carting the balled-up towel. They clean up, Andrew fills the empty glass with water and hands it to Neil, and then they get back in bed. Neil doesn’t bother getting dressed, and Andrew doesn’t bother putting anything else on, either. Why bother? Who cares? Who’s going to see? And Andrew’s clearly having a good day, so Neil isn’t going to argue.

“Are you okay?” Neil asks, threading his fingers through Andrew’s.

“Feels like I’m the one who should be asking that.”

Neil shrugs. “You can ask it, as long as you answer it, too.”

Andrew lifts Neil’s hand, kisses his knuckles. “I’m doing very well. You?”

“Perfectly well, thank you very much. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Remembering his buzzing phone, Neil checks his texts—he’s managed to miss six, somehow. Two are from Riley— _I seriously can’t believe she texted me. What do I wear_ and then, two minutes later: _…why am I asking you_ , which is a valid question. He answers: _She’s seen you gross and sweaty, what does she care what you’re wearing, anyway?_ And then he glances at his new jeans, still sitting on the floor where he kicked them. _Never mind, that’s bullshit advice_. _Try some really nice jeans._

There’s one from Allison, requesting the girls’ favorite colors—he informs her that he’ll ask when he sees them. And then two texts from Nicky, with music suggestions—living in Germany hasn’t stopped Nicky from expanding Neil’s cultural knowledge; it just means that Neil is now more fluent in German pop culture than in pop culture in the States. The final text is from Renee: _Nadiya says the commercial is coming along great! Do you need to see it? I can vet it for you if you don’t have time_. Neil gives his permission. He doesn’t want to see the commercial, ever. He’s a coward like that.

And then he puts the phone down and rolls over to face Andrew.

“I will buy you this makeup,” Andrew says.

“I can ask Maria what it was.”

“You don’t know?”

“She pulled it out of her bag, she was _prepared_.”

“I hope she’s having a good day.”

“She is, she’s got a date with Riley set for tomorrow.”

“Did you tell her Riley likes Nora Roberts?”

“Of course I did.”

“She’s never read any, has she.”

“Nope.”

“How have they been friends for years, but Maria doesn’t know this?”

“That’s not the kind of secret you share with someone who’s just a friend. Also, apparently, when you have a crush on someone, you stop talking to them.”

“In many cases, yes.”

“You never stopped talking to _me_.”

“I’m not normal, hasn’t anyone told you? I’m a psychopath. And anyway, _you_ never stopped talking to _me_ , either.”

“Talking to you was a prerequisite for us dating. Also, I didn’t know I had a crush on you until we’d spent a solid few months talking. Also, there’s a reason why I was confused about this. If you don’t know someone, why would you date them?”

“I’ve heard it has much to do with hormones.”

“But I’ve _got_ those, and they never made much difference. Anyway, I don’t understand how it’s possible to _like_ someone without talking to them, let alone _love_ them.”

“You sound like Natalie and Paige.”

“ _They_ sound like _me_.”

“I think that’s the point of dating. To get to know the person. Find out if there’s anything there you could love.”

“Isn’t that just called being friends?”

“For a married man, you don’t seem to understand the concept of love very well.”

“I don’t know, I found a guy I’d either die for or live for and then I married him. As far as I’m concerned, no one knows who they love until there’s a gun to their head.”

“Was that your criteria? _Must be good enough to die for, also good enough to live for_?”

“I didn’t have criteria. I had a big ol’ _no_ , which I crushed like a tin can the second you suggested it.”

“Why me? What if someone else suggested it?”

“No one else is you.”

“Exactly. So what criteria did I meet that no one else could?”

“In possession of a soul.”

“You’re the worst.”

“You’re the one who married me.”

“And I’ve never regretted it.”

“You’re about to, because I’m getting us back on track. I need you to explain the concept of a newborn relationship to me.”

“You have a billion friends, and you’re asking _me_?”

“You’re my best friend. Suck it up.”

“You’re the only serious relationship I’ve ever had, I’m not exactly an expert. But I would guess,” he continues, seeing the obstinate look on Neil’s face, “that it’s similar to the way you can’t talk about me without resorting to absolute nonsense. And the way I can’t talk about you without resorting to a couple pointed hand waves. What do I love about you? The whole thing, and also, many little things. If I loved you less, I could talk about it more. It’s very easy to know everything about someone you don’t know.”

“Stick them in a box. You know the words on the box; you know the person in the box.”

“And then you get curious, and interested, and realize that they’re in ten boxes, actually, which makes you _more_ interested, and once you realize that you’re actually _extremely_ interested, you also realize that they’re in a _million_ boxes, and also on the floor. And suddenly it feels like you don’t know them at all, but god, you’d like to.”

“Ended _that_ sentence with a preposition.”

“I gave you an impromptu dissertation on love. Leave my grammar alone.”

Neil wiggles forward to plant a kiss on Andrew’s nose. “Thank you for the dissertation.”

“Your turn. Why didn’t you want Lorna to know about me? I know you weren’t lying, earlier,” he clarifies, “but it was a truth in much the same way as it was a truth that the armrest of the porch chair was digging into your side.”

Neil grimaces. He distinctly remembers his revulsion, the protective instinct that had made him unwilling to broach the topic of Andrew in front of her. “It just—felt like—you two are diametrically opposed,” he says, trying and failing to find the words he wants. “She’s so— _touchy,_ like, physically, and—she hates her husband but she won’t divorce him, she and her husband are cheating on each other, she’s involved in her kid’s life in that she’s head of the PTA and hosts parties and whatnot but has no idea what he’s learning in school—it just feels like. If she knew about you, it would hurt you.”

“I am not so easily damaged,” Andrew says softly.

“I know. And I want you to be there—I very much do not want to face her again. Not alone, anyway. But at the time—she said something about how rare it was for a dad to go to Parent’s Day instead of a mom, and I was about to say something about how it would’ve been a dad regardless, and then we got interrupted, and then—she was—she asks questions, and has expectations, and—you know that feeling when you’re surrounded by Foxes and everyone knows you’re fucked up somehow, but none of them are going to ask, and it’s fine because everyone else is also a mess trying very hard to be a person? I got the opposite feeling from her.”

“Above all that, and ready to be shocked when you turn out to be a disaster.”

“And ready to talk to all her friends about it. In front of our kids, probably, and their friends.”

“Ah.”

“And ready to talk shit about you, and make you into a big bad scary man.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone could in good conscience call me _big_. How often do you think she’ll drop the word _psychopath_?”

“Often enough that I’ll have to drop a copy of the DSM on her head. If people are going to spout bullshit, they should at least know the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. And the difference between psychopathic and psychotic.”

“Getting off-topic. Anyway, we’ll go to her little party, and maybe we’ll start some shit, and she and her friends can have fun and then we’ll go home.”

“Which is all well and good, except, again, _kids_.”

“Our kids have no problem with any of this. They’re wandering around telling people how boring we are. We’ll go to the party and behave like hardened killers—”

“We kind of are—”

“—and Natalie and Paige will be the cool kids who have hardened killers wrapped around their pinky fingers.”

“They _do_.”

“We horrify the elites and cement our kids’ status. And have some fun. Or I will, anyway. If she wants gossip, she can have it.”

“I distrust gossip. Kevin.”

“Kevin,” Andrew agrees, having been reminded of the events leading up to Kevin’s smashed hand. “And look how that turned out.”

Well. That’s all well and true. “But. Still. Moriyamas.”

“No need to bring them into it. Pretend you don’t know they exist.”

“It’ll be like I’m a child again.”

“Oh, good idea, bring your mom.”

Neil shudders. “She’d have to be dead before I could attend an organized gathering of more than 5 people.”

“Was that the actual rule?”

Neil shrugs. “Not really. I was allowed to go exist in public. So an organized gathering of 5-30 people, really, was the problem. If people knew I would be there and we couldn’t vet everyone beforehand, I couldn’t go.”

“Where _did_ you go?”

“Not really anywhere. School?”

“How often did you go to school?”

“Most of the time,” Neil says, absentmindedly tracing the lines on Andrew’s hand. “It wasn’t a very— _linear_ experience, I guess. I mean, I took American history twice and ended up skipping European history altogether—got bits and pieces of the histories of various countries along the way, depending on which country I was in. I re-read a lot of books, and missed a bunch of others, and read a lot of literature in languages that were not English. I tried to make sure my math classes stayed straight, though—no making up for a missed math class.”

“Nerd.”

“What are you gonna do, shove me into a locker?”

“Yep.”

“I probably would’ve fit. I was a small kid.”

“You’re a small adult.”

Neil waves a hand—that’s true enough. “I was always nice and easy to bully. My parents never showed up anywhere, I was quiet, I turned up out of nowhere, I had no friends. Head down, get work done, go home. No extracurriculars. Made sure I was as bad as sports as a kid could feasibly be.”

“Were you bullied often?”

“They tried. I didn’t take to it very well.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “You fought back?”

“The second… no, third, if we count the two days I spent going to school in England. Third school I went to, post-running away, I broke the kid’s nose. Mom slapped me silly for drawing attention to myself. Found an easier way, though. I just—didn’t care, not where they could see. They were punching me? I was much more interested in that kid over there with the cool backpack. They tried to trip me? Oh, wow, how weird is it that I managed to avoid their foot? Steal my lunch? No worries, I pulled a second one out of my bag. It annoys people, to have so little effect.”

“You managed to avoid getting visibly angry? I can’t see it.”

“I got worse at it as I grew up. And anyway, not many people pay as much attention as you do.”

Neil’s phone buzzes before Andrew can answer.

Andrew nods at it. “Might be a kid.”

Neil sighs, checks it, and discovers that it is, indeed, a kid, requesting a pickup. “They want us over in 30 minutes.”

“Time to get up, then,” Andrew says, very businesslike, so Neil rolls away and stands. Andrew does not. Neil glances at him to find him looking at Neil. Just—looking.

Well, that’s fine.

Neil looks back. He already knows how beautiful Andrew is. That doesn’t mean he won’t take the opportunity to look some more.

Eventually, Andrew decides he’s had enough, and he stands up.

They make themselves presentable.

Neil removes his eye makeup. “So you like _some_ makeup,” he says, grinning at Andrew’s little sigh, “but not other makeup. Is this dependent on how hot it makes me? Do I look ugly, when I do my scar-stealth makeup? Or is it just about whether or not I’m using it to hide?”

Andrew’s eyebrows pull together. “This complex you have—thinking you look ugly—is _not_ attractive. But no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with your level of attractiveness, at all.”

Neil looks at him and waits.

Andrew glances his way.

Neil raises one curious eyebrow.

Andrew points his hairbrush at Neil. “You liked this eye makeup. I also liked it; the fact that you like it contributes to my enjoyment of it. I like your face, and don’t care much for the hiding of it, but if you liked your out-in-public makeup, I’d get used to it. But you don’t like it. You hate it, so I hate it too.”

“I don’t hate it.”

Andrew puts the brush down, freeing up his hand to poke Neil’s shoulder. “When you put on your out-in-public makeup, you don’t look in the mirror—and if you do, you look distressed about it. You don’t smile as much. You’re tense. When you cover up your scars, you think you look like your dad,” he says, calmly, absolutely furious, “and you hate it. And it makes you unhappy. So I hate it.”

Oh.

Well, there’s nothing to say to that.

Andrew isn’t wrong, after all. He rarely is.

Neil takes Andrew’s hand, kisses his palm, pulls Andrew in as gently as is possible. Neil wraps his arms around Andrew, gently, loosely, a bind easy enough for Andrew to pull out of if he wants to, and lowers his cheek to Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew hugs Neil back, which is nice.

“Stop thinking stupid things,” Andrew murmurs.

“I’m stupid, remember? I need things spelled out.”

“Then I’ll spell it out for you. I don’t hate things that make you happy. I don’t hate things that keep you safe. Even when I don’t agree with you, I don’t hate them. I _do_ hate that you insist on seeing your dad every time you look in the mirror. _That’s_ some bullshit.”

“Why couldn’t I have looked like my mom? I at least _want_ to remember her.”

Andrew rubs Neil’s back, wordlessly. There’s nothing to say to that. If wishes were fishes, and whatnot.

It just—hadn’t occurred to Neil. As far as he’d been concerned, the source of Andrew’s anger had been obvious: Neil, running from his past, hiding it away. Not because, like Andrew’s knives, his scars could get him arrested, but because Neil wanted to present a different version of himself to the world—a version of himself that wasn’t him, that didn’t exist. Neil was annoyed at himself for running; it had made perfect sense to Neil that Andrew would be annoyed at him for hiding.

The idea that Andrew might have started from a place of love rather than morals hadn’t presented itself.

Neil allows himself a count of ten to forgive himself for this egregious failure. It’s not his fault he’s spent more time being tolerated than he has being loved. He considers apologizing, but that doesn’t feel quite right. “Thank you,” he says instead. “For loving me.”

Andrew pulls in a breath to speak, and lets it out unused.

Neil waits. If ever he’s said something worthy of a _shut up_ or a _don’t say stupid things_ , it’s what he just said.

Andrew shrugs his shoulder, and Neil lifts his head. Andrew puts two fingers to Neil’s cheek and guides his face over so that he’s looking at Andrew—like he might’ve looked anywhere else—and shakes his head. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Neil kisses his cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

And then they head out.

Neil grabs the mail off the table in the hallway as they pass it; Andrew must’ve set it down when he came in. Andrew waits while Neil goes through it, tossing junk, and more junk, and—

He passes it to Andrew. It’s addressed to them. Andrew glances at Neil, and Neil shrugs—sure, maybe they _should_ wait until the kids are here to open it, but, well, what if it’s bad news?

Andrew opens the envelope, pulls out the letter, and reads it through.

Neil waits.

It could be bad news.

Andrew looks up at him. “We’re going to be dads.”

Neil jumps on him.

When Andrew puts him back down a minute and a half later, Neil grabs the letter and reads it himself. The adoption agency has approved the adoption, provisionally, with the understanding that Natalie and Paige will have to live with Neil and Andrew for six months before adoption, with monthly visits with caseworkers up to the adoption.

“Ooh, we can’t bring this into Sandra’s house with us. Should we bring it in the car? Or should we wait until we get home?”

Andrew glances at his phone. “We’ll have enough time to bring them home. We’ve still got an hour and a half until we have to head out to work.”

Neil places the letter carefully in the center of the table, and follows Andrew to the car.

The drive to Sandra’s house is an easy one—mostly highway. They blast the radio. They hold hands. They’re going to be dads. They’re on their way to pick up their kids. And then they’re going to go make shit up so they can surprise all their exy rivals.

Neil can’t believe how goddamn good his life is.

When they arrive, the kids aren’t ready. Neil and Andrew are welcomed inside, led to the living room, given drinks. Sandra introduces herself to Andrew; Rick introduces himself to both of them.

“Sorry about that,” he says, nodding at the TV, where the morning’s edition of _Coffee with Rosetti_ is playing. “I didn’t—it wasn’t because you’re coming over.”

“You have to wonder if Thea Muldani-Day’s performance was just a _little_ worse than we’re all used to,” Yarrow Davison is saying. “She was facing her husband, after all, and maybe it hindered her performance—she couldn’t help but root for South, really.”

Neil shrugs, attention more on the screen than on Rick. He hasn’t seen this episode. He hasn’t watched the show in three weeks, actually.

“I’d like to point out,” Jane Donnelly says, “That Andrew Minyard and Neil Josten faced each other for a year, and went at it so hard we all thought they hated each other—”

“And would Day have been willing to marry someone _less_ devoted to exy than he is?” Grant Hally asks. “Really, I don’t think he _could_. It would be tough to have a husband so thoroughly devoted to something that isn’t you, unless you’re also devoted to that thing.”

“The fact is,” Donnelly says, “South was going to win, and North couldn’t have won. South has Day, Josten, Minyard, not to mention Riley Hassick and Maria Herrera, and Theodora Muldani-Day is the best player on her team, but she’s spent the year carrying them all. North was going to fall, so how much does it matter if Muldani-Day threw the game—”

“Does Thea know they’re saying this?” Andrew asks.

“More importantly,” Neil says, “Does Kevin?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it, so I doubt it.”

“Why?” Sandra asks, eyes sharp.

“The concept of someone throwing a game is—anathema to Kevin,” Neil says. “He wouldn’t do it. And if _Thea_ let _him_ win, he’d divorce her. And if Thea ever found herself willing to throw the game to let Kevin win, _she’d_ divorce _him_.”

“Thea didn’t do as well as she usually does,” Rick says. “They’re not wrong about that.”

Neil shrugs. “Thea’s the best player North’s got this year—they’ve got new owners and a new coach, and none of them seem to know what they’re doing. Thea’s furious about it. Donnelly wasn’t kidding, when she said Thea’s been carrying the team the whole year. She’s exhausted. She’s been doing her level best to bring her team up to standard and they just—won’t do it. If she’s not at her best, it’s because her team sucks ass, and she can only do so much.”

“Will she trade to South?”

“She’s still got two years on her contract,” Neil says, “and in order to convince North to trade her, we’d have to offer up someone just as good, if not better, and we’re not going to do that—we’ve got a great team, we’ve been working together for years, not a chance we’ll give someone up to bring Thea on. Now, Kevin _should_ have gone to North three years ago, when his contract was up. North had a good team. He should’ve gone.”

“They didn’t,” Andrew says. “They had a shitty team, and Kevin knew it.”

“I’d argue that,” Neil says. “Everyone _on_ the team was good.”

“But their teamwork was terrible. Thea was the only person who loved the game enough to play it anyway. Fuck you for making me talk about exy.”

“Sure, but if Kevin had pulled his shit together for more than two seconds, he could’ve whipped them into submission.”

“He never will.”

“What do you mean?” Sandra asks.

“Imagine this,” Neil says, trying to frame the scenario properly. “You play a game. Professionally, and very well, and you’re committed to it. And then you meet the guy who is the best at that game. The guy who has been playing this game for longer than you’ve known it existed. Back before Evermore was built, Kevin had a custom racquet. He’s—”

“He’s Kevin Day,” Sandra says. “Yeah.”

“Yeah. So we wander around at our yearly banquets with Kevin in tow, and he stops every conversation in its tracks. It’s _Kevin Day_. Look. There are some young people getting into it now, who could, one day, beat Kevin. But they can’t yet. Kevin isn’t just _good_ —he _keeps getting better_.

“So let’s say that the team you play on is terrible. Shitty, fractured, _bad_. And then Kevin Day walks into the room and says he’s playing with you now. It would be—a miracle. A god walking into your midst.”

“How shitty and fractured is the team?” Andrew asks. “I seem to remember a lot more _hatred_ when Kevin joined the Foxes.”

“Sure,” Neil says, “but when he walked into the room?”

“Mm.”

“Exactly. He walks in. He says, 'hi, I’m Kevin Day, I’m your new striker.' And for thirty seconds, there’s a _glow_. Kevin Day is here. You have visions of trophies dancing in your head. And then Kevin opens his mouth and says, 'all of you are terrible, you’ll never be any good, and I’m going to be carrying this whole goddamn team on my back for the next five years.' And then you hate him, because he’s better than you are at the game you play and he’s a dick about it. But. If he could shut up? If he could just say, 'wow, good job, I can tell you’ve been practicing'? He could’ve had that team eating out of his hand.”

“But he can’t do that,” Andrew completes. “He’s an asshole.”

“So he should’ve gone to North, because he could’ve played with Thea instead of against her, and they’d have liked that. But it would’ve been a disaster, because he’d have torn that team to shreds, and they never would’ve rebuilt. He came to South instead, because Andrew and I can handle him, and because the rest of the team is good, and because Riley and Clark can counterbalance his personality.”

“He sounds like a good time,” Sandra says brightly.

“What do you mean, _handle him_?” Rick asks.

“He tells us we’re doing terrible, and I trip him and Andrew forces him to run all the way across the court to get the ball.”

“That’s—does that count as _handling_?”

Neil looks at Sandra. “Did you think I meant we were able to make him shut up? We’re not. No one is. It’s impossible. Thea is the only person he’s ever nice to. The key isn’t to make him _kind_ , it’s to not care about anything he says.”

“So the whole team just ignores him all day?”

“Oh, no, we can’t, he’s not usually wrong. He knows what he’s _doing_ , it’s the only reason anyone puts up with him, you just have to cut out everything except the actual criticism.”

“You must really like him,” Rick says, grinning. “He sounds like a good time.”

“He’s my best friend,” Neil says. “Well, except Andrew, but that goes without saying.”

"Are there going to be a bunch of exy fans at the—party?" Andrew asks. "Lorna's party?"

"Pretty much just us," Sandra says.

Rick sighs. "And the _food_ isn't even gonna be that good. I mean, Lorna's a great cook, don't get me wrong, but basically the _highlight_ of the party used to be Mariana's lasagna. And Lorna won't make it, she won't even try, because Mariana's was _that good._ And Sandra flatly refuses."

"It won't be as good as my mom's," Sandra insists.

"It's still _extremely good_ ," Rick tells Neil and Andrew.

"Sure, but it won't be as good as my mom's, and then she'll ream me out for it and tell me everything I did wrong. I will cook _anything_ else, but I will _not_ cook lasagna."

"Is your mom going to be at the party?" Neil asks.

"She lives in Italy," Rick says.

"Then how would she ever know?" Neil asks.

"She's my _mom,_ " Sandra gasps. "I'd call her and tell her. What, I mean, how good are _you_ at keeping secrets from _your_ mom? Wait, don't answer that—oh, hey, I hear kids! Saved by the kids!"

Sure enough, there’s a set of footsteps on the stairs—Sandy, making noise, followed by Natalie and Paige, absolutely silent even in another house. The stairs creak when Sandy steps on them; they do not creak when Natalie and Paige step on them. A useful skill.

“Hi,” the three of them say, Natalie and Paige tugging on backpacks.

“We need to decorate our house,” Paige announces.

“Okay,” Neil agrees. A glance around informs him that, yes, this house _is_ decorated—family photos, oil paintings, unused-yet-aesthetically-appealing candles, the whole shebang. 

“There’s _no decorations_ in our house,” Paige tells Sandra. The fact that Paige trusts Sandra enough to talk to her immediately boosts Neil’s own opinion of Sandra, which was already reasonably high. “It’s—like, there’s their Olympic medals, and then their friends came over and hung up a couple prints, and that’s _it_. They have one photo album. It’s got pictures of them and a bunch of friends at a bar. Also, pictures of Neil and their friend Matt playing video games. Oh, and, also, _their wedding pictures_. They don’t have their _wedding pictures_ on the wall. _Nothing_.”

Sandra grins. “So— _not_ the best day of your life, then.”

“No,” Neil says.

She freezes. Rick makes a face.

“The day they adopt us will be the best day of his life,” Natalie says, sounding very self-satisfied for someone so wrong. “He’s holding out.”

“Not really,” Neil says.

Rick snorts. “He’s a man,” he tells Natalie. “The days they got gold in the Olympics were the best days of his life.”

“Also no? Those were up there—or, will be up there, I guess,” Neil says, “but no.”

Everyone is offended, Neil realizes.

“What was the best day?” Sandra asks.

Neil shrugs. “Today? Yesterday was pretty good, too.”

Sandra looks like she’s in hell. “I mean—was your wedding day really _bad_? Did something _happen_? Is there a fun story here?”

“No,” Neil says with a shrug. “It was fine.”

He’s getting the same looks from Sandra and Rick, he realizes, as he once got from his kids—the look that says _why did you get married_? “Look,” he says, “when you buy a car, are you excited because you bought a car? Or because now you _get to drive the car_? I didn’t get married because I wanted to get married, I married _Andrew_ because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. And I’m doing that! Every day, I wake up, and I share it with Andrew. If, today, seven years after we got married, the _wedding day itself_ was still the best day of my life, we should probably get divorced, because we’ve clearly made a terrible life together. And likewise,” he says, looking at Natalie and Paige, “we’re not adopting because we want to adopt. We’re adopting _you_ because we want _you_ to be our kids _._ If the best part about having you guys be our daughters is signing our names on a bunch of paper, that would be terrible. But none of that is the case. I get to spend every day with the love of my life and with my soon-to-be-kids, and it’s _great_! So why would the big-name days be the happiest days of my life? That would be depressing.”

There’s three full seconds of silence.

“That’s—one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard,” Sandra says. And then she whirls and smacks Rick’s shoulder. “Why don’t _you_ say things like that!”

“I thought I was supposed to say our wedding was the best day of our life!” He protests, but he’s grinning.

Neil glances at Andrew, but Andrew’s too busy looking smug to be much use—although Neil isn’t sure why Andrew’s feeling smug in the first place. To be fair, Neil also doesn’t understand why what he’d said was a controversial statement—the day he became _Neil Josten_ , legally, in the system, with a real social security card and a legal passport, was great, and was a big deal, but not nearly as big a deal as getting to spend the rest of his life as _Neil Josten_. He’d picked up pretty quickly that the paperwork was secondary to the thing that the paperwork allowed him to _do_ , such as call himself Neil Josten and call Andrew his husband.

“Could you _please_ ,” Sandy says, red in the face.

“It’s my job to embarrass you,” Sandra says cheerfully.

“It’s really not. No one’s paying you.”

“I volunteer. It’s pro bono embarrassment.”

“You guys can go,” Sandy says, turning to Neil and Andrew. “You don’t have to stay here.”

Andrew checks his phone. “Yeah, we still have to make dinner and then go back to work—Neil, you’ll have to annoy Kevin into yelling for twenty minutes when we get there, I’ll need time to digest.”

“Will do,” Neil agrees.

“Back to work?” Sandra asks.

“Prepping for championships. We practice at night.”

“Good luck,” Rick says, showing them out the door.

They pile into the car, and Andrew grins at Neil. “Can’t believe I have the best husband,” he says. “Putting everyone else to shame.”

Neil grins back, endlessly happy, so unbelievably happy. He can’t answer—doesn’t care enough to answer—cares too much about Andrew grinning to answer—Andrew’s grin disappears, muscles unused to holding the position, but he looks infinitely pleased, smug, as he pulls out of the driveway and points the car towards home.

“I love you,” Neil says in Russian.

“I love you, too.”

“Hey, speaking in other languages is rude,” says Natalie. “Also, we’re serious about decorating the house.”

“Can it wait until after championships?” Neil asks. “Another two weeks? Also, do you guys want to try to make anything? Don’t most parents have shit their kids made?”

“Yeah, from when their kids were babies,” Natalie says. “And then the kids grow up, the parents realize that it’s not aesthetically pleasing, and they stick it in a box to give to those kids when they move out.”

“Sure, but we haven’t been dads for long enough to get tired of your aesthetic choices. Thoughts on painting? Drawing? Word art? Collages?”

“Do _you_ paint?”

“Took a class last year, was terrible, will try again this year,” Neil says cheerfully. “Wanna join me?”

“Maybe.”

“Cool. Let me know. You’ve got a couple weeks until we have time to do anything, anyway.”

The conversation devolves, and Paige and Natalie are heatedly arguing over silver versus gold when they walk through the door, Andrew lingering conspicuously by the letter until Paige notices. “What’s that?”

Andrew offers it to her.

Neil remembers Andrew grinning—Andrew, happy, loved, _in_ love, and wasn’t that just everything he never thought he’d be? Would Andrew have thought, back in freshmen year of college, that he’d ever be standing with his kids in their friend’s house, listening to his husband talk about how every day spent with Andrew was the best day of his life?

And then Paige squeaks, Natalie dives on her, and then Natalie drags Neil and Andrew in for a group hug. “We have dads!” Paige says, and then Natalie joins her, chanting “We’ve got dads! We’ve got dads! We’ve got dads!” 

Natalie grabs the letter. "October 25? That's our next visit? I can do that. I'll even be nice."

"I'm going to be _so good_ ," Paige insists. "The best behaved child they've ever met."

"You're 14, you're not supposed to be well-behaved," Neil says, reaching up to ruffle her hair. "You'll be fine. It'll be fine. Wanna help us make dinner?"

"Yes!" Natalie says, and then she coughs and composes herself. Paige doesn't bother, bouncing around the kitchen like the floor is a trampoline. Andrew gives her garlic to peel—a good choice; Neil has the vague feeling that, asked to cut things, she'd end up cutting herself right now.

Neil and Andrew get food on the table, get the kids started on their homework, spend three minutes making out in the car, and then head out for night practice.

They wander into the stadium in the dark, and blink against the light of the locker rooms. Night practices are different, and night practices with the full team are _very_ different; everyone’s there, and they’re barely talking.

At least, not until they pile into the main room.

“Maria,” Andrew calls, and Maria wanders over.

She doesn’t look particularly happy to be called away from where she and Riley were standing, awkward but talking, grinning—but nonetheless, Maria makes her way to him. She raises an eyebrow.

“Thanks,” Andrew says.

Maria stares at him for a second—and then she laughs, sudden and loud in the silence, laughs until she can’t breathe.

Andrew refuses to look at the rest of the curious team, so Neil doesn’t either, and eventually Maria straightens, wipes her eyes, gives Andrew double finger-guns, and says “No problem.”

And then they train.

Wednesday and Thursday are grueling; Neil feels every second of his age, training all day long. He loves it. God, he loves it so much. He’d forgotten what it felt like, to dedicate himself to exy, to give himself over to the feeling of the court under his shoes, of the smack of the ball in his racquet, of his muscles after a long day spent training.

Andrew starts calling him _junkie_ again, but Neil doesn’t care. He can’t. He remembers full well Andrew grinning. And he’s got eyes in his head. He can see how much Andrew’s getting into it. He waits for Andrew to come up with an excuse to get out of training, but it doesn’t happen. He barely even complains. Neil dreams of Andrew, grinning, even for just that split second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway the theme song for this chapter was Untouched by The Veronicas


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The school party! Plus some other stuff. this one is Excessive cause i was in a Mood when I wrote it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for domestic violence--just a couple lines, no torture porn here

Friday, they get in the car, and Andrew and Neil grimace at each other.

Neither of them want to go to this party.

If there was a kind and just god, it would have been canceled. Or Kevin would have insisted that they not skip night practice, and Clark would’ve agreed, and their managers would’ve taken them to task for not being invested enough in their work, and that would’ve been that.

But they’d said they’d go, and neither of them is willing to abandon the kids to Lorna’s oversight, and it’s just one night. And tomorrow they’ve got to fly to Texas—of course it had to be Texas, someone who might actually beat them—and if this will keep Andrew’s mind off the impending flight, Neil is happy to do it.

So they drive to Lorna’s house.

They’re nearly half an hour late, but eventually, they find themselves at the end of a long line of cars parked against the curb, staring at a very large house.

“We could just turn around,” Andrew says.

Natalie shoves the door open and gets out of the car. Paige follows her.

Neil sighs, squeezes Andrew’s hand one last time, and gets out.

“Makes me wish I still smoked,” Andrew mutters, shutting the car door behind him and locking it.

Neil takes the lead up the driveway and down the path to the door, which is lined with perfectly trimmed plants and what looks like rosebushes. He rings the doorbell.

The door opens, releasing a wave of perfume, showcasing a woman in a red dress and a wide smile. “Neil!” Lorna says, bestowing upon him a smile that very nearly makes Neil turn around and walk away. “And—oh, where’s your wife? And who is this?”

Neil doesn’t understand her tone for a minute—and then he realizes that Andrew is standing in Neil’s shadow and is shorter than Neil and both of the girls. Lorna thinks he’s a child. That’s what her tone was. The tone of an adult trying to make friends with a fussy child.

“Andrew,” Andrew says. He doesn’t hold his hand out. He _does_ step into the light a little bit, so that Lorna can see very clearly that he’s a 30-year-old man. “She couldn’t make it. I came, instead.”

“Ah—emotional support, then,” she says wisely. “Come in, come in, it’s cold out.”

It’s not, not really—a little chilly, maybe, but it’s only barely October. But they all step in anyway, Neil with the same jolt of adrenaline he might get from walking into a lion’s den.

“Kids are all downstairs,” Lorna says briskly, pointing at a door. “Shut the door behind you.”

Natalie and Paige give Neil and Andrew apologetic glances, and shuffle themselves into the basement.

“Why don’t you join the men?” Lorna says, pointing into the living room. “They’ve got beers in there.”

Neil and Andrew shuffle themselves into the living room. It’s an open plan house. The separation is largely meaningless. Neil can feel Andrew’s distaste for it.

Still, though, they’re not without friends—Neil spots Rick just as Rick spots them, and Andrew and Neil head for safety, Rick giving them a look that says _there’s safety in numbers_.

“Where’s Sandra?” Neil asks.

Rick nods at the ‘kitchen,’ and Neil looks at the crowd of women and spots Sandra, looking perfectly at home and engaged. And then she glances at Neil and Andrew, grimaces, and raises her cocktail to them.

“What’s with the gender divide?” Neil asks, feeling remarkably blessed to be married to a man.

“Lorna,” Rick says, like that explains things. “Let me grab you—” he reaches into a nearby cooler. There shouldn’t be a cooler in the living room. Then again, the floors are the same tile as in the kitchen—open plan—so what’s the difference? Neil glances at Andrew, disgust renewed at the idea of a cooler in the living room. Rick pops the lids off two beers, handing one each to Andrew and Neil. Neil raises an eyebrow at Andrew—hadn’t he just said a couple weeks ago that he was never drinking beer again?—but Andrew takes it nonetheless. “Anyway,” Rick continues in a low voice that blends in with the general murmur of conversation, “Lorna hates her husband—he’s over there—and he hates her, and the easiest way to host a party wherein both of them are present without making it look like they’re avoiding each other is to force _the gender divide_ , which is present at every single one of Lorna’s parties.”

“That’s…”

“Yeah,” Rick says, nodding. “Sandra’s tried telling Lorna to get a divorce, but she just keeps having affairs instead.”

“Ah,” Neil says tactfully.

“There’s basically a pool,” Rick says, glancing around, tilting his chin discretely at a few individuals. “There’s all the people who are cheating, and they’re all cheating with each other, and no one will just get a divorce, because then they have to think about healthcare and housing and who’s gonna take the kids and how are they gonna pay for W. Prep?”

“That’s one way of living,” Neil says carefully. "Have they ever heard of open relationships?"

“It’s a fucking mess,” Rick says cheerfully, raising his beer in a toast to his wife, who looks absolutely miserable. “But when we get out of here, we get to spend the whole drive home gossiping, so it’s worth it.”

“For whom?”

“For us, and who cares about the rest of them?”

“They do, probably.”

“Sure, but they’re the ones doing the shit and telling us about it,” Rick says reasonably. “Anyway—how about that season, huh? Montana did shockingly good—I didn’t think they could get that many good players out there.”

“That’s why they did so good,” Neil says, relieved to be back on familiar ground. “They get way more practice than bigger teams. And people who _could_ be good but would never get a shot in, say, Denver, go to Montana and train, and they get a shot there, and they’re the ones who were willing to move just to get the opportunity, so they’ve got the drive.”

Andrew’s bored, Neil knows it, but _bored_ is better than miserable, and Neil doesn’t particularly know how to discuss the specifics of other people’s sex lives, but for sure and certain he can talk about exy from now until they’re set free from this house, so exy it is. And anyway, he doesn’t want to offend the only friendly face this side of the gender divide.

He smells the perfume before he hears her approaching him.

“Neil,” says Lorna, wrapping a hand around his arm, “I think you should come talk to us! It’s not fair that we don’t get your household’s perspective on things, is it? Why didn’t your wife want to come again?”

“What?” Rick says.

Neil just stares at Lorna.

Andrew sips his beer.

Rick shuts his mouth.

Lorna nods sympathetically. “And anyway, I hear you’re a _star_! Sandra told us. I don’t know much about exy, will you come tell us? Sandra offered to teach us herself, but I said, if we’ve got a professional in the house with us, then you can probably tell us so much more!”

“There are plenty of fans who know as much about exy as I do,” Neil says, desperate to avoid further contact.

Lorna laughs. “So humble!”

Neil is being carted past the invisible boundary and into the kitchen.

Sandra makes an apologetic face at him. She holds out a fist, which Neil bumps. “Andrew should come over, too,” she says, waving a hand. “ _Save me_ ,” she whispers as Lorna turns around. “ _I’m in hell._ ”

“What were you talking about?” Lorna asks, turning back to Neil, leaning towards him. “I _am_ sorry I interrupted your conversation.”

“Exy,” Neil says. If he stands perfectly still, maybe she’ll get bored and move on.

She just laughs, ignoring Andrew as he comes to stand by Neil. “Men. Have you ever had a conversation that _wasn’t_ about exy?”

“Once or twice,” Neil says. And then, desperately trying to make himself more unappealing—he shouldn’t have put on makeup today, he should roll up his sleeves—he says, “once, I went out to eat with my exy team and some cheerleaders. I ended up stuck in a booth with a girl who wouldn’t talk about exy. I couldn’t stand her. She tried to give me her number. Ended up storming off.”

“Where was I?” Andrew asks. “It sounds like it was fun.”

“You weren’t there.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow at him. “Clearly, but where was I?”

Neil stares him down.

Andrew stares back.

Neil shrugs. “Easthaven.”

“Oh.” Andrew sips his beer.

“Easthaven? The rehab facility?” Lorna asks.

Sandra makes a face—one, presumably, intended to shut Lorna up, but Lorna blatantly ignores it in favor of looking at Andrew.

“Why were you there?”

“Drugs,” Andrew says. “I was court-ordered to get off them in rehab.”

Neil refrains from reacting. Well, at least Andrew’s not bored anymore.

Sandra tips her glass upside down and drains it, and then turns around for a refill.

“Ah,” Lorna says, light disapproval in her voice. “Well, perhaps we’d better talk about—exy, instead. I’m sure it must be odd, to come here and have no one know who you are!”

“Kind of a relief, honestly,” Neil says. “I prefer to fade into the background.”

“Oh,” Lorna says, at a loss. Neil’s response was, clearly, a conversation ender, for which Neil is eternally grateful. Unfortunately, Lorna's much too good a conversationalist for it to work. “Is he really as humble as he says, Sandra?”

Neil watches Sandra scramble for something, anything, that will save Lorna. “He—yeah, definitely. Getting him in front of a camera is—well, Andrew’s worse, he refuses to talk to reporters at all.”

“Oh? You play too?”

“Yeah,” Andrew says, and then he huffs, and there’s a twinkle in his eye that unnerves Neil. “I learned when I was in—”

The basement door slams open, cutting Andrew off. Neil can see it from where he’s standing. He can see it from everywhere he stands. Open plan house. He can see the teenager zooming out of it.

“They’re fighting,” Sandy says, gasping from what must’ve been a sprint up the stairs. “Natalie and Arnie.”

“Whoops,” Neil says, detangling from Lorna with a gratitude he shouldn’t feel. His kid is fighting. He shouldn’t be happy about that.

“Arnie doesn’t fight,” Lorna says, aghast.

“Natalie does,” Neil says cheerfully, heading towards the basement, Andrew on his heels. He heads down the steps, and he can already hear yelling—a boy’s voice, saying something about fake parents. He reaches the floor and turns the corner in time to hear Natalie yell:

“Well, at least my parents _love_ each other! _Yours_ can’t even stand to be in the same _building_!”

“Oof,” Neil says.

Paige sees him, goes white, and tugs on Natalie’s arm.

Natalie ignores her, on a roll. “At least _my_ shitty parents aren’t mine anymore! You _wish_ you had my family!”

“Nat,” Paige says.

“I— _what_?”

Paige nods in Neil’s direction. Neil, and Andrew, and Sandra, and Rick, and Lorna’s direction.

Natalie turns.

She goes white, and then red, and then normal, head held high. “It’s _true_!”

“That doesn’t mean you should say it,” Neil suggests.

“Are _you_ going to lecture me on not fighting? _Really_?”

Andrew snorts.

“No,” Neil says. “But sometimes, you should think before you speak.”

“Remember that time you called Kevin a cripple?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah,” Paige says, latching on to that. “Did you think before you spoke _then_?”

“I did, actually. That was the product of several minutes’ worth of thought.”

“It seems a lot meaner than telling someone their parents are shitty,” Natalie says.

“Well, what’d the kid do?”

“What did Kevin do?”

“Technically, nothing. What’d he do?”

“Called me a liar. What does _technically nothing_ mean?”

“Andrew broke into my room and went through my shit. Telling him to stop was useless, but telling Kevin to stop would do the trick, so I broke into _their_ room and told Kevin to fuck off and called him a cripple. I already told you about that altercation, why didn’t you ask questions _then_?”

“You guys are weird,” Natalie says, shrugging off the question.

Neil and Andrew shrug back. “Why’d the boy call you a liar?”

“I told him I was learning how to throw knives.”

Neil pinches the bridge of his nose. “All right.”

“He said it was beginner’s luck!”

“What was beginner’s luck?”

She points, and Neil notices a dartboard across the room. There’s one dart two centimeters away from the center, and one dart an inch away from the center, and several others scattered around the edge. “The _really_ close one is him. The _mostly_ close one is me. The rest is everyone else. He said I only got that close because I’m lucky, and I told him it’s because I’m learning how to throw knives, and he said that there was no way and I was lying because no one in their right mind would give a foster kid a knife, and I said that you would, and he said you wouldn’t because you don’t want to die. And then I said some other stuff, and he said some other stuff, and at least I didn’t call him a cripple!”

“I bet Neil would win,” Paige says.

“What?” Neil says, after a beat. “Natalie _is_ learning how to handle knives,” he tells Arnie. “Win what?”

“The dart throwing contest,” Paige says.

“Why are a bunch of teenagers throwing darts?”

“I bet _you_ did way more dangerous stuff when you were a teen,” Paige says.

“And she’s right,” Natalie says, crossing her arms. “You _could_ win.”

“I don’t throw darts,” Neil says helplessly. He probably could. But he doesn’t. Darts seem too—playful. He doesn’t like water guns, either. He knows too much about the real thing.

“Then throw a knife,” Paige says, like it’s the obvious conclusion.

“I’m not in the habit of carrying knives on me,” Neil says.

“I bet you can’t do it,” Arnie says. “You’re a whole family of liars.”

Andrew holds out a knife, arresting Natalie before she can get going on what looks to be really a very good rampage.

Neil looks at it, and looks at Andrew.

_Do it._

_She’s showing off._

_Yup._

_Oh. You’re showing off, too._

_Yup._

_You hate being called a liar._

_Yup._

_Jesus._

“Go ahead, Pinocchio.”

“You’ll make a real boy of me yet,” Neil says drily.

Half the kids in the room jump.

They hadn’t seen Neil move, yet there he is, arm outstretched, and there is the knife, quivering in the center of the dartboard.

Neil smiles, and when he looks at Natalie, she grins back.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand, and Neil lets his smile melt into a grin.

And then Natalie turns and gives Arnie two middle fingers. “My dads are cooler than your dad.”

“ _Nat_ ,” Neil says.

“ _What_?”

“Kindness is a virtue, I think.”

She looks betrayed. “That’s patience.”

He shrugs. “Don’t fight where people can catch you, remember?”

“Ah,” Andrew says, “I forgot, that rule that you’ve always stuck to so strongly.”

“I’m passing the lessons I learned onto our kids,” Neil says.

“I’m remembering…” Andrew closes his eyes, like he’s thinking very hard. “I’m remembering you fighting with Riko at a banquet. Kevin informed me that you did punch him, right in front of the punch bowl, appropriately enough, and then punched him several times after that. And then that time you and Aaron beat each other up in the hallway. And you _to this day_ fight with Kevin absolutely non-stop, just, _right_ in the middle of the court. That time you beat up the dude who started singing the _Maria_ song from West Side Story at Maria. The time you punched the reporter who kept asking Riley about Tyler. And the one who kept calling you the wrong name—”

“I’m an adult,” Neil says, cutting Andrew off before he can get much further down that list.

“You don’t get to pull adult privilege,” Natalie says. “That’s not fair.”

“It’s fine,” Paige says. “We’re not fighting anymore. Hey, Arnie, we’re friends now, right? You have a shitty dad. We’ve had several shitty dads. We have a lot in common.”

He stares at her.

She sticks her hand out.

He shrugs and shakes it, and then turns to Natalie. “I guess you weren’t lying,” he says.

“I don’t lie,” Natalie says. “Unless I have to.”

“Hey,” Neil says, sharply. “Don’t touch that.”

The kid nearest to the knife freezes, arm outstretched.

“Knives are dangerous,” Neil says. “You’ll hurt yourself.” Visions of stabbed children dance in his head.

“I can get it,” Natalie says, rushing over.

“Don’t look at the knife while you’re walking,” Neil reminds her as she carries it back to Andrew.

“Yeah, but it’s weird to just stare at you for five minutes while I’m walking over here,” she says, handing it back to Andrew. Andrew tucks it into his armbands.

“You could've just told me you were married to a man,” Lorna says, and, oh, she’s angry. This is her party and Neil has stolen it from her, and Neil has also stolen all hope of an affair from her, _and_ he’s a whole entire mess dragging down her upscale party.

 _Please_ , he prays to whoever might be listening, _don’t let her be part of some other mafia._ Neil shrugs at her. “It’s not _my_ fault if people are going to make assumptions.”

“Hey,” Sandra says, wrapping an arm around Lorna’s shoulders, “we’ll get you into exy yet.”

“Could you not?” Arnie says, looking remarkably uncomfortable. “Dad is literally upstairs.”

“One time,” Paige says, “we had a foster mom who kept her boyfriend in the basement. Her husband didn’t know.”

“That sucks,” Arnie says.

“It was pretty bad,” Natalie agrees. She holds her fist out. Arnie bumps it.

“Are we staying or leaving?” Andrew asks.

“We can stay,” Natalie says.

“Then don’t fight,” Neil suggests. “Or you’ll get us kicked out.”

She waves him off.

“Back upstairs, then,” Neil says, and Rick and Sandra nod, apparently relieved by the suggestion that they don’t have to spend any more time in a basement full of teenagers with darts.

Andrew sighs. “Do we have to keep talking about exy?” He asks in Russian, pulling Neil towards the stairs.

“I think the alternative might be worse,” Neil says.

“Why are we here again?”

“The kids are making friends.”

“Jesus.” He drops Neil’s hand when they reach the top of the stairs.

“Everything okay down there?” someone asks.

Rick waves them off.

Sandra abandons Lorna to the comfort of the kitchen, and she and Rick bundle Andrew and Neil into a place that could be considered either the living room or the kitchen. Open plan house. Andrew’s so annoyed about it, Neil can _feel_ it from half a foot away.

“We can just stay here,” Rick says, clutching his beer. “Right? We don’t have to go to separate sides of the house.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Sandra says under her breath. “Roland’s making a bid for the TV. Lorna’s husband,” she says for Neil and Andrew’s benefit.

Neil looks over, and sure enough, a man is laughing, holding the remote, flipping through channels.

“He’s going to turn it on, nice and loud, and then he’s gonna turn up the volume, and then Lorna’s going to come ask him very nicely to turn it down, and then Rick is going to walk over there and agree, loudly, that perhaps the TV should be a little lower, not that Lorna’s _right_ or anything, but that maybe, we don’t want to watch football. Except that nothing’s on yet. So we’ll be watching—”

 _Coffee with Rosetti_ , apparently.

With exy championships beginning tomorrow, exy talk shows are getting more views than ever—and _Coffee with Rosetti_ likes to make the most of it, with extra episodes during championships. Given that tomorrow’s the yearly bloodbath, they’ve got an evening episode—they must be working their makeup artists to the bone, because Gianna and her cohosts look precisely as chipper as usual. Neil wonders if the coffee in their mugs is super-caffeinated.

“—and they’ve got South Carolina against Texas tomorrow,” Yarrow is saying, “which is unfortunate for South Carolina—Texas actually came close to beating them, two weeks ago—they actually scored on Andrew Minyard—”

“No one could forget that,” Jane says, “God knows it’s rare, but it could be worse, either of them could be facing Denver—”

“No one wants that,” Gianna chips in. “Denver’s likely to beat everyone they play—and if the ERC is aiming for a Denver-South showdown, they weren't going to pit them against each other tomorrow—makes sense to pit Denver against Mississippi, which is sure to lose—no offense to them—”

“Well, sure, sure, but I’m just saying, South lost to Denver, back in July,” Jane interrupts, “and they’re liable to lose again—to be honest, I think we’re looking at a Denver championship this year, they’ve got one of the strongest teams they’ve had in years—”

The TV gets louder; Neil doesn’t feel the need to compete with it by trying to hold a conversation, and neither, apparently, do Sandra and Rick.

“Sure, but don’t forget,” Gianna says, steadfastly supporting the Jaguars, “every year South comes out with new footwork, new—”

“But will it be _enough_?” Grant asks. “I don’t know, this year South might take a fall—”

“You’ll never convince me of it,” Gianna says, laughing, eternally loyal to her greatest source of views. “And maybe I’m biased, but I’m also not often wrong, and South’s teamwork leaves everyone else in the dust—but that’s enough speculation for now,” she says, silencing her cohosts as the TV gets louder.

Sure enough, as predicted, Lorna is heading towards Roland, a smile pasted on her face, but she doesn’t make it there—the basement door bangs open, releasing a stream of teenagers, headed by Arnie.

“Mom, we’re hungry,” he says, loudly, over the TV. Lorna looks desperately torn between the desire to fling the remote into the TV and the desire to feed the horde of teenagers spilling out into her open-plan-household. “Why is dad watching… whatever this is?”

Gianna is laughing: “—special release, all ours. Enjoy!”

And then the TV goes black, and for a second, Neil thinks Lorna’s managed to turn it off with her fury alone. And then, at top volume, there’s the sound of a door shutting, and Neil thinks maybe the picture’s gone—with all Nathaniel’s desperation he hopes not; he doesn’t want to see Roland angry—and then Neil’s voice says: “Oh—sorry,” but Neil’s mouth isn’t moving. And then:

The sound of a light switch, and blue eyes, ice blue, staring directly at Neil, and the shock that goes up his spine almost makes him drop his beer. The urge to step backwards is nearly overwhelming.

Someone to Neil’s right wolf-whistles. The women are drifting in from the kitchen, curious, and Lorna isn’t there to hold them back.

“What’s the worst part?” asks Nadiya’s voice, and Neil immediately regrets doing this commercial. Regrets handing control over to Renee and his PR Manager. Regrets not asking when the commercial would air.

“The questions,” Neil answers, the camera zooming out as Neil looks away, showcasing his burn scar. “Everyone always wants to know what happened—and, I mean, these are strangers. People in the grocery store. At the gas station.” The shot changes—now he’s rolling up his sleeves, arms twisting to reveal those scars. “And even if I was comfortable telling them—” and now the camera is at his back, following him through the locker room, his name and position appearing at the top of the screen as he heads for the court—“there’s just not enough time in a day to tell everyone my whole life story. I’m just trying to get a gallon of milk, you know? Not—chat about trauma.”

Nadiya—“What do you think about when you look at your scars?”

The camera follows Neil’s back as he pulls his shirt off, and then he turns around. As the camera pans up the mess that is his stomach, Neil-on-TV laughs; Neil-at-Lorna’s cringes at the room-wide gasp, at the strangled shriek behind him. “Mostly, I think about how annoying it is that I can’t go shirtless at the beach. But—” the shot changes; Neil, standing in the center of a lineup of people, scars on faces, wrists exposed, missing limbs obvious, all of them grinning, hands moving as they talk—“I have the scars because I survived. I _survived._ These are just proof that I’m not dead yet.”

And then a montage, fast, shots of scars and grinning faces. _Hear their stories on our website,_ the bottom of the screen says.

And then all of them, in a line, smiling, arms around each other, while Skin Deep’s logo and website appear on the bottom of the screen.

And then it cuts back to Gianna, grinning, absolutely thrilled, clearly waiting for the tweets to pour in. “That was our favorite, Neil Josten, telling us all precisely what it means to have some manners—quite a lesson to those of us so used to asking questions—as of tomorrow, that’ll be playing during all the exy championships, but for today our show is the only place you’ll see it—we got the release—”

“That’s you,” says a woman to Neil’s right, looking at him with a puzzled look on her face. And then it clears up, even as heads swivel to look at her, and then to look at Neil. “Oh—I guess those were all fake? They must have had a really good makeup artist. It’s shitty of you, though, to do a whole commercial about scars when you don’t have any.”

“I wasn’t wearing makeup,” Neil says, annoyed, as Gianna goes to an actual commercial break. “I’m wearing makeup _now_.”

“Sure,” she says sarcastically.

“Anyone have makeup wipes?” Andrew calls across the room.

“I mean, yeah,” Natalie says, diving for her bag.

“You don’t even wear makeup,” Neil says.

“Dad gave them to me on my way out the door this morning.”

Neil glances at Andrew, who looks absolutely innocent. He looks back in time to see Natalie throw the wipes, and catches them. Two-handed. He can feel Andrew’s condescending look, but, well, one-handed catches are for the desperate. Two-handed catches are safer.

He wipes his face down as quickly as he can. People are staring at him. He hates that. It’s amazing, really, how much he’s changed; once upon a time, he’d have given anything for people to think his scars were fake. Now, the thought pisses him off.

After a minute, he turns towards Andrew, who glances at him with a critical eye and nods—Neil’s gotten all of it. He raises an eyebrow at the woman who’d thought he was lying, and she acknowledges defeat with a smile.

“Why bother covering them up, if you’ve got a whole commercial coming out about them?” she asks.

“Didn’t realize it was coming out today, and didn’t feel like answering questions.”

There’s a protracted silence, which Neil realizes is the sound of dozens of people suppressing their questions.

God. He is so, _so_ happy he made that commercial.

“Now, hang on,” says Roland—a loud, booming, genial voice that Neil doesn’t trust for a second. “I thought _you_ were their dad?” he asks, pointing at Neil.

“I am,” Neil says. “Why?”

“One of your kids just referred to blondie as _dad_.”

Neil glances at blondie, who looks more shocked at being called _blondie_ than confused, which is a shame, because Neil is hopelessly confused. “He is her dad.” How did Roland know which kids were Neil’s? Roland doesn’t seem the type to get involved with his son.

Oh. Of course. The open-plan house. He saw them walk in, heard Lorna’s voice when she said _Neil,_ he would’ve looked over, would’ve wanted to see who his wife was hitting on. He’d have seen the kids.

“So—did your wife send you along with her ex?” Roland asks, laughing. “Or are _you_ the ex? Women are cruel masters, forcing men to go to parties with their replacements.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“They’re gay, Roland,” Lorna snaps. “They’re married.”

It’s a mistake. Neil feels it. Roland is being embarrassed in his own home. The consequences of embarrassing Lorna are this: She is embarrassed, and angry about it. But the consequences of embarrassing Roland are—Neil doesn’t know. He has the horrible feeling, though, that Lorna will be finding out later.

“We’ve been trying to get her into exy,” Sandra says, looping an arm through Lorna’s in an attempt to take the heat off her, but that’s a mistake, too—now Roland thinks Lorna _knew_. Thinks she knew full well Roland would get all worked up about a man who would never sleep with Lorna. Thinks Lorna did it on purpose, to make Roland look stupid.

“We’re adopted,” Paige says happily, and that, too, is an attempt to take the heat off Lorna—and it almost certainly doesn’t work, but it _does_ distract everyone, because Sandy perks up—

“Adopted? Are you? I thought—”

“In February,” Paige says cheerfully, “we’ll officially be Paige and Natalie Minyard-Josten.”

There are cheers, and squeals, and hugs, and Neil can pick out precisely who’s friends with Paige and Natalie and who isn’t based on the excitement displayed.

It isn’t enough, though, for Roland, who turns a furious look on his wife.

Neil rapidly revises his understanding of their relationship—he sees the flex of Roland’s hand, sees the tension in Lorna’s shoulders, and he knows what that means. Roland beats Lorna, and cheats on her, and Lorna’s cheating and flirting and partying and PTA leadership is her best attempt at getting control, at getting back at him. The saying _may as well get hanged for a sheep as for a lamb_ comes to mind—if Roland’s going to beat her, she may as well earn it.

She must be very certain, then, that Roland won’t hurt Arnie or kill Lorna herself. Why? A living Lorna, even one over whom he has so little control, must be more useful to him than a dead Lorna. Why? Status? Appearance? Neil glances around the house, thinks of the perfect lawn, the immaculate landscaping, how nice it must be to invite friends over and have them see that Roland lives in a perfect house, how nice to have his wife serving them food made from scratch. And Arnie—well, that’s Roland’s son, his legacy. Thinking it over, it’s less shocking that Arnie is safe than it is that Lorna and Roland only have one son.

Neil glances at Andrew and, yes, Andrew understands. Andrew twitches— _we can’t do anything about it_. And, well, that’s true—Lorna knows well enough she’s being abused, she must have a solid reason for not leaving. Certainly, it’s nothing Neil and Andrew can help with.

“Oh, what’s she playing now?” Asks the woman who had doubted Neil’s scars. “Is that—you again?”

Neil looks up, and sees, on a 75-inch TV, himself, diving on Andrew, and recognizes it as a clip from the moment when Andrew’s old team had made the announcement that Andrew was transferring to South Carolina. It was the moment that had permanently ended rumors of the Minyard-Josten rivalry. Once upon a time Gianna had played it every episode, and then every other episode, and then less and less often; her cameras had gotten the best shot, and then she’d gotten the exclusive interview, and she’d basked in the added viewership for months.

The room is dead silent. Neil regrets leaving the house this morning. Regrets letting Andrew choose the school—it might be a good school, but public school kids don’t do this shit. Regrets so much about his life.

“And they’re _still_ our favorite couple!” Gianna says as the clip fades out. “I really thought Kevin and Thea might steal our hearts—separate teams, it’s heartbreaking, really—or Jean and Jeremy Knox, but Josten and Minyard really are still the best. Did anyone else see that goofy grin Josten had when Minyard blocked Pinza’s shot last game? The _sweetest_.”

Roland turns the volume down, finally. 

“Oof,” Rick says quietly.

Neil flatly refuses to look anywhere but just above the TV screen. He will not. He might be able to dive out a window. Is there any way to get Gianna to stop playing that clip? How much would he have to pay?

“They’re gross,” Natalie says, breaking the silence. “They’re so sappy it’s like living with two maple trees. Why are we still standing here? They make out all the time, I didn’t need to see it blown up _that_ big. Aren’t we supposed to be eating?”

“Oh, yeah,” Arnie says, looking endlessly grateful for her interference. “Mom! Can we eat yet?”

“Let the adults eat first, why don’t you?” Lorna says.

“Why? We’re hungry _now_ ,” Arnie insists, and Lorna must be able to see as well as Neil can that Arnie’s on the verge of appealing to his father, because she gives in instantly.

“Yes, yes, fine,” she says, harried, hustling them into what is nominally a kitchen by virtue of the fact that it contains a stove.

“Thank god for our children, thank god for our children, thank god for our children,” Neil whispers devoutly.

“We’re only in this situation because of them,” Andrew reminds Neil under his breath.

“Oh yeah. No more children, ever, never.”

“Natalie’s gonna run the whole school within two years if we’re not careful,” Andrew mutters, watching her stand at the head of the group.

“You think it’ll take that long?”

“You wanna bet?”

“I don’t gamble.”

Andrew holds out a pinky, and Neil takes it.

“I think it’ll be Paige.”

Andrew tilts his head side to side. “Power behind the throne?”

“Peacemaker.”

“They sure are something,” Sandra says.

“We got a couple good kids,” Neil agrees.

“Good?”

“Yeah.”

“Natalie was just fighting, like, two minutes ago,” Rick says.

Neil shrugs. “Don’t we all?”

“Not really,” Sandra says. “Or, I hope not. I don’t think so.” She shrugs. “I don’t catch Sandy at it, if she does. Anyway. How are you enjoying the party?”

Neil gives her a look, and she laughs.

“At least it’s entertaining,” she says, sipping her cocktail.

“What percentage alcohol is that?” Neil asks her.

“Not high enough.”

“ _Neil!_ ” Natalie yells.

Neil goes.

Natalie is standing in a halo of her own righteous fury, glaring down Lorna, who looks poorly equipped to handle five-foot-four of rageful teen. “She’s trying to tell me off!”

“For what?”

“For yelling at Arnie!”

Neil looks at Arnie, who looks like he has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

“Don’t yell at other people’s kids, Lorna,” Roland says from what counts as the other room.

Andrew ghosts a finger across Neil’s palm. He’s had enough of this.

“No, you know what, yell at me,” Natalie snaps at Lorna, apparently equally tired of Roland. “Fuck him.”

Paige snorts.

Lorna looks at Neil, looks away, looks at Andrew, seems to find no purchase there either, and looks away again.

“Look,” Neil says to Lorna, pitching his voice so Roland can’t hear it. “No one got hurt. Did you tell Arnie off?”

“No,” Lorna says.

“Well, he started it. What’d you say to Natalie?”

“I told her it was rude to argue with your host.”

Neil looks at Arnie. “It’s rude to argue with your guest. It’s also rude to call them liars. Don’t do that.”

He looks annoyed, now, too.

Good. Proof of a good compromise is that everyone’s unhappy. “What are you making?”

“I just have to—” Lorna gestures at the kitchen in general. There’s something cooking in a crock pot, and a pot on the stove, and turkey in the oven that smells like it’s just about done.

“You get—whatever’s in the oven, and I’ll pull out whatever’s in the crock pot, and Andrew will deal with whatever's on the stove. Arnie, you’re staying right here, Andrew and I don’t know where anything is. Let’s go.”

“Why do I have to help?”

“Because we don’t know where anything is,” Neil repeats patiently.

“Why do _you_ have to help?”

Neil pauses.

He thinks of himself, cooking with Andrew, dinner for two, nowadays dinner for four, helping, even when it’s just _move food from package into instant pot_. Of Roland, twenty feet away, with a clear view of everything going on in the kitchen, Lorna cooking for the masses, and unwilling to help—the perks of an open-plan house, apparently, include the ability to watch his wife slave away in the kitchen while he does nothing. 

Neil looks at Arnie. “Sometimes, people need help, and you should help them, because one day, you’ll need help, and people will help you, and it will be a kindness you never expected. Earn it, or it’ll feel terrible.” He opens the crockpot—a ham. “Where’s a plate? A big one. This needs to be sliced.”

“If you’re good with a knife,” Lorna says carefully, maneuvering an entire turkey out of the oven—Neil understands nothing about rich people, although he supposes that the 60-odd people in the house need to be fed somehow—“this needs to be carved.”

“I can do that,” Neil says.

He switches places with her. “Arnie, I need a place to put—this,” he says, waving a knife at the bed of vegetables the turkey is seated on. “Got a bowl? Or someplace I can put the turkey?”

Arnie slides over a cutting board, Neil maneuvers the turkey onto the cutting board, and Arnie takes the tray of veggies. Neil picks up the knife, remembers carving up many animals, and sets to work on this one.

And then there’s an army of teenagers, hauling out plates, forks, napkins.

“Do we have enough chairs?” Rick asks. “I’ve got arms, I can carry some in if we need them.”

“Are we all eating now?” Lorna asks.

Rick shrugs. “Food’s hot.”

“The kids can eat later,” she says, apparently desperate to maintain some kind of child-adult separation. Neil would bet his house that Roland doesn’t like noisy kids.

“They’re hungry now; we’re hungry now,” Rick says, putting down his beer. “Do you have folding chairs?”

“In the garage,” she says. “They’ll need to be cleaned off.”

“Direct them,” Andrew tells Lorna, waving a knife. “I’ll deal with the ham.”

Lorna takes a breath, and then Neil understands why she’s head of the PTA.

There are folding tables, usually intended for summer parties outside; they’re brought in from the garage, cleaned, and set up. There are folding chairs, and they are cleaned off and set up. The mashed potatoes find bowls. A salad is compiled. Food makes its way onto the long counter, and a line starts up, and children and adults alike meekly await their turn.

Natalie joins Andrew and Neil in the line, and gently punches Neil in the arm. “You really fucking started shit, huh.”

“I didn’t,” he says.

She glares at him.

“He did this shit all the time,” Andrew says. “Eleven years ago, the Foxes were a wreck. Disaster. _Kaboom_. And then in pops Neil, and he gives a shit about exy, he gives so _many_ shits about exy. And then Neil realized he’d be sticking around for more than a month, and he wanted an exy team worth playing on. Suddenly, upperclassmen are mingling with monsters. Fast forward a couple months, and they’re halfway to friends. A little while later, he’s on Aaron’s ass to make up with me, and on my ass to make up with him, and suddenly Aaron’s relationship problems are solved, the Foxes are a good team, Kevin starts shutting up sometimes, we beat the shit out of the Ravens, and Wymack had picked his captain for the next year.”

Neil shrugs. “Sometimes, things need to get done.”

Lorna laughs at something, and it sounds like a real laugh—certainly, it’s not the polite one he’s been hearing. She must have _some_ real friends here.

They get in line. Paige is standing with Sandy, and she glances back, looking for Natalie, but doesn’t seem to feel the need to come stand by her.

Neil breathes. Many things are bad; some things are good. He exchanges a glance with Andrew. They’ll get to leave this house eventually; Lorna won’t. Some things are good, many things are bad. Neil desperately wants to be home, wants the doors locked, wants to be wrapped in Andrew’s arms, wants to think about nothing but beating Texas tomorrow. He hates being in public, hates not being able to hold Andrew’s hand, desperately misses the feeling of Andrew’s skin. He misses his friends. He misses his house. He glances at Andrew, and he knows Andrew’s thinking the same thing—they miss the safety that comes from being at home, surrounded by the people who know them best.

Well, they’ve only had that for a few years. If they could survive it before, they can survive it now.

It’s incredible, Neil thinks as he scoops mashed potatoes onto his plate, how fast he’d gotten used to safety and love. How much it distresses him to be outside of that environment.

It’s a relief, to sit down at the table. He’s next to Andrew—he’d have rioted otherwise—but everyone else he knows is spread out. Most of the kids are clustered towards the head of the table; he’s ended up across the table from Sandra and Rick, and, somehow, next to Lorna. He recognizes Noriko and Harry; everyone else is no one. Roland sits at the opposite end of the table altogether, an absolute relief to Neil.

Conversation picks up wherever it left off, undeterred by the food. Neil picks up snippets—someone’s looking for a new landscaper, someone’s trying to figure out if it’s time to get a new carpet or if they should get the carpet cleaned or if they should just switch to tile altogether, which after all is cleaner, but there’s area rugs to consider and those are all too easy to slip on—

“Oh, did you hear?” Harry says, leaning over to look at Lorna. “Ellen Lischer got _fired_.”

Lorna gasps. “ _Fired_? For what?”

Her gasp is echoed down the table, as two whole conversations stop and half the table turns to listen. An equal portion of the teenagers look up, ears pricked, eyes wide.

“Offending too many parents,” Harry says, looking absolutely delighted at the response. “Apparently she told Nelly Chowski to stop bothering her, and to spend her time convincing her son—not the young one, obviously, the older one, Jerry—to stop huffing glue.”

Murmurs, down the table.

“She’s not _wrong_ ,” someone says, smirking. “He does. He has since fifth grade— _not_ the brightest kid.”

“He’s plenty smart, mom,” a kid says. “He’d just rather sniff glue than pass tests.”

“Drugs make you stupid,” the mother says.

“Still, though,” someone else says, “you can’t just _say_ that.”

“That’s not even the worst thing Ellen’s ever said, though,” a third woman pitches in. “Remember when she told Jenna to quit and go to public school, because they’d offer her more opportunities?”

“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t _just_ what she said to Nelly,” Harry says, “this must have been building up for a little while. I heard they had a replacement in the next day—not even a sub, her permanent replacement. They were just _waiting_.”

Lorna clucks her tongue. “I’m sure she deserved the firing,” she says, “but that seems cruel. She worked at their middle school for twelve years,” she says, glancing at Neil and Andrew. “And she really _was_ a fixture. An absolute trip.”

“My favorite teacher,” Arnie says with relish. “She used to curse in front of us all the time.”

“You never told me that!” Lorna says, aghast.

He shrugs. “You’d have yelled at her.”

“Of course I would have,” she says indignantly. “Teachers shouldn’t curse. Especially not English teachers. They should have a big enough vocabulary to avoid that.”

Neil gives his dinner plate two raised eyebrows. Why is cursing really the biggest imaginable issue?

“Do you not agree?” Harry asks. She’s grinning. Neil’s lived with Andrew long enough to recognize a drama-lover when he sees one.

Neil shrugs. He really needs to learn to keep his face under control.

“Did you have many teachers who cursed in front of you?” Harry asks.

Neil and Andrew snort in unison. “A few,” Neil says.

“Where did you two go?” Lorna asks.

Neil looks at her, and realizes that she’s expecting some kind of private school. _Where did you go_ _to middle school_ , in the same way people might ask where he went to college. “I went to a few places,” he says vaguely.

“I went to Central California Juvenile Detention Center,” Andrew says.

“Oh,” Harry says. Visibly looks for the next appropriate line in the conversation, and then gives in—possibly, she can sense Andrew reveling in the promised chaos. “For what?”

Andrew waves a hand. “Whatever it took.”

Neil keeps his face under control. Summons every shred of self-control. Andrew is amused.

“Did—did you meet there?” Harry asks.

Neil realizes a second too late that she’s looking at him. “No, we met in college.”

“Oh,” Harry says, apparently on firmer footing. “Where _did_ you go to school?”

“Palmetto State,” Neil says, on firmer footing. 

“Oh, not for college. Where did you go, that your middle school teachers would curse at you? _A few places_ doesn’t mean much.”

“Yeah, Neil,” Andrew says, and, oh, he _is_ amused. “Where _did_ you go to middle school?”

“I moved around,” Neil says.

“Oh, did your parents have to travel for work?” Lorna asks. This is firmer ground, and she’s clearly desperate not to talk about her guest who went to juvie.

“You could say that,” Neil allows.

“What did they do?”

“Mom was a survivalist,” he says.

“And your dad just followed her? That’s so sweet,” Harry says.

Across the table, Sandra and Rick look like they’re struggling. Neil wills them to stay silent. “Well, dad was more of a home body.” Andrew huffs a laugh; at least _someone_ knows enough to appreciate that joke. Neil stabs a piece of turkey. Maybe if he eats, they’ll all move on.

“Oh, wow, so she traveled and took you with her?” Noriko asks, bringing another chunk of the table into the conversation. “And your dad was okay with that?”

“She didn’t give him much say in the matter,” Neil says. If he gives them nothing, they’ll have to move on, right?

“He never tried to bring you back home?” Noriko asks. “Didn’t he care if you even went to school?”

“He tried,” Neil says. “Mom flatly refused”

Harry laughs. “Your mom sounds great. He really never managed to get you back home?”

Neil is rapidly forgetting every argument ever made for truth, even the half-truths he’s been telling. He should lie. He should say his dad died of cancer. The problem is, there are multiple people here who would know he was lying, and all it would take is a google search to find out the truth. There are drawbacks to being known, as opposed to having an office job.

But he really doesn’t want to ruin dinner. It was going so _well_. “He managed, once,” Neil says. “It didn’t stick.”

Harry laughs again. “Wow, he did? Over your mother’s dead body, I assume,” She jokes.

“It was.”

Neil feels like a giant, wearing a shoe, and Harry is a bug, and he just squashed her.

“Oh, no,” Lorna says, doing her level best to salvage the conversation. “She must have died young. Was it cancer?”

Oh, god, this is going to just keep going.

Fortunately, Neil knows precisely how to end it. “My dad had her killed.”

He eats his turkey. It's very good.

“Pops, that’s inappropriate dinner table conversation,” Paige says earnestly. “Like, for real.”

He shrugs. _Pops_. He can practically feel himself glowing. Even if _pops_ is still the worst possible fatherly title.

“Is he still in jail?” Harry asks, aghast. “That’s terrible. Do you have a restraining order out against him? Jimmy’s a domestic violence lawyer,” she says, nodding at a man down the other end of the table, who raises his hand. “He can help you out.”

“Oh, no, he’s dead, too,” Neil says. “But thanks for the offer.”

Sandra chugs her cocktail.

“Who was your therapist?” Jimmy asks. “Anyone I can recommend to my clients?”

“I didn’t go to therapy,” Neil says.

Jimmy looks distressed. “You really should talk it out with a professional. That’s a lot of trauma.”

“Do FBI agents count as professionals?” Neil jokes.

“The FBI got involved in a domestic violence case?” Jimmy says, eyebrows pulling together. Oh yeah. The answer to that is usually _no_ , and Neil has failed again.

Sandra and Rick glance at each other.

Neil sighs.

This could go on.

He could squash it.

He _thought_ he’d squashed it _before_.

Allison’s voice in his head tells him to just tell them what they want and get it over with.

It’s not that it bothers him. It’s more that they’re eating dinner, and he hadn’t come over to be the center of attention.

“My dad was the head of a crime syndicate up and down the Eastern Seaboard,” he says. “The FBI was involved, yes.”

“Oh,” Roland says. “Are you that kid they call the Butcher’s Son?”

“That’s me,” Neil says brightly. It’ll end soon. It _must_ end soon. Surely, someone will get uncomfortable and start a new conversation soon. “Good to know my reputation has spread outside of exy.”

“Now, what was that like?” Roland asks. “Growing up like that?”

Neil stares at him. “What, you want a step-by-step breakdown?”

“Sure. I bet you got hit a lot.”

Neil stares.

He can see, out of the corner of his eye, Andrew’s amusement rapidly fading.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “That’s what happens when your father is a piece of shit.” And mother. He doesn’t add that. It is, he feels, currently irrelevant. And in terms of shittiness, Nathan vastly outperformed Mary.

Roland rolls his eyes. “Sure, but you grew up just fine, didn’t you? Kids these days think they have it so bad, when they don’t actually know how good they’ve got it.”

“ _Not being hit_ isn’t _good_ ,” Neil says, pointedly, like Roland is stupid. There’s nothing men hate more. “It’s just not necessarily _bad._ The bare minimum standard of behavior for a parent should be not hitting their children.” He’s so very tired of this. So very tired of the people sitting around this table. He wants to grab the girls and let Andrew drive them all home, so he can lock the doors and laugh about how terrible this was. “I don’t understand why my childhood is an example of how bad things could be, instead of a good reason never to get involved in a gang. My dad isn’t a warning to other kids, he’s six feet under, and a solid platform to dance on.”

Roland looks at him, and the mask is imperfect.

Possibly, not to others. Possibly others would never even realize it was a mask. But Neil spent over half his life terrified of a man Roland’s age, and Neil knows what it looks like when a man is going to take a hot iron to a child the moment the coast is clear, and Neil wants to take Lorna and Arnie with him when he leaves.

“You know, I’m surprised they let you adopt children,” Roland says, “given your pasts. They must not have done a thorough background check on you. Lucky break.”

Neil goes very still.

Andrew is a void.

Was that a threat? They’re safe on that end, at least—they’ve had the full background check, they’ve passed, all is well, but—was that a _threat_?

Paige snorts. “Neil and Andrew are the best guardians we’d ever had,” she says, and she’s not talking to Roland. She’s not even looking at him—she’s got her eyes on her plate. Neil wants to tell her to stay silent, to let Neil handle it, to stay out of his line of sight. “And they’re the best parents we could’ve asked for. Look, I’ve been remembering to chew my food, instead of just swallowing it whole,” she says, happily. “It’s pretty cool to have food.”

She seems lightly surprised by the horror of those at the table.

“Some food restriction might be good for the two of them,” Roland says, eyeing Natalie. “You don’t want them to get fat.”

“You’re never going to talk to my daughters again,” Neil says, and he can’t tell whether or not the threat is coming through—his blood is boiling too loudly for him to listen to himself.

“For worrying about their health?” Roland asks.

“Ever,” Neil enunciates, “again.”

Roland rolls his eyes and smirks, and controls the table. “Or what? You’ll set your ex-juvie husband on me?”

Neil sees red.

“It’s always surprising to me,” Andrew muses, “that people are so worried about _me_. What, just because I’m good with a knife? Just because I went to juvie? Just because of that physical assault conviction? I’m not even the most dangerous person in this relationship.”

Neil recognizes, distantly, that Andrew’s setting a trap, but can’t figure out why, or for whom, or what spikes lie at the bottom of it.

“Well,” Roland says, “between you and the kid whose dad beat him up, who let someone shred his face, you’re certainly the scarier one.”

“See, but that’s the thing,” Andrew says, surprise painted on his face by someone with a heavy hand. “Between Neil and me, one of us is a multi-murderer, and one of us is not. And I’m not the multi-murderer. I’d think people would be more scared of _him_ , but I guess I have—what’s it called? Resting bitch face?” He looks at Neil. “Is that what it’s called?”

“Oh, you're a multiple murderer?" Roland asks, dodging neatly out of Andrew's trap. "Is it true that the first time you kill someone, you puke? I feel like it must not be. Always wanted to find out. But.”

Maybe, if Neil pinches himself, he'll wake up.

But he knows it's not a dream. He can feel Lorna next to him, all too real, perfectly still, perfectly silent. He dislikes being the tool Roland is using to scare her. But if he refuses to play along and Roland pushes him, Andrew will put an end to this, and Neil doesn’t want to know how he’d do it. 

And, well, no one’s _stopping_ Neil. It’s the same morbid interest that makes people slow down when they drive past a terrible accident.

“Yes,” he says.

“But not the second time?”

“Correct.”

“What’s it like?” Roland asks. “Killing someone.”

Neil hates this, so much. So much. Hates Roland asking him this in front of Lorna. “Not great,” he says shortly.

“I’ve heard it’s like playing god.”

“I don’t believe in god.”

“So it’s not, then?”

“No.”

“Do the TV shows have it right?” Asks one of Roland’s friends.

“I don’t know how the TV shows you watch portray it.” They need to stop, or Neil needs to say something—Andrew’s getting angry. Not just _angry_ —he’s getting angry on Neil’s behalf. Dangerous.

“Well, why don’t you tell us?” The friend asks, like it’s a reasonable question. “Then we’ll know.”

Neil feels like a museum exhibit: There to be gawked at by people who don’t understand what they’re seeing.

Well, fuck it. “The first time, you aim for the chest. He drops. You vomit, and get in the car, and your mom slaps you for slowing the two of you down, and then you scrub your teeth in a gas station bathroom because you can’t afford dental care if the stomach acid erodes your enamel. The second time, you aim for the windpipe, so he can’t scream. With a good silencer, the only sound anyone should hear is the body hitting the ground. And if it’s a knife, you don’t even need the silencer—but then you need to go back for it. Fingerprints.”

“Holy _shit_ ,” Arnie says, grinning with the bloodthirsty smile of a teenager. “Dinner at your house must be _so much fun_.”

“It’s not, usually,” Natalie says indignantly. “They never talk about any of this. They argue over—what to use to clean bathrooms, and boring stuff like that.”

“Straight bleach,” Andrew says, just as Neil says “scrubbing bubbles.”

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew digs his heels in. “Bleach kills germs.”

“Sure, but soap scum, and also, bleach is bad for the cats.”

“Who cares about _soap scum_? I’d rather make sure there’s no mold in the shower. And the cats can be locked out until it’s vented.”

“You care,” Neil says, shamelessly throwing him under the bus. “And it gets rid of mold _anyway_. And bleach takes forever to vent.”

“You _just had this conversation_ ,” Paige interrupts. “Literally _two days ago_.”

Andrew throws an injured glance in her direction. “Don’t look at us,” he says. “Blame Natalie, she brought it up again.”

“Why are you throwing _me_ under the bus?” Natalie asks indignantly. “I can bring up another one.”

“What else do they argue about?” Asks Rick, looking endlessly entertained and thoroughly willing to talk about more harmless topics.

“Yesterday it was stick shift versus automatic,” Natalie says. “Last week was spent arguing over which Jane Austin book is the best—”

“Which one won?” Sandra asks.

“Pride and Prejudice,” Paige says, “by a landslide. But then they had to decide which was the _second_ best—”

“Sense and Sensibility,” Neil says.

“Emma,” Andrew refutes.

“Wait, wait, who won stick shift versus automatic?” Harry asks, looking almost reluctantly drawn in.

“Both of us,” Neil says. “It depends on what you’re _going_ for. Stick shift _looks_ cooler, and is way more fun, but if you’re going for speed, it’s _got_ to be automatic.”

She nods.

“You like cars?”

“They’re a hobby,” she says.

Neil feels a little like he’s just been slapped—who has _cars_ as a _hobby_? Rich people do. “Andrew has a Maserati.”

Her gaze snaps to Andrew, and then they start saying car things, and Neil breathes a sigh of relief. They’ve still got Lorna’s attention, but with any luck, they’ll never be invited back again.

“What kind of car do you have?” Harry asks, and Neil realizes with horror that she’s talking to _him_. “I got Lucy a Mustang—maybe not the best, but, I mean, it’s a _Mustang_ ,” she says, and Andrew nods. Neil is absolutely certain he’s never heard Andrew talk about Mustangs.

The woman next to Harry grins—Lucy, Neil assumes. “I think the first thing we talked about when we got married was what kind of car I wanted.”

“I have a Honda,” Neil tries.

“What model?” Harry asks.

Neil visualizes the car. “Civic?”

“Oh.”

“He’s not a car guy,” Andrew says.

“And he looks absolutely terrified,” Harry says.

“I don’t know anything at all about cars,” Neil admits. “And I bought the car without Andrew.”

Lorna laughs—is she just going to listen in on the whole conversation? Neil decides he doesn’t begrudge her this. Easier for her to listen to than the previous conversation, anyway, and she isn’t required to participate.

“I told him what to get,” Andrew says. “He didn’t even make it to the right dealership.”

“A nightmare,” Harry says cheerfully. “Not a scrap of car-intelligence, huh.”

“I’ve been told my learning curve is a horizontal line,” Neil says.

“By who?”

Neil points a thumb in Andrew’s direction.

“What had you done?” Lucy asks. “Insist on using scrubbing bubbles instead of bleach?”

Neil laughs. “Wandered off without telling him.”

“Oh, he’s _that_ type,” Lorna says understandingly.

Neil lifts an eyebrow at her. “What type?”

“Has to know where you are at all times.”

“No,” Neil says, backpedaling as hard as he can. “No, no, it was—he’d told me to stop making his life difficult, and then I went and disappeared for two hours.”

“The needs-to-have-you-around type?” Lucy asks, looking concerned.

“This is character assassination,” Andrew says cheerfully. 

“No, it wasn’t like that,” Neil protests. “It was—I’d just—it’s a long story. It was for my own safety, anyway.”

“This sounds worse the more you talk,” Harry says, tapping the table. “You may as well just tell the story.”

Well, fuck.

This one’s on him, he supposes.

Well. If there’s no getting out of it, he may as well go through with it. “Okay. So, I play exy, and back when we were in college there was one really good team, the Ravens, and they were captained by this kid named Riko—he was one of the first-ever exy players—and coached by Riko’s uncle, one of the inventors of exy—and he insisted that I spend a Christmas break training with him—wanted to see if I was any good. Anyway, I went down there for two weeks, but the Ravens, they didn’t work on 24-hour days, they worked on 16-hour days, and it—the Ravens back then were batshit, it was all exy all the time, screw your mental health, screw your _physical_ health. Their stadium has rooms underneath it, underground—we didn’t leave for two weeks, and there’s no windows anywhere. And they didn’t pull their bodychecks, or do things like help each other clean up after practice, or—anyway, when I got back, my circadian rhythm was gone, I was covered in bruises and cuts, I was an absolute mess, and I had a habit of wandering off, losing track of time, and falling asleep in weird places. And then I said I’d drive to practice with Andrew, except I went out to the library, passed out for two hours, and made us both late. And when Andrew found me, he reminded me that I’d only just promised to stop making life difficult for him, and asked if my learning curve was a horizontal line. So, anyway, it was for my own safety, and _not_ because Andrew’s a freak.”

Harry and Lucy open their mouths, looking more concerned than before—because of course they did—but Rick gets there first.

“I mean, after all that, it must have been a huge honor to be chosen as a member of the perfect court, right?”

“What’s the perfect court?” Harry asks.

“What?” Neil asks. The perfect court? An honor?

“It’s—Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day were the first-ever exy players, and from the time they were kids Riko would draw the number 1 on his cheek and Kevin would draw the number 2 on his—they were the best strikers, apparently,” Rick explains to Harry. “And then they grew up, got the numbers tattooed, and then Jean Moreau—well, now he’s Jean Knox—who also played for the Ravens for a couple years—appeared with the number 3 on his cheek. Riko was building the Perfect Court—the perfect Olympics team. The best players in exy. And then after that Christmas, Neil appeared with the number 4 on his cheek—so, I mean—to go through all that and walk out with the number four on your cheek? Even if Riko was crazy, he knew skill when he saw it. And you were still so new—you must’ve impressed him,” Rick says, shooting Neil a grin.

Impressed him?

It infuriates Neil—it shouldn’t, it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing—but it infuriates him that people don’t see the common thread between Kevin, Jean, and Neil—not talent, not skill, nothing of the sort. Riko playing mafia. Riko choosing his arena and dragging the people he owned into it, so that he could beat them into leaning his rules and then beat them at the game anyway, over and over and over again, on pain of death—marking the people who _belonged_ to him. An honor. An _honor_? People must envision it as Neil sitting down in a chair, so happy while a tattoo artist marked him, Riko holding his hand in case Neil was in pain, like something ceremonial, something Neil had _chosen_ , instead of what it was—blinding pain, and lost amidst it that prick-prick-prick on his cheek that he’d _known_ was bad, that he’d _known_ he needed to fight, and he’d fought it, “Pops?” even through the pain he’d struggled until, in the most neutral of tones, _if he keeps moving this won’t come out looking like a four_ , and then a hand around his throat and then blackness that he’d _fought_ , he hadn’t _wanted_ it, and people _still think_ —

A clink of a fork against his plate, loud in the silence, makes Neil blink, look down at his plate, just in time to see Andrew steal Neil’s last carrot. “Hey,” Neil says, “that’s mine.”

Andrew shrugs. “I don’t have any left.”

Neil reaches over with his fork and lifts a slice of turkey on Andrew’s plate, exposing the carrot which Andrew _must_ have known was there.

Andrew spears it. “Oh, cool, thanks.” He pops it into his mouth.

“I _know_ you weren’t raised in a barn.”

“Were you there? Lorna, these are delicious,” he says, leaning over to look at Lorna. 

“Thank you. Neil, are you okay?” She asks. Her question is echoed up and down the table.

“Me?” Neil asks, idiotically, like there’s another Neil in the room. Although, actually, there might be, there’s a few people at the table whose names he doesn’t know, but she’s looking at Neil, they’re all looking at him. “I’m fine, why?”

“You looked a little—zoned out,” she tries, looking like that’s not what she wanted to say.

“And that’s being nice about it,” Lucy adds.

“No, I’m fine,” Neil says, looking around, giving the table a smile. “Just reminiscing. But, no—Riko didn’t know as much as he liked to think he did. He liked people he thought he could mold, not the people who would turn out to be the best players. He never liked Andrew, for instance.”

“A badge of pride,” Andrew agrees.

“What happened to Riko?” Harry asks. “Did he—make the Olympic team?”

“Committed suicide in college,” Neil says cheerfully. “After our team beat the Ravens—the first championship they’d ever lost.”

“Jesus,” Harry says. “Where were his parents, that they let the kid get so wrapped up in sports? That they’d let him attend a school like _that_?”

“He and his father were estranged,” Sandra says. “No one ever knew anything about his mom—I assume she must’ve died when they were young. He lived with his uncle.”

“And they both lived in the stadium,” Neil adds. “Not very healthy.” He supposes it’s his duty, to bolster the suicide story.

“How’d his uncle take it?”

“Moved to Japan,” Neil says. “Resigned.”

“Did the new Coach keep all that up?” Lucy asks.

“Nah—they actually had to disband the whole team for a year. Closed the Nest, reintegrated all the players with the rest of the student body… it was a whole scandal.”

“You sound very happy about this,” says someone from down the table. Neil can’t believe none of them have stopped listening yet, but he’s still got the whole table’s attention.

Neil shrugs. “It was horrible—all those college kids—and I mean, we thought we were adults then, but we were really all just kids, you know?” He says earnestly, ignoring the noise Andrew makes. “And they were all shut up in there all the time—it was abuse, honestly, and having it all shut down was the best thing for them.”

“I guess you must’ve made friends with them, during your time there,” Lorna says sympathetically.

“Friends? Oh, no—absolutely not.” Andrew coughs. Neil ignores him. “They were all terrible people. But I can be the bigger person.” Neil refuses to look at Andrew—he’ll break down laughing. “I can want the best for them, even if they didn’t earn it. We all deserve second chances.”

“Where was the tattoo?” asks Harry, horrified—and as she asks it, everyone else understands: Tattoos are generally permanent, and yet Neil has no tattoo. But she seems to have gotten a little farther than everyone else. The rest of the table still looks confused. Harry looks like she’s figured it out.

Neil taps his burn scar. “When my dad’s people kidnapped me, they burned it off. Only good gift my dad ever gave me, really,” he says lightly.

“Say that again and I’ll kill you,” Andrew says in casual Russian.

“Hey,” Paige says loudly, “no Russian at the table, it’s rude.”

“Do they speak Russian often?” Lorna asks, clearly ready to move on.

“Apparently, they decided before they picked us up that it was rude to speak a language around people who didn’t understand it,” Natalie says. “But then, like, the _first_ thing they did was start chatting in Russian, and they do it _all the time_. I have picked up at least one curse word.”

“Really?” Neil asks. He hadn’t realized they’d cursed so much around her. In Russian, anyway.

“Yep!” She sounds it out, proudly. It’s heavily accented, but Neil figures it out.

He winces. “Oof.”

“Which one is it?” She asks excitedly. “What does it mean?”

“I’m not going to say it in polite company,” Neil demurs, to Lorna’s visible relief.

“How do you know it’s a curse if you don’t know what it means?” Noriko asks.

“They say it whenever they argue.”

“We don’t argue that much,” Neil says, frowning.

“Sure, but whenever you switch into Russian and get all annoyed, you say it,” Natalie says.

“What was it?” Arnie asks. “Say it again?”

“ _Ar_ nie,” Lorna says, shocked.

Harry butts in before Arnie can defend himself. “You know, back in August, Lucy got me this anniversary gift,” she says, and she manages to pull a chain with a little ball on it out of her shirt, in spite of her bowtie. “It’s written in 50 different languages—I’ve made a point of learning all the languages on it,” she explains, waving it around. “Specifically, it says _I love you_ in 50 different languages, and that’s why I’m _reasonably_ sure that what you just said was _I love you_ in Russian.”

Natalie stares, agape, at Harry, and then turns a betrayed face to Neil and Andrew. “You guys were going to let me just wander around _saying_ it!”

“Look. If you think we sit there and curse at each other all day, that’s—I mean, kind of horrifying,” Neil says. “But if you want to teach it to all your friends so you guys can run around telling each other you love each other all day? I’m _never_ going to stop you. That’s hilarious.”

“A curse word,” Andrew grumbles. “You really think we just sit around cursing each other out?”

“Why do you end all your arguments in _I love you_?” Natalie asks, hands spread wide. “That’s _way_ weirder!”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Neil asks. “Why’s that weird? And we don’t really argue.”

“You’re not _supposed_ to argue with your spouse,” Harry tells them. “It’s bad for your marriage.”

Natalie and Paige lean forward, eyebrows raised, in perfect sync. “ _Please_ explain to me what it is, then, when you get all annoyed and bicker-y.”

“A heated discussion,” Neil answers promptly.

“I would _love_ to hear the difference,” Natalie says, folding her hands politely on the table.

“An argument is two different sides, each trying to overcome the other. A discussion can end peacefully.”

“A good compromise makes both people unhappy,” Natalie says immediately.

“Not a compromise. Okay. First of all,” Neil says, holding a finger up, “you should always be able to end every conversation with your spouse with an _I love you_ , it’s not weird, you should love them." Neil pauses for a moment as a murmur of agreement runs around the table, a few people remaining noticeably silent. "Don’t go to bed angry and all that. Second of all. When you’re in a relationship, when all parties involved have decided that their lives are intertwined or whatever, you can’t argue over everything. You shouldn’t want to make them give in, or make them agree with you. It’s you and your partner—or partners—trying to make the best choice for you, plural, you-as-a-unit. So, like,” he says, hunting for an example in the face of their confusion, “when we were trying to decide if we should stay in the city or move to the suburbs, it wasn’t an argument. It was—which one would be the best for the two of us? Which would make us both happiest, which would be safest, which would we like the best? I thought suburb, Andrew thought city, and within five minutes we’d discussed it so thoroughly that we’d both completely switched sides. It wasn’t about whether or not I got what I wanted, it was about what would be the best for two of us. And that’s not an argument. It’s a discussion, which maybe gets heated sometimes.”

“Hang on,” Paige says. “Hang on. You spend hours daily screaming at couples on House Hunters for arguing city or suburb, and you had the _same argument_?”

“No,” Neil says patiently. “That’s why it pisses us off so much. We _didn’t_ have that argument. It’s—selfish, to see your partner go _I need to be here for work_ and to say _I like the suburbs better_. And if you can’t sit down with your partner and discuss work and raising a kid and where you’d like to live—why are you together? And honestly, half the time it’s so clear that they’re just not on the same page at all—one is like _we can’t raise a kid here_ and the other is like _well, who knows how long it’ll be ‘til we have kids_? So they can’t even have a real discussion, because they’re coming at it from two totally different places.”

“But what if your partner is _wrong_ , though?” Natalie asks.

“They’re not,” says half the table, sparking a table-wide laugh.

Sandra leans forward. “If you come at everything like _I’m right and they’re wrong,_ then either your partner will let you win everything and be miserable, or you’ll spend the rest of your relationship arguing. You have to come at it as, _they think I’m wrong; why?_ Like, you have to ask yourself what they see that you don’t. If you’re right, that’ll help you figure out where they’ve gone wrong. And if you’re _wrong_ , it’ll help you figure out what they know that you don’t. But honestly, a lot of the time there _is_ no wrong or right. There’s just different pages, and you have to get on the same one.”

“You can’t be _perfect_ ,” Paige objects. “No one can just _always_ solve their problems without fighting.”

“Why not?” Rick asks. “That was rhetorical, don’t answer it. I mean, sure, it’s hard, but it’s worth trying for, y’know? If my wife wasn’t worth being a better person for, I shouldn’t have married her. So you try, and hopefully, most of the time you succeed.”

“You know, I never would’ve thought to talk to my kids about any of this,” Noriko muses. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me. You do the whole don’t-drink-and-drive, don’t-do-drugs thing, but you never tell them what to look for in a relationship.”

“There’s no real actionable advice in any of that, either,” agrees Jimmy-the-domestic-violence-lawyer. “You tell a kid not to do drugs, but you don’t say _hey, if you’re feeling lost, talk to me and I’ll help you_. You tell them not to drink, but you never teach them how to figure out what their limit is. At least _date someone you can talk to_ is _actionable_.”

“Ah, but that might put you out of a job,” someone else says, laughing.

“Still, that assignment their English teacher gave them was a good one,” Jimmy says good-naturedly.

And then the conversation moves on to their homework, and the kids shut themselves out of the conversation as a strike-and-or-protest, and the next question anyone asks Neil is Noriko asking how the kids are managing to do so well in German, and Neil refuses to look in Roland’s direction for the rest of the dinner. Andrew's hand taps at Neil's; Neil takes his hand, flatly relieved about it, and Andrew gets into a discussion about Macbeth with Lucy, who was, apparently, an English major—never mind the fact that she’s an insurance agent now, she can still talk Shakespeare, and if she can’t they should take away her degree, she informs him firmly.

Eventually, dinner ends by majority decision, and Neil gently bullies Arnie into helping to clean up. No one notices—everyone else is helping, too, and Lorna looks flatly shocked about it.

Neil wanders vaguely away as Arnie, Natalie, and Paige exchange phone numbers. He doesn’t want them to feel like he’s being overbearing.

He doesn't want to leave. More accurately: Neil doesn't want to leave Lorna alone with Roland.

But what's he supposed to do? Hang out for the rest of forever until Lorna decides to get a divorce? She knows a domestic violence lawyer; she knows what's happening in her own house. Neil can't do anything.

So he follows Andrew out to the car, and Neil sinks into the soft embrace of the Maserati, and Andrew takes Neil’s hand, and they just sit there, car not even running, desperately grateful for the end of the night.

“Well, that was fun,” Paige says cheerfully. “Wonder when the next one is?”

“We might not be invited back,” Neil warns her hopefully.

“Oh, of course we will, are you kidding?” Natalie asks. “You know how people watch TV shows about serial killers and shit? They just got that, in _reality_. Yours will be the first invitation they print.”

“No. Not a chance. We just spent a full hour talking about German genders and versions of the word _the_ , they’re not looking for more of that, _or_ more tales of an abused child.”

“Well, they’d gotten plenty. Just wait until they get a chance to think up more questions.”

“I don’t want to,” Neil says as Andrew starts the car and pulls out of the space. “I just want to talk about German verb conjugation.”

“Go for Russian,” Andrew says, taking Neil’s hand again. It’s a relief. “None of them know shit about Russian—you can just go on for an hour, uninterrupted. Any time they try to ask a question, you just start chattering away in Russian. See what happens.”

“They’ll think I’ve had a mental break.”

“Eh, they won’t do anything about that, though. That’s free entertainment.”

“Anyway, you _did_ have a fun and terrifying mental break, and they didn’t do anything about it,” Paige says.

“I did? Oh, no I didn’t, I was just pissed.”

“No, you went all dead and scary, it was bad,” Paige says.

“That’s what it looks like when I’m pissed.”

“No it’s—oh, hey, Arnie texted. We, like, just saw him.”

“He’s sexist,” Natalie says.

“Mm. He can learn,” Paige says, distracted. “Nat, you’re in on this, too. Look.”

“I am? Oh, I am. Oh. Hmm.”

Neil glances in the rearview mirror—they’re both frowning at their phones. He hears a phone buzz, and the girls glance at each other, and frown more deeply. Their fingers go flying. Neil glances at Andrew, who is frowning at the road, speed dropping down to the speed limit, and then looks back at the girls.

Natalie clears her throat. “Um, so Roland is really going at Lorna. Arnie’s scared.”

She’s barely finished speaking when Andrew’s pulled onto a side street—making a u-turn.

“He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not sure if calling the cops would help, cause his dad is friends with a couple cops.”

Andrew hits the gas. Neil squeezes his hand. Yes, they both knew Lorna would be in danger tonight. No, there was nothing they could have done in advance.

“Tell him to stay out of the way,” Neil says. “Lorna can’t take care of herself if she’s protecting him.”

“Would Roland hurt him, though?” Paige asks. “Arnie seems really surprised. I don’t think he knew Roland was that abusive. I don’t think Roland’s beat him.”

Neil shrugs. “He’s only gotta cross that line once.”

“He—he’s asking if you can come back, try to talk to him. You’re the only person who’s ever told Roland to shut up. I’ll tell him we’re on the way.”

“Talk to him?” Neil asks. “He’d be better off calling the police. I’m not known for my ability to talk people down. That was a joke. He should _not_ call the police. Maybe—” Jimmy would be the obvious choice; Arnie and Lorna already know him, and also, he's the only DV lawyer Neil knows—but then again, what if he's friends with Roland? Neil keeps his mouth shut.

Paige and Natalie shrug. 

Silence for a moment, as Neil keeps his eyes out for cops—a familiar role, one he’d performed for his mom plenty often, her speeding away from their pursuers at top speed, knowing full well that getting pulled over would be a death sentence—their car in the system, anyone following them easily able to catch up to them. Neil keeps an eye out for unnatural shapes in the darkness, for the glint of a headlight, as Andrew speeds back to Lorna’s. They’re not far.

Roland is friends with cops—that’s a problem. Neil doesn’t trust cops to correctly dispense speeding tickets, let alone to handle a domestic violence situation. And Neil has no idea how to handle this without police.

Well, that’s a lie, he knows _exactly_ how to handle this without cops. The problem is that he has no way of getting rid of the body. Or of establishing an alibi. Well, maybe Lorna would be willing to run away.

Neil grimaces. He’s unwilling to go so far as to say this is his fault, but there’s a solid chance Neil was the trigger for this particular outburst. Maybe if he’d played along—made Roland look good—he’d acted without considering Lorna’s safety.

They pull onto Lorna’s street. Neil accepts the contradicting truths that he is not responsible for Roland’s behavior and that he could have feasibly reduced the severity of whatever Roland is doing to Lorna. And then he lets go of Andrew’s hand, and holds his own hand out, palm up. Andrew pulls silently into the driveway, one-handed, the other hand held out so Neil can pull out the knife in that armband.

“Pops, you can’t kill him,” Natalie whispers. “That would be bad.”

“I know,” Neil says quietly. “The two of you should stay in the car.”

He and Andrew get out, barely shutting the doors behind them—if they shut the doors properly, the sound will alert anyone in the house.

As they near the front door, they can hear shouting, a raised voice. Just one. Neil and Andrew exchange a glance. Andrew pauses, weight shifting, and then reconsiders. He tries the doorknob.

It turns.

Andrew looks at Neil. Neil nods. Andrew makes a face that says _here goes_ , and shoves his way through the door, Neil on his heels.

Neil takes the situation in at a glance—Roland, hand tangled in Lorna’s hair, one arm bleeding; Lorna, an absolute wreck. Roland looks wildly at the intruders.

No peaceful solution here. Neil throws the knife.

“ _Dad!_ ” shrieks Paige, behind him.

The knife handle hits Roland in the temple, and he drops like a rock, taking Lorna with him.

“I told you to stay in the car,” Neil says as he drops to the floor next to Lorna, helping her untangle Roland’s limp fingers from her hair. “Are you okay?”

Lorna looks up at him, scooting backwards. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t have done that, he’ll be furious. Oh, god, he’ll be so angry—”

“Arnie texted,” Neil says by way of explanation. “We weren’t going to let him kill you.” He pats Roland down, looking for weapons and finding none. “Does he own a gun?”

“Does he—he does, it’s in his dresser—”

Neil sees Arnie, leaning over the staircase railing, and lets Roland’s gun pass without comment. But he looks at Lorna, and sees her think it through—if Roland hadn’t been too angry to wait until they got upstairs to beat her, she’d probably be dead right now. She sits back on her heels, and Neil looks away, trying to give her some space.

“I can’t—I don’t know what to do,” she says helplessly.

“You were just supposed to talk to him,” Arnie says, halfway down the staircase. “Not _kill_ him!”

“He’s not dead,” Neil says. “Unconscious. Hopefully, concussed. If I keep hitting his head, I might be able to make him lose his memory. Maybe he’ll wake up nicer. Arnie, I couldn’t have said anything to him. I’m the reason he was angry.”

Arnie opens his mouth, glances at Paige and Natalie, and closes it.

Neil looks at Lorna. “If you want us to go, we’ll go, but he’ll kill you when he wakes up.”

“He might be concussed,” Lorna says hopefully. “He might not be able to do anything.”

Neil waits.

Roland’s fingers twitch.

Lorna sees.

“If you’ve got any rope, I could tie him up,” Andrew offers.

Lorna gently, nervously, touches her face, her hair. Neil wants to look away, wants to give her time to think, to process, to decide on a course of action, but—Roland’s waking up.

“In the garage,” she says, and Andrew heads in that direction.

Neil picks up the knife. He hopes he won’t have to use it again, but, well, he’s a realistic man.

Andrew comes back with a rope just in time—Roland groans, starts trying to move, and Neil pulls his arms behind his back. Andrew makes quick work of it, braiding Roland’s fingers together and everything. For good measure, Neil sticks a knee on Roland’s back.

When he looks back at Lorna, she’s staring at Roland, hands fisted.

“He used to be nice, you know,” she says quietly. “He’d take me out on nice dates. He always held the door for me. Carried in my groceries—wouldn’t let me lift a finger. Was always so worried about me. Wanted to know where I was, all the time—he was so worried something might happen to me and no one would tell him. He used to call himself my knight in shining armor. I didn’t _marry_ him like this. I’m not stupid.” She sighs. “I guess I’ll have to call the police. Otherwise he will, and he’ll have you arrested, and where will your girls be then?”

“They won’t arrest me,” Neil says, as Roland begins to realize he’s tied up. “The FBI is protecting me.” It’s a lie, but it’s true enough that Neil is unlikely to be arrested, or at least unlikely to be charged. Keeping one person out of jail is nothing to the Moriyamas. “You could go to a domestic violence shelter.”

Lorna smiles at him. “But he’ll kill me if someone doesn’t do something. He really didn’t like you. I think I was supposed to grovel. Be grateful that he wasn’t as bad as you are. Well. And maybe I’ll have to go to a shelter anyway, but if you think I’m going to let him get out of this one if I end up having to move out, you’re out of your mind. If I’m going down, he’s coming with me. Oh, god, I’m a mess,” she says, standing. “Well, maybe the police will feel bad for me. I look very convincing, right about now.”

“What—what are you—” Roland tries, squirming. Neil presses down a little harder.

“Go home,” Neil tells Andrew in Russian. “Take the kids. I’ll wait with Lorna, go to the police station with her.”

Andrew stares at Neil. Roland opens his mouth again, some threat, something horrible. Arnie, out of Roland’s range of sight, looks horrified. Lorna speaks, on the phone with the cops.

Neil leans down so Roland can see him. “You should shut up. You have _no_ idea what I’d do for some peace and quiet. I’ll chop your tongue out of your head. It can have a place of honor on my living room wall. I’ll pin it up, nice and neat, no Command strips or anything.”

Roland bucks up. Neil loses his balance, gives up, and just sits on Roland instead. “Don’t make me knock you out again,” he warns, and then looks up at Andrew.

“I don’t want to leave you with a bunch of cops,” Andrew says in Russian. “I don’t want to leave you alone with this jackass. _Fighting your own battles_ wasn’t supposed to mean leaving you alone with this.”

“I’m safer around cops than you are,” Neil says in gentle Russian. “And I can’t leave Lorna alone. And the kids don’t need to be here for this. I’ll be fine.”

Andrew looks briefly furious, and then he scrubs a hand through his hair and gives in. He gestures, and Neil holds out an arm, and Andrew slides his armband off his own arm and onto Neil’s. Neil picks the knife up off the floor and slides it into the sheath.

Andrew looks at Arnie. “The girls and I are going home. Do you want to come with us?”

“We are?” Natalie asks.

“What about Pops?” Paige asks.

“To your house?” Arnie asks.

“We are. Neil is going to stay with Lorna until she’s done with the cops. Yes, to our house.”

“Are we really sticking with _pops_?” Neil asks. “I sound like a cereal.”

Roland tries again to get up, one ferocious jerk upwards meant to surprise Neil. Neil is unsurprised, and unmoved. He knows how to stay in one place. Neil decides against looking at Andrew. Andrew might decide to stay. Neil can’t do that to him. Can’t do that to the kids.

“My _son_ —”

“I’ll gag you,” Neil says pleasantly. “It doesn’t take any special knowledge to do that, but it _is_ very uncomfortable.”

“I’m staying,” Arnie says. “I want to talk to the police.”

Neil hopes, desperately, that he doesn’t intend to tell the cops how nice and wonderful his father is.

Lorna returns. “You’re staying? Where else would you go?”

“Andrew and the girls are going home,” Neil explains. “Andrew offered to bring Arnie, but it sounds like he’d rather go to the police station with you.”

“And you?”

“Staying with you until you’re done. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

Lorna stares at him. “You barely know me.”

Neil shrugs. “I was taught that we should help people who need it, even if we don’t know them.”

“Your mom sounds like a wonderful person.”

Neil snorts. “Nah. Learned _that_ in college. Had a good coach.”

“No one else even knew, I think. About this. How did you figure it out? Actually, why are you _here_?”

“Arnie texted Nat and Paige,” Neil says. “Speaking of—you should probably head out,” he tells Andrew.

Andrew grimaces. “Text me,” he says in Russian. “Whenever you get the chance. I don’t trust any of these fuckers.”

“Will do. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He points at the door. “Let’s go, kids.”

“Do we really have to?” Paige asks plaintively. “If Pops is staying, we should stay too.”

Andrew ruffles her hair and guides her out the door. Natalie looks back, and Neil waves pointedly at her.

Roland tries to speak, as the door shuts.

“Shut up,” Lorna says. “No one wants to hear your voice. I’ll stick a sock in your mouth.”

“Mom!” Arnie says.

“I’ve heard his voice too much today, I think,” Lorna says, unperturbed. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

Neil raises an eyebrow at her.

“I’ve had enough,” she says by way of explanation. “I’m not hedging my bets. If I’m doing this, I’ll do it. If he wants to kill me, he can go at it, I’m not apologizing anymore.”

Neil opens his mouth to argue with her, to say something about being an adult and playing along to maintain her safety, but, jesus, he’s the last person who has any right to say that. And if this is how she’s holding herself together, who is he to tell her otherwise? “Fair enough,” he says instead. He’d always thought his loud mouth would come back to haunt him in the form of a knife in his back. He’d never thought he’d be sitting on a grown man’s back, waiting for the cops, wishing a woman would shut up for her own safety.

Well. So be it.

They wait in silence, the four of them, Roland having apparently come to the conclusion that it would be better to run his mouth at some sympathetic cops than at Neil and Lorna. Fortunately, it’s not a long wait; Roland’s friendship with them must have made this a top-priority call.

The cops knock on the door. Lorna answers it. She hasn’t made any effort to fix her hair or clothes. Still, she’s got a gracious smile on her face, the ideal hostess, welcoming policemen into her home to arrest her husband.

Neil stands.

“Who are you?” asks one cop, eyeing Neil.

Neil keeps his mouth shut.

The other cop flicks a glance at him, looks away, and then looks back. “You’re Neil Josten,” he says, and there’s something about the way he says it that makes Neil think the cop doesn’t just know him from exy. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Neil stares at him. Mouth shut.

“We know about him,” the second cop tells the first when it becomes clear Neil isn’t going to answer. “Don’t worry about it.”

Neil waits while the cops ascertain that an incident has in fact taken place. He watches the second cop. There’s something about him that Neil doesn’t like—something about the sympathy with which he looks at Roland, the fear-annoyance with which he looks at Neil, the considering way he looks at the house. There’s something there that Neil doesn’t like, something that shoves red flags in Neil’s face. Is he on the Moriyama payroll? Is he one of Roland’s friends? Something about the way Roland looks at the cop when he finally stands up tells Neil he’s got that right, at the very least. It’s nothing major—the first cop appears reasonably bent on doing his job, and the second cop appears willing to maintain that façade.

“If you’d like to come with us to the station, we’ll give you a ride,” the second cop offers. “You’ll have to give a statement. Probably, you’ll have to stop at the hospital, too.”

“Should probably drive separately,” Neil says, like it’s something the cops have already agreed to. “Wouldn’t want to crush the three of them into the backseat.”

“We came in two cars,” the cop says.

Neil shrugs. “Wouldn’t want the kid to find out what the inside of a cop car looks like, regardless. We’ll drive separately. Save you a couple trips. You’ve got your keys?” he asks Lorna, like it’s been settled.

“Right here,” she says calmly, pulling her purse out of a coat closet. “We’ll follow you there.”

They’re a fun little procession. Neil keeps an eye out for any odd detours, any cars on the side of the road—his paranoia acting up. Maybe. But then, he hasn’t survived this long by dismissing his instincts as paranoia. There’s something about this he doesn’t like.

"I have a friend," he tells Lorna. "She was in the same situation as you are. I can ask her who her lawyer was, if you want."

"That—I suppose that would be helpful. Thank you."

So Neil texts Riley, who answers promptly, and Lorna reels off her phone number so Neil can forward it to her.

He’s obliged to wait in the front of the police station while Lorna and Arnie head into a room, Lorna apparently oblivious to any odd looks, to give a statement. He shoots Andrew a text, and then puts his phone away. He doesn’t intend to be distracted.

But Lorna and Arnie return, Arnie looking a little bloodless, a little nauseous, Lorna looking unperturbed, like she’s spent her life giving police statements. They head to the hospital; Neil sends Andrew a text from the waiting room. Arnie sits next to him, silent, fidgeting with his phone, nervous. Lorna comes out looking a little more put together.

“I’ll drive you home,” she tells Neil.

Neil shakes his head. “I’ll have Andrew pick me up from your house.”

“Are you sure?”

Neil nods. He wants to make sure there’s no one in her house. He doesn’t text Andrew. They drive silently back to her house, and Lorna turns off the car.

“Don’t spend the night here,” Neil says, impulsively, staring at the house. “We’ve got space. Stay the night with us.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s—humor me,” he says, looking at her, struggling to articulate precisely what’s setting off all his alarms. “Roland is friends with cops. They’ve just been obliged to arrest him. They know you’ll be all alone here, tonight. Don’t be. Stay with us.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she says.

Neil shrugs. “What’s the worst that happens if I’m wrong? You spend the night in a bed that isn’t yours and then you go home. If I’m right and you stay…”

Lorna sighs. She drums her fingers on the steering wheel and glances back at Arnie. “I don’t want to impose.”

“You won’t. We’ve got the space. We don’t care.”

“I don’t want to run.”

“Running is an important part of surviving.”

Her face twists into a stubborn fury that Neil recognizes all too well—it’s what he feels, any time he starts doing something that would keep him safe from Nathan. “Sometimes,” he says, “you have to run to regroup. You give up now, because if you don’t, you won’t get the chance to come back later.” And he’ll never tell her this, but the idea of abandoning her yet again is more than he’s willing to do. He and Andrew had headed out a couple hours ago, knowing full well Lorna would get beaten, and he doesn’t particularly intend to do a repeat performance. He wouldn’t be able to sleep, remembering how that cop had looked around, had looked at the TV, the couches, the kitchen. Had looked at Lorna.

“We need—I need to shower. I need to change. We need to pack clothes.”

Neil shrugs. “I can wait.”

“Isn’t Andrew on his way?”

“No. I didn’t text him.”

“You should’ve talked to me about this when you got in the car, then. There was no need to wait until now to spring it on me.”

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to.”

“But looking at the house changed your mind.”

“I’m paranoid. I know I am. It’s not something I feel the need to change. It’s served me well. I can sit in the car and hope all I want that I’m wrong, and I can hold out as long as I want, because I don’t want to distress you, or worry you, because you don’t need that, but when it comes down to it—” Neil glances at the house again, dark and empty, and wonders how long it would take for the whole thing to burn to the ground. He shakes his head. “Don’t.”

“I hate this.”

Neil doesn’t answer. Of course she does. She must be in pain—she’s good at hiding it, and Roland must not have gotten very far down, because she’s not having any trouble sitting, but there’s a careful way she moves her arms that tells Neil that Roland must have hurt her shoulders. And now she’s being humiliated. And she can’t even retreat to her own home. Even now, when Roland isn’t in it, when it’s safe, she can’t go inside and lock the doors.

She gets out of the car. “Fine. We’ll be ready in 20 minutes.”

Arnie scrambles out of the car and inside, following his mom. Neil follows at a slower pace. He doesn’t bother locking the door behind him. There’s no deadbolt on this door, and without that, it’ll barely slow down anyone intent on doing any real damage.

He texts Andrew, warning him that they’re going to have visitors and asking him to set up the guest room. Andrew texts back—he’s installed all the deadbolts he’d bought, a couple days ago.

Neil paces. Is there anything he can do? Not really, short of blockading the house.

Fifteen minutes later, Lorna comes downstairs, wet hair pulled back, bruised face devoid of makeup, wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck, carrying a lockbox and a backpack. “Birth certificates,” she tells Neil. “Passports, social security cards, the titles to the cars, the wills—some cash—the important stuff. And my runaway bag.”

Arnie comes down a minute or two later, carrying a backpack, looking meek and small.

“Ready?” Lorna asks. “Toothbrush? Underwear? Phone charger? Great. Let’s go.”

It’s a silent ride to Neil’s house, punctuated only by Neil giving directions. Neil keeps his eyes peeled for cops. It’s in the back of his brain, prickling—something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong. There are some things he’s given up, in his quest to recover from his childhood—coping mechanisms that no longer serve any purpose, things he’d once done for his safety that were no longer necessary. His paranoia—his insistence on noticing tiny things, details—all of that, he’s kept. It never stopped being necessary. And all of it is calling out to him, right now. Every instinct he developed in his youth, all going at once.

But they turn onto Neil’s street without incident, and as they close in on the house Neil spots a short figure standing on the front porch and feels calm again.

“I’m sorry,” Lorna says, tense. “I didn’t mean to keep you out so late. I’ll take the heat for it.”

“I’m an adult. Who’s gonna yell at me? My parents?” Neil laughs at himself, and then sees Lorna glancing at Andrew, and every ounce of joy evaporates. “Andrew’s not angry. He’s worried. There’s no heat to take.”

She parks the car, smiles at him, and gets out.

Well. That’s one problem that isn’t his. Neil gets out and follows her and Arnie to the porch. Natalie and Paige meet them at the door. Andrew gives Neil a once-over, Neil kisses Andrew’s forehead, Andrew kisses Neil’s hand, and they join the girls and their guests in the hallway, where they’re all standing, looking horribly awkward.

“Hey, pops, what would you do for some peace and quiet?” Natalie asks.

“What? Like, now? It’s not loud,” Neil says.

“But if someone _was_ being loud.”

“Probably go home,” Neil says. “Or outside. Why?”

“See?” Natalie tells Arnie. “He was bullshitting.”

“What?”

“You’ll also notice we have no tongues on the wall,” Andrew says gravely. “Or eyeballs. Or ear lobes.”

“Or fingers or toes,” Neil says, understanding. “I’ve never chopped anyone’s tongue off and I don’t intend to start today. I’m not big on sadism. Or on murder, for that matter. I _am_ good at running my mouth, though, and I’ve heard enough threats to make some pretty good ones myself.”

“You scare him,” Natalie says.

Neil shrugs. “Not much I can do about that. Anyway, I know this was my idea, but I don’t exactly have any activities planned. Are we supposed to watch a movie now, or?”

Everyone looks less-than-pleased with that suggestion.

“We could go sit out back and smoke,” Neil suggests.

“That sounds good,” Paige agrees, putting a confused look on Arnie’s face. “It’s nice out.”

Neil leads the way out back, and he and Andrew distribute bottles of bubbles from the case by the door, and then they all pause.

Once upon a time, there were six chairs on the porch. And then Abby had mentioned to Kevin that she needed an extra porch chair, because one of hers had rusted, and Kevin had mentioned it to Thea, and Thea had mentioned it to Neil, and Neil and Andrew had taken a look at their rarely-used chairs, packed one into the trunk, and driven it over to Abby. She’d spent years bandaging up Andrew and Neil; they could give her a chair they barely used.

Of course, now there’s six people and five chairs.

Well, that’s easy enough to solve. They have folding chairs; they can bring one out. But before Neil can turn to head inside, Andrew tugs him over to one of the non-rocking chairs, sits in it, and pulls Neil into his lap.

Ah. “I worried you, huh,” Neil says in Russian.

“You always worry me. Blow some goddamn bubbles.”

Natalie takes the seat next to them, uncaps her bubbles, picks at the seal, gives up, stabs it with the bubble wand, and with extreme care, blows the biggest bubble she can manage. Within seconds, Paige and Arnie have joined her, competing to blow the biggest bubble.

Neil leans back, grinning, knowing full well he’s being annoying, and Andrew jabs him in the ribs.

“Don’t suffocate me, you big lump,” Andrew grumbles.

“Not two days ago you called me a stick,” Neil rejoins cheerfully.

“That was definitely more than two days ago.”

“I know,” Neil says haughtily. “That’s why I said _not_ two days ago.”

Silence.

Neil grins. He feels Andrew’s forehead hit his back once, twice—Andrew smacking his head into a wall—and Neil laughs.

“You’re an idiot,” Andrew says. “An absolute imbecile.”

“I’m not _that_ stupid.”

“You have never said a single intelligent thing in your life.”

“Beg to differ.”

“Then beg.”

“Please, _please_ , oh great Andrew, allow me to differ.”

“I will allow you to differ, but I require proof. _Not_ ,” he says, putting one finger in Neil’s field of vision, “something survival-based. Survival instincts are not to be conflated with intelligence.”

“That’s fair, that’s fair. Okay. Here’s the intelligent phrase,” Neil says, taking Andrew’s hand from in front of his face, wrapping it around his waist, tapping the ring on Andrew’s finger. “ _Yes._ ”

Silence.

“Speechless twice in 20 seconds!” Neil crows. “I think I win, this time.”

“You’re being weird,” Paige says.

“We’re talking,” Neil says. “That’s not weird.”

“Why do you call this _smoking_?” Arnie asks, apparently no longer scared of Neil.

“We used to smoke,” Neil tells him. “And then we quit. And now we blow bubbles instead.”

“Why?”

“Same motion.”

“I thought it was the nicotine that was the problem.”

“Addiction is complicated,” Andrew says, giving his bubble wand a thorough dunking. “Sure, I missed the nicotine. But, first of all, fuck addictions. I’ve spent too much time under other people’s power to sit around addicted to nicotine. Fucking stupid. Going to stand outside in the rain and get soaked just because I needed it. Spending all my goddamn money on it. Smelling bad.”

“You didn’t smell bad,” Neil interrupts.

“You like the smell, your opinion doesn’t count. Anyway, I am full of spite and hatred, and if those little sticks thought they could make me go give myself lung cancer, well, fuck ‘em. I’ve been through withdrawal a couple times. You get through it, you deal with it, and then you hold up both middle fingers and keep them there. Hard to smoke with two middle fingers in the air. _But_. I’d gotten used to them. When you smoke, you have something to do with your hands, you can watch the smoke, it’s peaceful. It reminded me to breathe. So my therapist suggested blowing bubbles instead, and now we blow bubbles.”

“Oh,” Arnie says, sounding oddly disappointed. “That makes sense.”

Lorna leans forward. “You _like_ the smell of cigarette smoke?”

“Smells like Andrew,” Neil says, grinning when Andrew snorts.

“But then why would you like the smell?” Arnie asks, frowning. “You’d have had to thought he smelled bad for at _least_ a little while. I’m calling bullshit.”

Neil shrugs.

“Oh,” Natalie says. “Oh, that means there’s a terrible reason why. You’re trying to give us a way out. You could just lie, you know.”

“I don’t particularly want to lie to my kids,” Neil says thoughtfully. _His kids_. He’s got _kids_. Incredible. “And I’ve been trying to tell the truth for a few years now, and I don’t think I should start lying indiscriminately again.”

“Evasion,” Paige accuses. “That’s evasion.”

“I never said I wouldn’t use evasion. Or omission. Those aren’t lies.”

“Figure something out for yourself once in a while,” Andrew murmurs in Russian. Neil grins. He’s becoming a hypocrite in his old age.

“So why, then?” Paige asks, ignoring Andrew.

“I mean, just because _you_ want to know doesn’t mean anyone _else_ does.”

“No, I’m very nosy,” Lorna says. “I want to know.”

“Arnie’s just a kid.”

“I want to know,” Arnie says indignantly.

Neil blows a long stream of bubbles. “Smells like my mom’s burning body.”

“ _Je_ sus,” Natalie says. “God. And you _liked_ that?”

“It was all I had left of her,” Neil defends himself. “I didn’t exactly get to take pictures with her. I didn’t inherit, like, family heirlooms or some shit. I couldn’t even keep her cell phone. I hadn’t seen her, undisguised, in eight years. I remembered her voice, and I remembered what it smelled like when she burned, and her voice was fading. Memories are imperfect. Usually.”

“Burning human bodies doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke,” Arnie says. “I’m calling bullshit.”

“And how do you know?” Neil asks.

“I read, sometimes.”

Neil hums. “True enough. But when you have a car, and a bunch of gasoline, and also a human body, and you light the whole damn thing on fire, it smells pretty much like cigarette smoke.”

Arnie thinks about that for a second, and then he makes a face, and then he makes a deeper face, and then he gags. “ _Gross_.”

“You’re telling me,” Neil agrees, and he blows bubbles, watching them drift up into the sky, watching the long stream of bubbles from Andrew’s wand end as Andrew wraps his arm back around Neil’s waist, silent comfort that Neil doesn’t particularly need but is grateful for anyway.

And then Arnie starts talking about school, and the girls eagerly jump in, and Lorna blows bubbles. Neil, recognizing that he and Andrew are no longer required to make anyone feel comfortable, rearranges himself so he can lean against Andrew without suffocating him. It looks weird, but no one’s looking at him.

Eventually, though, the chill starts to set in, and Neil—with a strategic push from Andrew—stands up, getting everyone’s attention. “Andrew and I are going to sleep,” he says. “Does anyone need anything from us?”

“There’s only one bed in the guest room,” Andrew says, “but it’s a big one. We set up a bed in the basement, too, Lorna, so you’ve got your choice of where you want to sleep.”

Lorna stands. “I’ll sleep in the basement,” she decides, and Neil understands—she’s so thoroughly battered that sharing a bed would likely be painful. He keeps his mouth shut, though, and shows her to the basement, and shows her where the light switch is, and Andrew shows her where the extra blankets are, and she starts to crumble. She’s trying—she’s trying _hard_ —to hold it together, but she’s crumbling. It’s been easy enough to hold herself together, listening to Neil talk about Mary, listening to the kids talk about school, but that’s all gone, now, and she’s got nothing to hang onto. Andrew and Neil say good night, but as they turn to head up the stairs, she blurts out: “I didn’t want—I just wanted someone to touch me without hurting me. Is that so wrong?”

“No,” Neil says softly. “It isn’t. And I hope you get to have that, someday.”

“Good night,” Andrew says, and he leads the way up the stairs.

They check the locks; Neil sticks his head out back to remind Natalie and Paige to lock the door when they come in; and then they go upstairs.

Andrew drags Neil wordlessly into the bathroom, pulls his shirt off, and spins Neil so he can see himself in the mirror. “They’re not there,” he says, pointing at Neil’s stomach. “See? They’re not there.”

Neil frowns at the myriad of scars, which most certainly _are_ there. “What’s not there?”

Andrew looks at Neil in the mirror. “You were tracing them. After Rick asked you about Riko,” he elaborates, “You started tracing every place he cut you. You didn’t stop until I grabbed your hand. But they’re not there. You don’t need to remember them.”

Neil blinks at him. “I don’t. I don’t remember them.”

Andrew taps a finger against Neil’s temple. “Somewhere, you do.”

Neil takes Andrew’s hand. “I’m sorry that you do.” Because he must. Those cuts hadn’t healed quickly; they hadn’t scarred him permanently, but they’d stuck around, every line. Neil remembers having Andrew’s hands up his shirt, sitting on the rooftop of the athlete’s dorm, where his fingers could feel every single ridge, every single bump. Unforgettable, for Andrew.

Andrew wraps his free hand around the back of Neil’s neck. “They’re not there,” he says again. “And Riko’s dead.”

“And I’m here with you,” Neil agrees, and then he lets Andrew put him to bed. Neil takes off Andrew’s armbands, Andrew puts them away, and then he snuggles up around Neil, breath soft on the back of Neil’s neck.

And then he whispers in Neil’s ear: “Do you think dinosaurs could talk to each other?”

Neil chokes on a breath, and then composes himself. He whispers back: “Like, in full sentences? I assume they could roar or whatever, like how dogs bark at each other.”

“I guess. But like, did they have a grammatical structure?”

“Maybe some of them were super elitist about it.”

“The T-rexes were probably _hardcore_ about never ending a sentence with a preposition,” Andrew whispers, tone severe.

Neil turns his head into the pillow to muffle a snort. “And I bet they corrected everyone else, and were really annoying about it, and all the other species were like _that is some bullshit up with which we will not put_.”

“They, too, understood the seriousness of ending a sentence with a preposition. Prepositions are _transitional_. Through, to, with, at—you can’t start a transition and not _end_ it. This is _serious_ , Neil. How will anyone ever understand you if you _start_ your transitions but don’t _end_ them?”

“Very Winchester House of us,” Neil decides. “Like having staircases that lead to nowhere.”

“Exactly. Good night.”

Neil twists to glance at Andrew. “That’s it? That’s all? I didn’t even really answer the question.”

Andrew snuggles down. “Just didn’t want you to go to sleep upset, love.”

Neil tugs at one of Andrew’s hands until Andrew allows him to lift it, kisses the inside of Andrew’s wrist, and puts it back down. “Mission accomplished, my love.”

Andrew’s lips are right up against Neil’s skin, so Neil feels it when Andrew’s breath freezes for a moment—and then resumes, soft and slow.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's a game in this one! also yakuza. tw mention of vomit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as per usual: I have done no research, everything in this story is bullshit.
> 
> ALSO: would like to formally apologize for a big ol' fuckup. named abusive-husband-roland in the previous chapter after a bad guy from another series I read, having completely and absolutely forgotten the bartender-roland who. literally already exists in this series. foxsoulcourt was like "roland is an interesting name" and i was like "yeah it's fun!" and then curvedyellowfruit was like "why oh why would you name him roland" and i was really like. why is this such a big deal? i do not understand? guys it took me ten minutes of deep and dedicated thought. so anyway would like to apologize for that, it doesn't mean anything, I'm just dumb

They’re on the way to the airport the next day when Neil gets a text from Natalie. It’s pictures, mostly, with minimal words to provide context. Neil grimaces.

“They wrecked Lorna’s house,” Neil tells Andrew. “Smashed everything smash-able, slashed everything slash-able. Burned a bunch of stuff, too—books, Arnie’s schoolwork.”

Andrew merges into the left lane and the car shoots forward. “Good thing Lorna and Arnie weren’t there.”

Neil blesses every instinct he’s ever had, puts his phone away, and hopes for the best. He has no idea how to help her. Certainly, the cops aren’t going to work too hard to find the people who did it. “If they’d just burned the house down, Lorna could’ve gotten the insurance payout.”

“Too smart for that,” Andrew agrees.

“She should get deadbolts. Cameras. A good security system. Maybe a dog. Is it weird if I text her? She’s probably already thought of all this. But, I mean, what if she hasn’t? What if I could help and I don't? Drew, _help_."

"Why are you asking me? I have approximately the social aptitude of a large rock thrown through a window."

"Maybe I'll text her. I'll just text her."

"Have we adopted her?"

"Maybe."

He texts Nadiya, first— _I saw the commercial, it looked great! Thank you so much for this opportunity_.

He receives a text from his PR agent: _Saturday October 12—interview with Gianna. Make sure you win Friday’s game._

He texts Natalie and Paige, who respond immediately— _we literally just got into Abby’s car, I was typing out a text, everything’s fine, old man_.

And then he remembers why he picked up his phone and texts Lorna. He dithers, types out a few texts, deletes them, and finally settles on: _Let me know if you have any questions about security cameras. Also, Home Depot sells this little stick-thing you can use on your door, so even if someone manages to get past a lock and a deadbolt they won't be able to push the door open_ , and then he mentally thanks Andrew for his smartphone as he looks up a link for the little stick-thing to block the door, and sends that to her, too. “I have an interview with Gianna Saturday morning. Wanna join?”

Andrew shrugs. “Sure. Should be a good time.”

Neil will never understand.

They wander the airport for a little while. They window shop. Every store has the same thing, but that doesn’t stop them. They get on the plane, and Neil reads, and naps. Ten minutes into his nap, he wakes up to find Maria talking to Andrew, who isn’t answering but is listening. He sleeps better, knowing Andrew is distracted.

And then they play Texas again.

Texas is raring for a rematch, excited and ready to beat the Jaguars, but Riley is grinning, and Neil takes one glance at her and starts grinning too—yes. Yes, this will be a fun game.

And it is. Neil goes on first quarter and faces a furious team—they were beaten last week on their own turf, they’re not going to let it happen again. It’s violent, and Maria is in her element, reveling in her well-honed ability to piss off her opponents, and Neil is ready and willing to assist her in that. He opens his mouth and lets it run faster than his feet. He crashes into his mark, one eye on Maria and one eye on the goal. When one of them gets an opening, the other gets them the ball; when they’re both covered, they make use of the wall, of the floor, of some of their fancier footwork. This isn’t worth pulling out any of the new stuff for, and Neil informs his mark loudly of this fact.

Eventually, though, they leave the court without any penalties, Neil grinning and Maria radiating a righteous anger that turns to a sharp grin when she passes Riley, following Kevin out onto the court. Neil is happy to see it.

He paces. Watches. Watches Kevin break, pass himself the ball, fling the ball at the goal from an impossible distance, watches the ball fly under the goalie’s arm.

Andrew shakes his head. “That man had eight minutes to stop that ball, watching it fly at his face. Kevin isn’t _that_ fast.”

Neil brushes his fingers over the back of Andrew’s hand, but doesn’t answer. They both know that Kevin _is_ that fast. They also both know that Andrew would’ve stopped it without blinking an eye.

Eventually, the second quarter ends, and their teammates head back in for halftime. They’re winning 7-6—not nearly the point gap they’d hoped for. They strategize. They stretch. And then they line up for third quarter.

“Andrew,” Neil says. When Andrew glances at him, he switches to Russian. “Shut down the goal, and I’ll spoonfeed you that cake you got last time.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll eat the whole slice in front of you.”

“Fuck you,” Andrew says as he walks onto the court.

“What’d you say to him?” Kevin asks.

“Asked him to shut down the goal.”

“He’d better. We don’t have any room for his bullshit today.”

Neil glances at Kevin, who gives him an unapologetic look. Well. Fair enough.

But Andrew doesn’t give Kevin any room to complain. He’s played this team before, with these players, and that was just last week—they haven’t had enough time to grow or change since he last played them. He knows how every one of them moves, knows how they play. They can’t shoot fast enough, can’t aim perfectly enough, can’t get close enough to get around him, and by the time the fourth quarter comes around, Kevin is buzzing just as much as Neil is. Kevin bangs his racquet against the floor as he walks on, getting Andrew’s attention, and gives Andrew a two-fingered salute. Andrew doesn’t respond, but Neil knows how much it means to him.

The last quarter, each side gets two penalties. Texas is fighting for their life—if they lose this game, not only will they have lost at home two weeks in a row, but they’re out of the running altogether—a shitty way to end their season. And their fans are roaring, as heated as the players, raging at the scoreboard as South Carolina’s score ticks up—10—11—12—and Texas’s score sits, unmoving, at 6.

When the clock hits two minutes, Kevin looks at Neil and waves at Texas— _useless_ , that wave says. _We could just sit down right here_ , it says. _Why are we even playing them_?

Neil laughs—the sound gets lost amid the sudden increase in shrieking from the crowd—and pushes forward again. He wants another point.

He gets another point, and Kevin gets two, and Texas gets none, and they’ve survived the bloodbath round. They’re in finals, for _real_. Three more games at least; four more games at best. One more week at least; two more weeks at best. Neil grabs Andrew’s hand, squeezes it tight, feels Andrew squeeze it in return, tight, unrelenting, Andrew’s own show of joy, and Neil doesn’t let go, not for anything, not when Riley slings an arm around his shoulders, not when Clark hauls him in for a hug, not for anything. Andrew is excited about this. He’s _excited_ about _exy_. If Neil got killed right now, he’d die happy.

He returns to his phone to find a text from Lorna— _I don't have any questions, but I'll let you know if I do. I'm thinking of getting a dog._

He texts back: _Mastiff._

They drive to the hotel, celebrating the whole way, and go to a team dinner, taking up three tables at a steakhouse and making more noise than they have any right to, but—tomorrow, they’re going straight from the airport to the stadium, to train for a few hours. The schedule comes in while they’re eating—Monday, they’re out in California for an afternoon game; Wednesday, Denver is coming to them; Friday, they’re in New York, up against Allison’s team. Neil texts the kids—the schedule, a reminder that tomorrow is the first Sunday of the month, a warning that the week is going to be tough on homework, warning them that they’ll have to have a conversation about Abby or Wymack or Bee staying at the house overnight. Not only does Neil not trust the Warren-Paganos, he’s now worried about the cops, too. And maybe it’s unnecessary, because the Moriyama name will keep Neil safe, but he’s inclined to worry that that protection might not extend to the kids.

And when dinner is over, Andrew declines to order dessert, drawing stares from everyone at the table.

He stares, poker-faced, out into the restaurant, and Neil keeps his expression under strict control. What else was his childhood for, if not to help him develop a solid poker face? 

Maria leans over. “You can tell me!” she whispers. “I’m your friend!”

Riley pokes her, and she waves Riley off. “Not Riley! _I’m_ your friend!”

“This is a relationship breaker,” Riley says.

“Shh, shh, shh, Ri, Ri, _shh_. Hey. Hey. Andrew. You can _tell me_.”

Neil sips his water. Andrew pulls out his phone and answers a text from Renee. Maria stares intently at him. Clark, on the other end of the table, starts up a loud conversation regarding Halloween costumes. Neil joins in, putting forth several ideas with regards to the use of makeup, requesting Maria’s input, too, since she _really_ knows what she’s talking about—

Maria shoots Neil a look, but joins in almost despite herself, until she’s carrying the whole conversation. Neil refuses to meet Riley’s eyes. He knows what he’s done, and he feels no shame.

Eventually, though, everyone finishes eating, Maria whispers “Is it high cholesterol? Are these doctor’s orders?” and the team splits up, heading for separate rooms, collectively deciding not to notice Maria and Riley holding a whispered conversation on their way to the elevator.

Andrew and Neil reach their room, and do much less digging than they had last week—it’s only been a week, after all, since they were last here. Their room is much closer to the ground this time, though, and Andrew tosses half a glance out the window and then looks meaningfully at Neil.

Neil orders the cake.

“You’re not feeding it to me, though,” Andrew says. “I’ve thought about it and I don’t think I want that to happen.”

“I could make train noises—chugga-chugga-choo-choo, and all that.”

“Oh, fuck, really? Well, _that’s_ a game-changer.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“No, I think it’s what the kids call _lying_.”

“So—not a game-changer.”

“No, not quite.”

“If I’d told you about the train noises back when I made the initial offer, would you have shut down the goal?”

“I’d have stood out of the way while Texas aimed at it.”

“Sounds like it would’ve been a game-changer, then.”

“You’re getting too good at this for your own good.”

“Too good at what?”

“Talking.”

“You could shut me up, if you’d like.”

“No, I like listening to you talk. You’re getting better at it.”

“That’s good. I’d hate to think you’d married someone who bored you.”

“Someone told me once that you were pretty entertaining.”

The cake arrives.

Andrew takes a bite, and then holds a spoonful out for Neil to eat.

He ends up feeding Neil half the cake, and then Neil tackles him, snorting with laughter. “That was _not_ the deal,” Neil tells Andrew, kissing his nose.

“I release you from your end of the deal,” Andrew says, sounding very solemn for someone who has just been kissed on the nose.

“I appreciate it,” Neil says, matching Andrew for solemnity, dropping his grin and holding his poker face until Andrew gives in and snorts an approximation of a laugh.

The next day, they go home.

They go straight from the airport to the court; the fact that they just played doesn’t mean they get a day off, not now, now when they’ve got finals. They work, and they work _hard_ , because this is it—this is _it_ — _this is it_. They can take Saturday off—they can have Saturday, because either they’ll be facing a week of hard training before the last game of the year or because they’ll have been knocked out of the running. Either they’ll be celebrating, or they’ll be mourning their season. And Neil sees it in his teammates’ faces—they can’t do that, they can’t, they can’t lose now. They can’t have killed it all season, only to fail when it comes down to it.

Still, they’d made a deal as a team, so they get to go home for dinner. Andrew and Neil rush their showers—it’s the first Sunday of the month. Aaron and Katelyn are coming over.

Neil and Andrew pull up to the house at the same time as Aaron and Katelyn do, and Katelyn unceremoniously hands Freddie over to Neil and drops a bag of toys into Andrew’s waiting hands. Aaron gives Neil and Andrew an apprehensive glance, clearly concerned that they might have a repeat of last month, but neither Andrew nor Neil deign to respond to that glance. Ideally, that will not be the case.

And, as it turns out, it is not.

On the contrary, Paige ambushes them as soon as they walk through the door and says—“Aaron, what kind of doctor are you? Pediatrician, right? You know, like, the basics of human anatomy, right? Hey, can I call you Uncle Aaron?”

Aaron looks outright alarmed, and he barely gets half an answer out of his mouth before Paige interrupts again—“Cool! Can you teach us anatomy? Renee is teaching us how to use knives and she said we need to learn anatomy.”

“Of _course_ you can call him Uncle Aaron,” Katelyn says, grinning wide. “And of _course_ he can teach you anatomy. Anyway, I’ll be cooking—”

She and Andrew hurry into the kitchen, not so much as glancing behind them to see the look on Aaron’s face. It’s one Neil recognizes perfectly well. This is the face of a man who is not prepared for two 14-year-old curiosity machines, and who is absolutely not prepare to teach them anatomy for knife purposes.

“We didn’t want to ask Katelyn,” Paige explains, herding Aaron into the living room, “because she’s a neurologist, and we’re not sure how much anatomy neurologists know. Or, anyway, how much they remember, years after they’ve learned it? And she’s cooking, so we’re not gonna interrupt _that_. Anyway, Natalie needs to know the quickest route to the heart.”

Neil grins, gives Aaron a finger wave, and dashes after Freddie. He’s spent months running around after the little monster; Aaron can teach Natalie about the soft spot behind the ear. It’s only fair.

Eventually, they sit down to eat, but the anatomy lesson doesn’t stop, and Neil discovers that, in fact, anatomy-for-knife-purposes has been left in the dust. Paige is on a roll; every sentence is a question; she’s got questions for Katelyn as well as Aaron; Andrew’s lips twist up for half a second as he looks down at his plate; Neil spoons mush into Freddie’s mouth and thanks god once more that he doesn’t have a baby and that Andrew doesn’t want one.

But, eventually, it starts to get late. Neil starts glancing at the clock, calculating how much time they have left before they have to head out. They clean off the table, Paige still tossing out questions, and eventually, Katelyn takes Freddie, Neil and Andrew and Aaron take some toys, and they deposit the whole kit and kaboodle in the car.

Neil and Andrew head back inside. “ _Much_ better than last time,” Neil murmurs as they step inside.

“Dad! Pops!” Natalie calls, and Neil and Andrew find them in the kitchen. “Help us with German? You've still got 20 minutes, right?”

“Sure," Neil says, sitting down at the table with them as they pull out books and notebooks. 

Not two minutes later, there’s a knock at the door.

“Aaron and Katelyn must have forgotten something,” Neil says, shrugging in response to Andrew’s questioning glance. Neil stands, waving Andrew off, heading into the hallway. He swings the door open.

Ichirou Moriyama is standing on the doorstep.

Ichirou Moriyama is standing on the doorstep.

Ichirou Moriyama is standing on the doorstep, alone.

Neil steps back, and Ichirou takes the invitation and steps inside.

Paige and Natalie explode out of the kitchen, Paige laughing, and then they stop.

And then Andrew’s there.

Neil shuts the door.

He moves to stand in front of Ichirou, drawing his attention. “Lord Moriyama.”

Surely, Ichirou wouldn’t have come to kill him with no bodyguards. No backup. No one to hand him a gun, to wipe it of fingerprints, to place it in Neil’s dead hand.

“Neil Josten,” Ichirou says. “And…?”

“My husband, Andrew Minyard. And our wards.” He doesn’t want to say their names, like maybe that will keep them safe. Like maybe Ichirou doesn’t already know. “Natalie and Paige,” he says, pointing. “They were just on their way downstairs to do their homework.”

Paige opens her mouth, but Natalie is faster, grabbing her wrist and hauling her around the corner towards the basement door. Andrew moves, less hurried, more calculated, to stand with Neil.

The basement door opens and closes, and as it does, Neil’s heart releases, just a little bit. Like being in the basement will protect them. Paige and Natalie, bleeding out in the basement instead of the front hall. _We will keep you safe_. Neil had never grown out of lying. He’d never been capable of keeping them safe; he’d always had a past, one that would always come back to him, one that would always threaten everyone around him, how had he forgotten, how had he lost that threat, the one from 10 years ago, when Ichirou had warned him that a single step out of line would get everyone Neil had ever known murdered? How had he agreed to bring a child into that, two children? He has no contacts, has no people. He can’t run—the FBI will be on him, the Moriyamas will be on him. Andrew will have to run with the kids. Neil sees himself closing the door on them, watching them get into a car and leave, sitting down in the living room, closing his eyes, never waking up. Andrew will refuse. Neil will make him see the necessity. Andrew will hate Neil until the end of time. _I’m not leaving you. I’m not going anywhere._ Neil will make him break those promises, will snap them like twigs. Useless, to make promises when the weight of the Moriyama empire was always hovering over Neil’s head. Neil will make Andrew take the girls and leave. They’ll hear the news, certainly, within a couple days, _Court Player Neil Josten Commits Suicide_ , and they’ll know the truth, and they’ll keep running. Will they go into the witness protection program? Can the FBI be trusted? If Neil runs, would they ever be safe?

“Someone,” Ichirou says, “should teach those children manners.”

“They’re shy,” Neil says, tucking them away in his head. Now is not the time for planning.

“Decades ago, the United States blockaded Cuba,” Ichirou says.

Neil waits. It’s been ten years since he last saw Ichirou. Certainly Ichirou hasn’t come over to give Neil a history lesson.

“A black market sprang up, almost overnight. Smuggling goods, people. My father took no issue with this. They were down south; we thrive a little farther north. There was no overlap.

“One particular group, however, was ambitious. It took over the others. Allied itself, rather improbably, with the Italian mafia, at which point we saw fit to acknowledge its existence. We have an accord. Our businesses are separate. You understand.”

Neil nods. Italian versus Japanese is not a war anyone wants, and if it's avoidable, then the smart move is to hold this truce.

“The Italians have a poor way of running a business,” Ichirou says, light derision touching his ageless face. “ _Allying_ with another group. It gives the Pagano family reach, and power, but little control.”

Pagano.

Neil swallows down bile as the world sways. It was Marianna, after all. He keeps his face still. He can hold a poker face. He can do that.

“The Paganos, of course, sent some family members to keep an eye on things,” Ichirou says, eyes fixed on Neil’s face. “Not _important_ ones, you understand. When you ally with a gang, you don’t send them _important_ family members. It was understood that the family members were expendable. But the Floridians were unwilling to bring down the weight of the mafia upon themselves; they protected the Paganos, and a couple generations later, the American Paganos began branching out. A daughter of the family married a businessman, who regularly traveled from South Carolina to Florida. Outside money, outside blood. Neil Josten, can you tell me the name of the man that Marianna Pagano married?”

“Henry Warren,” Neil says obediently.

“Marianna and her son lived in Florida, and Henry split his time between them and South Carolina. Harmless. Until, suddenly, quietly, they moved to South Carolina. Farther North, perhaps, than the Paganos should have gone. And Henry Warren doesn’t understand. He’s accustomed to money, and to the power of money, and not used to blood. It seems to have gone to his head, because when your husband attacked him three weeks ago, he went to his wife’s family and asked to have you killed. The answer, of course, was no. You are attached to the Moriyama name. The Paganos know that Warren is of little importance. They don’t realize that you are of even less importance. They were happy to sacrifice his pride to avert a war. A fight between mice is not the purview of the dog. 

“So Henry Warren scraped up an amount of money that could have kept his son living comfortably until the end of the world, and brought it to bear on someone else. Someone with a grudge against you already—you had made him feel foolish, when you asked him to force through your foster application, and orchestrating the mixup of your application wasn’t enough. Warren gave this person a job: kill you, kill your husband, kill your wards. Can you tell me how it was supposed to play out?”

Neil wants this to be over. He wants to kick Ichirou out. Wants to grab Andrew and drag him into the basement and lock the door behind them, wants to change all of their names and move to Montana and live on a farm and never touch an exy racquet again and never see another human being again and live in safety, wants to shield Andrew and Natalie and Paige from the rest of the world, wants to slaughter anyone who would so much as look at them wrong. “He suggests that I’m not paying my dues,” he says, instead, feet planted. “Getting above myself. He brings a superior here, to oversee the hit. Kills the four of us—just in case the kids knew the truth, they needed to go, too, as far as you were concerned; as far as _he_ was concerned, it was part of the job description. Frame one of us—Andrew, probably—and make sure the press rehashes every violent thing he’s ever done. And then your man collects payment from Henry Warren, and a job-well-done from you for noticing my failure to pay my dues.” He presses his hands to his side, desperate to stop them from shaking.

“And can you guess, Neil Josten, what would have happened if Andrew Minyard had killed his family and then himself?”

“Nothing,” Neil says, words hauling themselves out of his lungs. “A relapse. A tragedy. A funeral. And hardly any questions. We’re the ideal family to kill, if it must be done.” He can feel Andrew, standing next to him, smothered under the weight of his own reputation.

“I am not accustomed to weaknesses,” Ichirou says. “They spring up, in an empire this large, but I destroyed them, when I came to power. It’s been ten years. I expected some to show, around this time.”

There’s a silence, and Neil can read it. Ichirou had been on the lookout for a weakness, for a leak, for a fraying wire, but he hadn’t expected one quite so close to home.

“These weaknesses seem to find you,” Ichirou muses. “It’s odd.”

Neil’s feet feel nailed to the floor. He should beg. For Andrew. For the girls. Andrew won’t talk—no one would listen to him anyway—and the girls don’t know enough, or, at least, Neil can lie well enough to tell Ichirou that. There’s no need to kill them. He should beg. He should fall to his knees and put his forehead on the floor. He feels like he’s in a nightmare, knowing full well he should do something, and being incapable of doing it. His stomach informs him that if he moves or opens his mouth, he’s going to vomit, but that shouldn’t stop him. Although it would be a shame to puke on Ichirou’s shoes.

“I have spoken with the Paganos,” Ichirou says. “They agreed that, perhaps, now is the wrong time to expand.

“I told you once that people gain value in my empire through the blood they spill in my service. You had spilled none, at the time, and had performed no service.” Ichirou waves a hand. “You were a child, and your money was sufficient. You are no longer a child. I offer you this: A position in my empire. Not the one your father held; it’s difficult to maintain a career in exy _and_ the amount of power Nathan held, and your disappearance from exy would raise eyebrows. But it would grant you power you otherwise will never have. You could kill Henry Warren yourself. The Paganos do not know that you are, currently, as worthless as you are. They would view it as retaliation for an unapproved insult, and Marianna Pagano would go back to Italy. She failed to keep her husband in line.”

Neil feels his life closing around him like a vise. He’d thought he could escape. He’d thought he could walk away. He’d been so looking forward to getting old. To dying of a heart attack in his sleep. To dying as Neil Josten, beloved husband and father. The urge to run strains the muscles in his legs.

Andrew is standing next to him.

He felt that, before, but now he _knows_ it, and his feet stay planted in place, digging into the wood floor of the front hallway of his _home_. He _fought_ for this. He will not give up on it, not this easily.

He bows, straight-backed, parallel with the floor. “Lord Moriyama. I am honored by your offer. I cannot convey my gratitude that you have chosen to grant me this opportunity. But I cannot accept. Please view the blood I spilled, not as a request for power, but as a sign of appreciation from myself and my family for your continued patronage.”

He straightens, looks at Ichirou’s nose, and waits.

“Nathaniel Wesninski, you are your father’s son,” Ichirou says, and it’s not a compliment. “You have shown, over the past ten years, an ability to turn to your favor many things that would have gotten others killed. There are few who would dare remind my people that—for instance—the foster care system should be incapable of finding out about your involvement with my family, and should be ready and willing to overlook Minyard’s past, given my brother’s involvement in Minyard’s most public scandal. I am unwilling to allow you to use your meager service as collateral next time you decide you want something done.”

“I understand,” Neil says. And he does. This is not the giving over of power—Ichirou isn’t saying that Neil now has something to hold over Ichirou’s head. This is a threat. If Neil tries to use this, as leverage or a threat—death, destruction, et cetera. Bringing Neil back into the fold would negate all of that. “I have promised my children that I will keep them safe. I am not doing that quite as well as I could. Clearly. But taking you up on your offer would put them in immediate danger, and so I cannot. I will never mention the incident again.”

Silence.

Neil waits.

He can’t breathe.

“It is for the best,” Ichirou says, “as I don’t see that you could control anyone particularly well at all.” His gaze is floating over Neil’s shoulder. “Even your children don’t follow your orders.”

Neil twists so fast his back cracks.

He sees nothing.

“Come here,” Ichirou commands.

For a second, Neil expects the cats. And then, for another second, he expects nothing—expects to have to pretend Ichirou Moriyama is not hallucinating. And then a third second, during which Neil expects Ichirou to pull out a gun and shoot through the wall to kill whoever’s hiding from him. And then Natalie and Paige step out into the hallway, terrified and defiant.

“It’s my fault,” Paige says immediately. Natalie tries to step in front of her, but Paige steps forward. “I wanted to listen.”

Neil’s stomach shoots acid into his throat. “I’ll discipline them,” he says, frantic, twisting to face Ichirou, “they won’t do it again. I’ll make sure they won’t.”

Ichirou raises an eyebrow. “I could kill them. It would free you up rather quickly.”

He should fall to his knees. He should beg. But if he does, he can’t dive in front of a bullet, can’t tackle Ichirou (that would kill them, it would kill them all,) or save them.

Nathan would never have begged.

Neil Josten says: “I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t.”

Amusement flickers across Ichirou’s face, a foreign emotion. “You brought a threat to my attention once before, and I gave you your life, Jean Moreau’s life, and Kevin Day’s life. Two days ago, you spared me some rearranging, and brought another threat to my attention. I will give you the lives of Andrew Minyard and Natalie and Paige Gray. They will be equally untouchable. Our prior arrangement remains unaffected. You will, however, maintain a permanent residence in South Carolina. You will not sign with another team.”

“What do you mean?” Neil asks, alarm bells going off in his head even as Ichirou speaks. “You’re giving me their lives. What does that mean for them?” He shuts his mouth on the rest of that statement. He’s willing to make sacrifices. He’s not willing to force them upon Natalie, Paige, and Andrew, though. But to say it would be to antagonize Ichirou, and that’s not a good idea.

“It means little to nothing for them, except that if you step out of line, they will die.”

“Why are you giving them to me?” He should stop asking questions. But he can’t handle it. What does Ichirou mean, that he gave Kevin and Jean to Neil?

Ichirou looks at Neil. “Decades ago, my father sanctioned an experiment. The hypothesis was this: If you take a child, and break that child, and destroy all sense of individuality, and then hand them something shiny, they will love that shiny thing. Hand them exy, and put exy on a leash that leads back to us. Raise them until they can make vast amounts of money, and they’re an investment that pays impressive dividends. Marry them off, take their children, and repeat.”

Neil thinks about Jean and Jeremy—their last facebook post showed them on the beach, in the sun, laughing with their son and daughter.

“My uncle received two children. It should have been three,” he says, eyes boring into Neil, “but we must all work with the resources we are given.

“Kevin Day loved exy. My brother tried to take it away from him, and we discovered that exy wasn’t a leash, it was a lifeline. Without your intervention, I’d have had to kill him when I killed Riko, and would have lost a rather remarkable amount of money.

“Jean Moreau—another failed experiment. Perhaps if he had not been given to my brother, he would have succeeded, but we’ll never know. Without the intervention of yourself and your friends, we would have faced a scandal and investigation of distressing proportions, and lost a rather remarkable amount of money.

“Nathaniel Wesninski. Older than the other two, by the time he came to us, but his father had already done the breaking. His mother had already dangled in front of him the shiny object.

“If I sent a hit man, right now, to Day or to Moreau, neither one would kill him. They would fight; they love their families. But they would lose. They would not kill the hit man, check on their families, and then request a new rug for their front hallway. They would not sweep up glass and offer children Nutella while a body lay in their front hallways. If I had tried to speak to either of them ten years ago instead of to you, all three of you would now be dead. If I had asked them to beg for their lives, they would have begged. I asked you to beg for your life, once, and you told me to kill my brother. And they would not have been able to cover for two other people. You once walked, voluntarily, into Evermore, knowing full well what was there, when neither Day nor Moreau could have ever done that—and then, two weeks later, walked out, chopped to pieces, freedom intact, and then looked at a camera and insulted my brother, my uncle, and the Ravens. 

“I don’t want your kids, or your husband. I know better than to take children, or to require unwilling spouses to give up those children. What I want is this: The man who, handed a lit match, lights a bonfire instead of blowing it out.

“You will stay in South Carolina,” he says again. “You will stand here as a reminder that the Moriyamas have a presence here, and that those who try to encroach on our territory will fail. This is not cruel and unusual punishment. You can come home every day and have dinner with your husband and children, and if the Paganos and their smugglers stay quiet, you may never be needed again. Or, perhaps, someone else will stir, someone else will attempt to outgrow themselves, and you will be here, and you will kill a hit man, and protect my territory.”

Neil bows again.

The Paganos must have been a problem. A big one. And Ichirou hadn’t even known they’d been moving, until Andrew brought them, violently, to his attention.

And then he straightens. “Lord Moriyama.”

Ichirou waits.

Neil’s whole stomach is tangled in knots; this, perhaps, is not a good idea. “There is a pre-existing threat to the lives you just gave me.”

Ichirou waits.

“A man by the name of Trent Franklin. He lives in Colorado.”

Ichirou smiles, and it’s a cold, hard, cruel thing, made all the worse by the fact that Neil is fully familiar with that kind of smile. “Of course. The one who got stabbed by an orphan, and decided not to press charges.”

“He could never have taken them to court.” Paige wouldn’t speak to protect herself, but to protect Natalie? She might have spilled her guts, and Trent would have gone to prison. Pedophiles don’t do well in prison.

“An odd thing,” Ichirou says. And then: “Goodbye.” But he isn’t looking at Neil.

“Goodbye,” Natalie says, “Lord Moriyama.”

Paige echoes her, quietly.

“You should ensure they receive an education in manners,” Ichirou says. And then he looks at Neil. “If you lie to me, their lives are forfeit.”

Neil nods.

Ichirou turns and shows himself out the front door.

Andrew turns and grabs the trash can, and Neil vomits into it. His knees hit the ground. He puts his forehead to the cool wood of the floor. Andrew sits next to him, tangling their hands together, and Neil can’t tell which one of them is holding on harder.

“Are we going to die?” Natalie asks, startlingly calm. No—that’s the trauma.

Neil sits up, but his legs won’t let him stand, so he doesn’t try. He slides into Andrew, turning so he can see the girls. “No,” Neil promises. As long as he can uphold his end of the bargain. “No. You’re untouchable.” He holds out a hand to them, and Paige stumbles forward, dragging Natalie with her, until they fall to the ground next to Neil and Andrew, Paige sticking her face in Neil’s shoulder and Natalie falling against Neil’s chest. Andrew leans against Neil’s back.

“How are you going to discipline us?” Paige asks.

“Oh. Oh, no—I just didn’t want Ichirou to think he needed to do any kind of disciplining,” Neil says, half-laughing, the thrill of survival spiking. The odd feeling that he’s pulled the wool over Ichirou’s eyes. He grips his daughters, leans his head against his husband’s hair. Alive, all four of them, still. “No, I’m not doing anything to you. Don’t do it again, though. There are people you can eavesdrop on, but Ichirou is not one of them. I’m not going to hurt you. There’s no punishment.”

Neil breathes, trying to bring his heart rate down. Not through his mouth—he doesn’t want to breathe puke breath all over Natalie. He counts, and his blood pressure goes down. He doesn’t want to move, and that’s only partially because he still doesn’t think he can stand.

“Why would he do that?” Natalie asks Neil’s shirt. “Why not just kill us and take you? Why even—that was _nice_.”

“I need to brush my teeth,” Neil says.

The four of them stand, which is a mess. Neil leans on Andrew, but his legs are useless—all his muscles are sore—he’d probably been holding them tense the entire time Ichirou was here, just to stay standing. Before he can take a step, let alone attempt the stairs, Andrew dips down and scoops Neil up, bridal style. Neil grabs Andrew’s shirt, surprised, but he’s not complaining—Andrew’s arms are sturdy, comforting, and Neil feels safe, feels shockingly calm. With some detachment, he remembers kneeling on the ground for an indeterminate length of time, alone, last time Ichirou visited him, and he clutches at Andrew, relieved to have him here.

Andrew glances over his shoulder, and Neil looks, too, in time to see Natalie go for the door—Neil almost stops her, like maybe the door is booby trapped, like maybe Ichirou put anthrax on it on his way out, but she gets there and locks and bolts the door, and Paige ties off the bag in the trash can so no one has to smell Neil’s vomit, and the two of them follow Neil and Andrew upstairs.

Andrew doesn’t set Neil down until they make it to the bathroom, and even then, Andrew wraps his arms around Neil’s waist and presses his forehead against Neil’s spine as Neil brushes his teeth. It’s a relief. He’s not usually a puker.

But even now, standing in his bathroom with Andrew, safe, with his family reasonably safe, his legs won’t stop shaking. They could have all just died, again. Neil is an instigator. Neil can needle and provoke and push. Neil is not known for using his words to bring peace and calm to yakuza. The thrill of winning that fight vanishes, replaced with that strange urge to replay the moment again and again, complete with edits—maybe they’re all dead, and Neil just hasn’t realized it—Neil on his knees begging for them, no longer entertaining enough to keep alive—his little family, all bleeding to death in the front hallway—

He drinks right from the sink, and then takes one of Andrew’s hands and takes a deep breath.

“Lived another day,” Andrew says quietly.

“This whole _barely surviving_ thing is getting exhausting,” Neil says.

“Yes or no?” Andrew asks, making good use of his grip on Neil to turn Neil around to face Andrew.

“Yes.”

Kissing Andrew is a grounding, calming force, for all it makes Neil's heart race. Neil clings to him for a moment—warm, alive, here, breathing—and then Neil pulls him out of the bathroom.

Natalie and Paige are sitting on Neil and Andrew’s bed. Alive. Breathing. Neil glances at the closet, where the safe full of money sits, and considers raiding it, waiting a few hours, and then vanishing. It would be easy enough to ditch the car somewhere, steal someone else’s, swap license plates. They’ll have to ditch cars altogether somewhere—Neil has stowed away on trains before, they could probably do it again, it would be hard but doable—and that would interrupt their trail enough. Call Uncle Stewart—this is an emergency; no one ever need know that Stewart had given Neil names, numbers, a place to go—

Neil considers his options, and then sits on the floor. Andrew sits next to him, and then grabs Neil around the waist and pulls Neil into his lap. Neil should try harder not to worry him.

“When I was young,” Neil says, squeezing Andrew’s hand, “I was always— _surprised_ by how many people wanted to work for my dad. It wasn’t all of them, for sure. And the people who failed him always regretted working for him. But—but he had people, people who were _desperately_ loyal to him, who would do anything he asked. For some people, _anything_ meant a lot more than it did to others.

“This is important, because someone who knows enough can bring the whole thing down. It would have been easy enough for some of the people who worked for Nathan to hop on over to the FBI, enter witness protection, and bring the whole thing crashing down. And, sure, Nathan could have killed everyone that person had ever known—but it wouldn’t bring his empire back. And if Nathan himself died? Again—his people could have killed everyone that person had ever known, it wouldn’t bring Nathan back. So threats are all well and good—and, often, necessary—but when it comes to the running of a criminal empire, you want to surround yourself with people who want what you have to offer. Power? Money? An outlet for their sadism? If someone says _I want to torture people_ and you put them in charge of that, they’ll love you. They’ll never tell. Offered complete amnesty, they won’t tell, because telling would end their ability to torture others. Ichirou is smart. He knows this. And he knows what people want, and what they’ll fight for. If Kevin had been given to Ichirou instead of Riko, Kevin never would’ve left; Ichirou never would’ve made the mistake of taking away exy. 

“Ichirou wants something. He wants someone to sit down south and look scary. Not _obviously_ scary, not someone who’s going to draw attention to it, but someone who, if the right person is looking, will serve as a warning. You don’t send important members of a gang to sit around and look threatening, but you can’t risk leaving that to someone who might defect, either. So he’s making me that person. I can do it, I’ve proven that I can do it, and all _he_ has to do is offer me exactly what I’ve already got. He can’t take it _away_ from me; if he tries to take the two of you, or take Andrew, I’ll leave. If he tries to bring the two of you in, I’ll go batshit—he learned _that_ one from my mother. So he won’t do any of that, because he doesn’t need to, and because keeping track of two kids is a lot of work, and because Ichirou isn’t in the business of torture. He has other people for that. He’s in the business of murder, and of power, and of making lots of money while doing it, and I’ll contribute to that, happily, for the rest of my life, and all he has to do is tell me that it’s keeping you three safe. No arguments. No threatening. No torturing. No keeping track of money. No keeping an eye on me, to make sure I’m not getting restless. No work on his part at all. One trip to South Carolina, one ten-minute conversation, and he's gotten both a vacation and a Southern outpost for the rest of my life—and not only does he not have to pay me, because I’m not technically an employee, but _I_ am going to pay _him_ until I retire from exy. Neat. Clean. Done.”

Neil mulls it over, because that’s not entirely true—although, actually, maybe it is. Neil can be a pain in the ass, and he considers poking the bear pretty regularly, but realistically, he rarely interacts with the Moriyamas. He interacts with them so little that he forgot to warn them he was going to adopt Natalie and Paige. Ichirou has barely had to think about him at all for years, now—although, Neil realizes, skin crawling, that Ichirou had clearly kept up-to-date, had known who Trent Franklin was. And—how had he known that? “Andrew,” Neil says, twisting to look Andrew in the eye, “You would notice if we came home and something was out of place, right?”

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

“I mean. If we went to work, and someone came in and installed cameras, or microphones, you would notice if something was moved, right?”

Andrew freezes.

Neil gives him a minute, sorting through his own memories—he’s in the business of noticing things, too, even if his memory isn’t perfect. Still. He notices things, and remembers them, and he remembers nothing like this. Nothing that would set off alarm bells, even retroactively.

“I would,” Andrew says at last, relaxing. “Assuming it was someplace I would look, and there aren’t many places in the house where I _don’t_ look. But there’s nothing. Nothing out of place.”

Neil leans against him. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Lucky his husband has an eidetic memory. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

“Cameras?” Paige says, and then Neil sees when she understands. “How else could he—know?”

“It’s possible,” Neil says, thinking through his initial panic. “It’s not even hard, if you’re Ichirou. His family has been doing this since before cameras and microphones were invented. And cameras and microphones can be destroyed, or can break, or can be covered up, or subverted. All he has to do is ask. Listen. Hand over some cash. Connect some dots. Do some research on the children of the man he’s going to threaten. _One man was hospitalized_ , Harmony told us, with barely any prompting; two days later, Andrew put together a pretty solid understanding of why. Ichirou could get access to those hospital records. Could get access to the records of everyone who’s been in that house. Could connect the dots. And suddenly, he’s got a useful picture of the children of the man he wants something from. And to be honest, we’re attributing a lot more knowledge to him than he might have—he knew the name, he knew the hospital records. He didn’t admit to anything else. We just assume he knows everything.

“My mom used to do it,” Neil continues, remembering. “She’d park the car in a corner, stick me in the driver’s seat, and then walk into a bar. Ten minutes later, she’d come out knowing that the owner of the motel two miles away has a drug problem he’s trying to hide and keeps cops out because he pays for the drugs by letting prostitutes use the rooms, and suddenly we’ve got a place to stay the night where we don’t have to worry about cops, and where we can give fake names and not be looked at twice. Or we’d walk into a hospital, and ten minutes later my mom would know where to go to steal needles, surgical thread, whatever it was we needed. It’s not hard to get things from people, when you know what they want. It’s easier when you can pretend like you already have the things you need from them. And it’s even easier if you’ve got Ichirou’s resources.” Neil takes a deep breath, relaxing the more he considers it.

“How could you remember, dad?” Natalie asks. “If something was moved? _Why_ would you remember?”

“Eidetic memory,” Andrew says. “Photographic memory.”

The girls stare at him. “And you _never told us_?” Paige asks.

Andrew shrugs. “It never came up.”

“Well, sure, but _why would it_?” Natalie says. “I mean, how did you end up telling pops? What was _that_ conversation like?”

“He figured it out on his own,” Andrew says, a note of pride in his voice.

“He’d just made an incredible save,” Neil recalls, grinning, grabbing the distraction with both hands. “I mean—that save won us the game. And he hadn’t had any time to think about it. He’d moved before the striker had, and made it just in time. I asked him how he’d known where the striker would aim. He told me that the packets we'd gotten about that team said that that striker aimed for the bottom left corner for his penalty shots—Andrew knew that, with so much on the line, the striker would aim there. But the thing is—Andrew hadn’t read that packet. He’d flipped through it, once, when we handed it out, and then shoved it in his locker and never looked at it again. So he’d picked that up in the split second he’d seen the words on the page. And then I started quizzing him on heights of the players we were up against. He knew the answers, and he didn’t need to—it’s not relevant to his position. And he wasn’t much for studying, anyway.

“Once I figured it out, anyway, he stopped hiding it. I’d mention needing my keys, and he’d grab them from wherever I’d last put them, even if he’d only seen me put them down out of the corner of his eye. We started learning Russian, and he didn’t even pretend to study. He was a great study buddy—he’d glance at my flash cards, and then he could quiz me even while he was driving. And, I mean, it was kinda obvious, anyway. He never needed to use directions—he could look them up ahead of time and memorize them. He never studied—insisted he was allergic to the library—but aced all his tests, given a good enough incentive. Could quote Shakespeare verbatim. It’s just that no one ever bothered to notice.”

“So what I’m getting from this, dad, is that you just never fucking told pops, huh.”

Andrew shrugs. “I preferred to let people figure things out for themselves.”

“Except for you being gay,” Neil says, grinning. “That, Renee was allowed to tell me.”

“ _What_?” Paige asks, delighted.

“I didn’t know Renee very well, and therefore didn’t like her,” Neil explains. “I asked Andrew why the two of them weren’t dating—everyone thought they were a thing, and they insisted otherwise. Andrew told me to talk to her, and told her she could answer any of my questions, because he didn’t have the guts to hit on me like a man.”

Andrew huffs. “Well, no, I wanted you to talk to my best friend. Did there _need_ to be a hidden motive?”

Neil gives Andrew a raised eyebrow. His legs have stopped shaking, his hands have stopped shaking. That doesn’t mean he’s ready to end this distraction. “I don’t know. I have recently come into some information, and my informant told me you’d had a huge crush on me since you met me—”

“Don’t let that go to your head,” Andrew says, flicking Neil’s shoulder. “I just wanted to know if my crush would get along with my best friend. If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends—”

Neil drowns him out with a laugh.

“Also, you kept saying you didn’t swing, I didn’t need to be disappointed like that. I figured I’d let Renee tell you, and then you wouldn’t have to react non-gay-ly in front of my face.”

“See, the worst part is,” Neil tells him, dashing down memory lane, “Nicky fucking cornered me in the library—we were studying for finals, I think—and he was telling me about how he fell for Erik because he was _so_ strong, and he could support Nicky through _all_ his problems, and Erik was just _so_ sturdy and he could put Nicky back together and—and I was sitting there, thinking about you, and how I felt the same way about you, and _then_ ,” he says, voice rising as Paige shrieks, “I thought to myself, _well, anyway, I don’t have time for this,_ and then went back to studying—”

It’s Neil’s turn to be drowned out, as his family yells at him, wordlessly. Neil laughs, sighs, and checks his phone. “We’re late,” he tells Andrew.

“Not the way I drive,” Andrew scoffs.

“Yes, the way you drive.”

“Oh. Shit.”

Neil looks up at Natalie and Paige. “Do you two want to come to the stadium with us?”

They both nod frantically.

“We won’t get home until late,” Neil warns.

“That’s fine,” Paige says.

Neil stands, pulls Andrew up, finds that his legs are functional. “To be honest, you’re probably completely safe here. Ichirou’s guaranteed it.”

“Are you trying to convince us?” Natalie asks.

“No, I’m mostly trying to convince myself. Do you guys want to bring your homework?”

“I suppose we have no choice,” Paige sighs.

So they pile into the car. Neil sends their team a text, apologizing for being late and blaming it on Freddie, and then sends a text to Kevin, informing him that he’ll be getting a fuller explanation later.

“Dad,” Paige says, “what’s your favorite memory? And I don’t want to hear weird sappy shit about Neil or your wedding day or whatever, I’m talking about your _best_ memory.”

Andrew smiles, abrupt and absolute. And then, mimicking a familiar tone of annoyance “You know, I get it—”

Neil puts his face in his hands. He waits, and keeps waiting, for the end—but Andrew keeps going. He recites the whole speech.

“—So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.” Andrew sighs with utter contentment. “And then Neil turned to Dan and said _I said_ please _, Dan, I_ tried _to be nice_. And the thing is, looking back, Neil knew mostly who Riko was and that he was dangerous, and knew that Riko knew who Neil was, and knew it was a terrible idea to antagonize him. But Neil shredded him without a second thought anyway. I run through that speech in my head _at least_ twice a day, I want it etched into my gravestone. It is singlehandedly responsible for the word _please_ no longer bothering me.”

“It doesn’t?” Neil asks, surprised. When did that happen?

“Not particularly,” Andrew says. “Heard you say it too many times.”

“Hey, pops?” Natalie says. “What the _fuck_?”

“What?”

“Riko—that’s—that’s the younger brother of the guy we just saw, right? All-powerful mafia man? And Riko was his younger brother? And you said _that_?”

“Well, Riko wasn’t as powerful as Ichirou. Second son, remember? No one cared about him. Anyway, I _didn’t_ really know how powerful the Moriyamas were at the time, so yeah, I said it.”

“That’s no excuse,” Andrew says. “You called him a loser literally _an hour_ before he died.”

Neil snickers. “Yeah, I did. Worth it.”

“He tried to kill you immediately afterwards.”

“Good thing you were there to stop him,” Neil says lovingly.

“You called him a loser and he tried to kill you?” Paige asks.

“Well, our little nothing-nothing team had just beaten his ‘unbeatable’ team. They’d never lost championships before, _ever_. They had these huge banners hanging up, one for every year they won, and it was literally _every year_. NCAA exy was created, and from then on the Ravens won championships—and our shit team, literally on the brink of being too small to play at all, containing a broken Kevin, runaway me, and ‘I hate exy’ Andrew beat them. Kevin showed that he was a better striker than Riko. I showed that I was nearly as good, and was a good enough backliner to beat the shit out of Riko—”

“You were a backliner?”

“In Little League, I was. And then years later, when I went to high school after my mom died, I played for a year as a striker, and then when Riko dragged me out to Evermore he made me play backliner for—the amount of time I was there. And he thought I was shitty at it, because I didn’t get on the court until after he’d beaten me so bad I could barely stand, but as it turns out, I was in way better shape by finals. So yeah, anyway, we won, and I was just sitting there on the ground, couldn’t move an inch to save my life—literally—” Neil laughs—“and Riko was just standing there, staring at the scoreboard, in absolute disbelief, because we’d been tied, and then Kevin had scored in the last two seconds of the game, and we’d _won_. And I took my helmet off, so I could see the scoreboard, and _see_ that we’d won, and then I looked at Riko and said _I guess you’ve always known what it’s like to be second best, you piece of shit_ , and he swung his racket at my skull. And then my knight in exy armor came running, broke Riko’s arm, and saved my life.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“The two of you are fucked up,” Natalie says eventually.

Neil and Andrew perform matching shrugs.

When they get to the stadium, Andrew and Neil stick the kids in the stands and head onto the court.

Neil lets the court take it all away. He’s still here. He’s still alive. Andrew’s still alive, and whenever Neil gets worried, he can turn to look at Andrew, standing in the goal. And when Neil gets worried about Natalie and Paige, he can turn and see them sitting in the stands. He runs, and his legs hold him up, and he runs drills, and his stomach settles.

And at the end of the night, Neil looks at Kevin. “Got a minute?”

“Sure,” Kevin says, better, these days, at appearing nonchalant. Neil and Andrew collect Natalie and Paige, and then they head for the Maserati, nattering on about John until the teammates closest to them head out. And then Neil drops his voice, switches to French, and tells Kevin what Ichirou had told them. Neil considers leaving out the part where Ichirou effectively insulted Kevin, but—there’s always a chance that that was a veiled threat. Maybe Neil should call Jean, too.

Kevin’s face is in his hands within four words, and around halfway through he looks like he’s on the verge of a breakdown. By the end of it, he’s sitting on the ground. “So,” he says, a few minutes after Neil finishes, “we’re all going to die?”

“Actually, I think we’re _not_ going to die.”

Kevin makes a face. “Unless Ichirou gets bored and decides to send a hit man to visit us. Maybe Thea and John should go—”

Neil waits. “Go where?” He prompts.

“Ichirou knows where her parents live, I’m sure. And Dad. Can’t send her on a vacation without making some kind of reservations—no way of getting her and John out of the way without a paper trail, I guess. How the fuck did you manage to run for as long as you did?”

“Mom was smart. I don’t think you guys are in danger. If anyone knocks on the door, though, check through the window before you open it.”

“Well, you _really_ have to adopt them now,” Kevin says. “Unless—do you think they’d still be protected? I mean, they’d be a huge danger if they left—”

“We’re adopting them,” Neil says, waving a hand. “That’s like if ten years ago you told me I _really_ had to make Court.”

“I’m—” Kevin waves his hands, runs them through his hair, presses his fingertips to his face. “How do you keep talking him out of murdering you?”

“I’ve got practice.”

“With what? Usually, the shit you say makes people _want_ to murder you. Also, look, I like Natalie and Paige, but since you got them I really feel like you have gotten more distressing. You just keep popping up with stressful shit, like disclosing all our secrets to two children, or fighting a member of the Italian mafia, or killing a member of the yakuza. Could you _stop_? I mean, fuck _your_ life, but I _do_ care if I live or die.”

“You’re safe, I think,” Neil says. “He didn’t _threaten_ you.”

“He just _threatened_ to threaten me.”

Neil shrugs.

Kevin sighs. “Well, we’re not dead yet, I suppose. See you tomorrow?”

“As long as we don’t die in the night,” Neil says, grinning.

And then they go back home.

“Can you tell us a story?” Natalie asks. “About the stars?”

“Get ready for bed first,” Neil orders. The girls head upstairs. Andrew and Neil circle the first floor, looking at everything, smacking pillows and cushions to make sure there aren’t cameras or microphones in them, checking behind their four wall decorations to make sure there’s nothing there, checking in drawers and cabinets. Neil climbs on top of a step stool to check the tops of the kitchen cabinets. Paranoid? Sure. But in his line of business, it’s not a bad idea.

Neil realizes, as he shakes out the curtains, that _his line of business_ is really just _his life_.

And then they go upstairs, and find Natalie and Paige lying on their bedroom floor in the dark, staring up at the constellations.

Neil and Andrew join them. And then Andrew opens his mouth, and what comes out is galaxies—about finding them, naming them, the myths surrounding the stars, both Greek and otherwise. Two minutes in, Natalie rearranges herself so she’s using Neil’s arm as a pillow. Neil accepts that, as a consequence of being short and a dad, tall people will forever be using him as an armrest or a headrest—as something, anyway.

Two minutes after that, Paige starts using Natalie’s arm as a pillow, though, so maybe it’s just a thing.

Eventually, though, Andrew goes silent.

“Is that it?” Natalie says. “We haven’t covered half the room.”

“I’ll tell you one more story after you get in bed,” Andrew decides.

“About which one?”

“I’ll make it up.”

Natalie and Paige jump to, and Andrew and Neil sit on the floor. Paige and Natalie roll to face Andrew, expectant looks on their faces.

“Once upon a time, someone sat down, and looked at the stars. And this was a long time ago, way before electric lights or cities with high rises, and that person could see the whole milky way, and the sky wasn’t dark blue at night, it was shining, absolutely glowing with stars. And that person picked out the brightest ones, and made shapes out of them, and then made stories out of shapes, and told them to people.

“But it wasn’t just one person, in one place, at one time. People all over the world did this. People everywhere looked up at the sky, and made up stories about what they saw there. They built religions that incorporated the stars. They navigated based on the stars. They sailed around the world and knew they were in strange places based on the stars—but even those stars were _someone’s_ home.

“And the point of this story is this: If you’re ever lonely, or lost, look at the stars, and remember that people have been doing that for forever, and that you know exactly what they thought when they looked at the stars, because you know the stories they told each other.” Andrew stands up and places one hand on the head of each child. “Now go to sleep. If you need us, you know where to find us.”

“Good night,” Neil says softly. “Do you want the door locked?”

“Yes,” Paige says, covers already pulled up around her ears.

Neil locks the door, pulls it shut, and follows Andrew into the bathroom. They get ready for bed in silence. And then they go to bed, and Neil pulls Andrew in as close as he can. They don’t say anything. What is there to say? Neil is on the hook, again. He can feel it, digging into the back of his neck, inescapable. Because for all he said comforting things to the girls’ faces, that’s what this is. A reminder. He is not safe, he is not his own, he doesn’t get his own life. Kevin, Jean—they’re no danger; they’re no one, and that’s a blessing. But Neil has Nathan standing over his shoulder, forever. Has years and years of defiance on his record. Has connections in the FBI. He can’t tell if it’s him who’s shaking, or if that’s Andrew, but either way, no one in this bed is feeling particularly comforted.

After twenty minutes of lying there, squirming ever closer, the two of them trying to condense into one space where neither one would have to live without the other, Neil gives up. He doesn’t say much—what is there to say?—but he manages an _I love you_ , and he puts as much _truth_ behind it as he can. If nothing else, this. When nothing else, this.

“For one short, scrawny jackass, you sure manage to carry a lot of baggage,” Andrew mumbles.

Neil snorts. It comes out as a sniffle. “No, that’s why I married you, so you can carry it for me.”

“Ah. I’m a pack mule.”

“More like a pickup truck.”

“Is that better or worse?”

“You choose.”

“No, _you_ choose.”

“No, _you_.”

“Hey, Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Neil grins. “Hey, Andrew?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, too.”

“Thank god.”

“What?”

“What if you’d said something else?”

“What else would I have said? That you’re all I want? That I’m yours? That my whole life is worth it, as long as you’re in it?”

“And when did _you_ get poetic?”

“Probably after the night we moved in together,” Neil says. They’d arrived a few minutes before the moving truck, and had decided to go in together—they’d see the house, _their_ house, and not the way it had been before, full of someone else’s stuff, but as a shell. They’d see it plain. _Theirs_. A blank slate, and all theirs to do whatever they wanted with. Andrew had unlocked the door. Pushed it open. Neil had thought that Andrew was gesturing for him to walk in first—and then Andrew had swooped down, grabbed Neil, carried him bridal style over the threshold. _I think this is what newlyweds do_ , he’d said, and had proceeded to carry Neil around the house, flatly refusing to put him down, while Neil had grinned uncontrollably. And then the movers had arrived, putting an end to Andrew’s elation—until they left again, and Neil and Andrew gave up on the rest of the house and just made their bed. Just made the bed, and got in it, their bed in their house, their _silent_ house, the house they owned with the doors they locked and a room that no one would ever enter without their permission, and Andrew had opened his mouth and spilled years’ worth of poetry and Shakespeare into Neil’s ears until his head was spinning.

“What, trying to outdo me?” Andrew asks.

“Trying to keep up. Drew. Andrew Joseph Minyard. I won’t offend you by asking if you’re willing to stay with me, in spite of the fact that I am now chained to this state and have been expressly ordered to be a magnet for hitmen. I _will_ say thank you, though.”

“We’ll get cameras,” Andrew says. “Cameras of our own. Bolts on the windows. Trackers in the cars.”

“We’ll have to take those out when the girls start driving.”

“Oh, jesus, we’re going to teach them how to drive.”

“We can make Kevin do that. He’s a reasonable driver.”

“By whose standards? We’ll ask Abby.”

“Abby’s got enough to do. We’ve signed up for a lifetime of teaching John math—”

“ _You’ve_ signed up for that.”

“—I can make Kevin teach them how to drive. Maybe Thea? She’s a good driver. She won’t let us bully her, though.”

“Safety measures,” Andrew says, putting them back on track. “Computers? What the fuck is data? I don't know shit about shit.”

“I don’t know how to keep Natalie and Paige safe _without_ tracking them.”

“We’ll ask them.”

“I also don’t want to scare them.”

“Then we’ll be careful about it.”

“What if we can’t do this?” Neil says, and he’s trying to stay calm, he’s trying to maintain the action-taking tone of the conversation, but he can hear it in his voice that he’s not, and he knows Andrew can hear it too. “We’re not, fucking, modern women, we can’t have it all, the husband and the job and the kids and the house—”

“We do, though,” Andrew says. “All we have to do is keep it.”

Neil takes deep breaths. _Can’t, can’t, can’t,_ he was an idiot to think he could get out from under Nathan’s shadow, an idiot to think he could ever like any kind of life he wanted, stupid—

“Hey, Neil?”

Neil pauses. Andrew doesn’t sound right. “Yeah?”

Silence for a breath, and then, voice warped, Andrew says: “Please don’t run.”

 _Oh_. God. Neil grabs at Andrew’s hair. “Drew—”

“Don’t, don’t say you won’t unless you’re fucking serious. But—I will quit my job and spend the rest of my life patrolling this house if it’ll make you feel safe here. I will put a can of pepper spray and a gun into every bag you own, I will sew knives on every piece of clothing you’ve got, if it’ll make you feel safe staying. I will do whatever you need, Neil, but stay, _stay_. And, for fuck’s sake, if you can’t, if you really fucking can’t—take me _with you_.”

Neil pulls Andrew’s head up so he can see his eyes. “Drew—”

“Take me, take the kids, whatever, whoever. Just don’t—don’t try to—don’t make me run with them, either, don’t make me leave you, Neil, _please_ , I—”

Neil crushes Andrew close, closer, puts his lips everywhere he can reach, anything to make Andrew stop _begging_. “I won’t, I won’t, I swear, I’m staying right here with you, we’re not going anywhere, _I’m_ not going anywhere, I’m yours, didn’t I tell you that? I chose you, and I’m _still_ choosing you, and I’m never going to _stop_ choosing you, I love you so much, I could never leave you, I can’t—I can’t leave you. I won’t. You’re mine, Drew, you’re mine and I’m yours, and I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving.” Andrew’s fingers are digging into Neil’s back, and Neil drags a hand through Andrew’s hair. Would Mary think Neil was an idiot for making this kind of promise? No—she’d think he was an idiot for intending to keep it, though. “I’ll be here when you wake up, and when you go to sleep, forever, until the day I die of old age. We’ll stick it out. We’ll make it work. Not _you_ ," he emphasizes, " _u_ _s_. And don’t worry about what it’ll take to keep me here. I’m staying. I’m not a pipe dream, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“You thought about it,” Andrew accuses.

“I think about a lot of things.”

“You wanted me to take the girls and run, a couple weeks ago, and leave you to die.”

“I can’t watch you die, Drew, don’t make me do it. Don’t make me do that. I’m not going anywhere. You’re mine, mine, mine, and I’m not leaving you. What if someone came after you and I wasn’t there to keep you safe? Unacceptable,” Neil says, choosing not to mention the way Andrew sounds, the way he’s shaking like he’s about to fall apart. “I thought about running, the same way people who climb mountains think about jumping off—I’m not doing it. I’m staying. I’m staying, Drew, and you’ll believe me, someday.”

“Well, I don’t believe it yet,” Andrew says, rough. “So you’ll have to convince me. Stay.”

“Not going anywhere,” Neil promises. “Whether you believe me or not.”

“Well, I don’t. I don’t trust a word you say.”

“I’ve been told I lie a lot. You’d better stick around to make sure I’m telling the truth.”

“Don’t flirt with me,” Andrew mumbles.

“Was that flirting?”

“Probably.”

“I don’t think either of us is qualified to figure it out.”

“Speak for yourself. _I’ve_ flirted before.”

“Have you? I’ll be honest, I’ve been told that the way you flirted with _me_ was absolutely deranged.”

“Still counts.”

“If you insist.”

“Don’t _indulge_ me. I’m not elderly and senile.”

“No, just elderly.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Nah, I think I’m good here,” Neil says decisively.

“Fine, then.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“I’m not going to storm off,” Neil promises.

“Storm _on,_ ” Andrew scoffs, nonsensically. 

“Storm _in_?”

“Storm _out_ is the same thing as storm _off_ , but storm _in_ is not the same as storm _on_.”

“This is why English is bullshit.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Drew. And, Drew? I’m always going to stay with you. If you have to keep asking because—” Neil pauses for a second, brain sticking on Cass, on every foster parent Andrew ever had, on Aaron. “I’ll answer it as many times as you ask. But I’m always going to choose you.”

“ _Always_ is a long time,” Andrew says after a minute.

“And I don’t want to live it without you.”

“Oh, you’re immortal now?”

“I’ve never died before, who’s to say I ever will?”

“Certainly, you’ve tried to die plenty often.”

“But no one’s succeeded in killing me. Thank you for that, by the way.”

“I’d do it again. Every day for the rest of my life, I’d do it, Neil Josten, I’d break arms and take bullets and slit throats to keep you alive.”

“I know. Hey, maybe you won’t have to.”

Andrew snorts, pulling his head back so Neil can see his eyes roll. “Sure.”

“Rolling your eyes? Very mature. Copying our daughters.”

“ _They’re_ copying _me_. I was rolling my eyes professionally before they were even born.”

“You got paid to do it?”

“No, I did it for the exposure.”

And on and on they go, spouting bullshit, faking nonchalance until it becomes real, until they can settle down, fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway if you wanna cry consider listening to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEJab1iGNcY) and thinking about andreil


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two games! in one chapter! some angst, tw trauma, tw gross food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so look a lil while back Willow_bird was saying something in the comments about Clark being their coach and i was like "oh no he's their captain" because look. when I wrote The Crooked Kind I forgot to give them a coach. and then when I started this I expected it to be short and exy-minimal so I didn't care enough to give them a coach and I just let clark kinda take both jobs on, and then Willow_bird was like "here's a VARIETY of ways you can fix this" so look. when clark suddenly becomes a plot-point... it's not cause you missed something as a reader it's cause I genuinely know Nothing about sports even a little bit and am slowly coming to the conclusion that sports might be kinda a plot-point in this fic. so thank you to Willow_bird for helping me fix this 200k in cause lord knows otherwise it would not have happened

Andrew grabs Neil’s arm, and Neil wakes up.

It’s dark, and Neil can’t see the clock, but it must be early, the alarm hasn’t gone off yet, and Andrew is not awake—he's making tiny, terrified, inhuman noises that Neil recognizes all too well, and hates with a heart-shattering ferocity.

“Drew,” Neil mumbles. Andrew is shaking, grabbing Neil like he’s trying to cut off Neil’s circulation. “Drew. Wake up.” Neil pats him, gently, trying not to copy whatever’s in Andrew’s head. “Wake up. Drew—“

Andrew flips Neil off him, rolling until Neil is underneath him, Andrew's fist back and ready to go.

“Drew, it’s me.”

Neil watches Andrew register him, who he is, where they are, and Andrew pushes off him, scrambling away.

“Neil, I’m sorry, I—“

“It’s all right,” Neil says. “It’s all right. Do you need me to go downstairs?”

He waits while Andrew breathes, rough and strangled, feeling the sheets pull as Andrew flexes his fingers in them.

“You should at least flinch,” Andrew says abruptly.

“What?”

“I was about to punch you. You should at least try to protect yourself. At least pretend you care whether or not you get hurt.”

“I do. But you won’t hurt me.”

Andrew takes a deep breath. He extends a pinky in Neil’s direction, and Neil links it with his own.

“Do you want me to count for you?”

Andrew nods, and Neil counts. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Andrew doesn’t manage it, at first, heart still racing, still struggling, still caught in the web of his own crystal clear memories. But any time he loses it, Neil picks up the thread for him, starts again. It’s endless. Neil is good at being patient, these days, but he hates how long it takes for Andrew to find calm, to find himself in the present. It takes an eternity.

And then Andrew takes Neil’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Andrew moves back to sit beside Neil. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, my love,” Neil says, and Andrew snorts and puts his head on Neil’s shoulder. “Do you want to talk?”

“No, it’s... there’s no point, it was all the same—I just feel—" Andrew curls forward like he's going to puke, pulls in deep breaths, squeezing Neil's hand. "Dead, hes dead, and I’m alive. Gone, gone, gone.”

“And you’re here,” Neil says. “And I’m here. And this place is ours, and no one else has ever been in it—“

They jump as a cat lands on the bed. Andrew grumbles half-formed curses at it, pulse jumping through his wrist where it's pressed against Neil's, and Andrew reaches forward and grabs the cat, who squeaks—Sir. King doesn’t squeak. Andrew bundles him to his chest. Neil can hear Sir, purring like a motorcycle.

“Can I—“

“Yeah, here—“ Neil and Andrew maneuver Andrew into Neil’s lap, Andrew sideways, leaning against Neil’s chest, and Neil wraps his arms around Andrew. Sir purrs all the harder for it. Neil can feel his paws moving, kneading Andrew’s shoulder.

“I hate feeling—I hate having skin,” Andrew mutters, miserable. “Why didn’t I get to have—why didn’t I ever get good parents? Why did I only get people who wanted me broken? I was just a kid. Why did they want—why did they take—I was just a kid. Why was a depressed jackass 18 year old the best guardian I got?”

Neil rests his head on Andrew’s, rubs Andrew’s shoulder. _Just a kid_. Neil feels it in his heart, in his stomach, a tight miasma of horror and disgust and the desperate urge to _comfort_. Andrew has asked these questions before—often—and Neil still has no answers. Andrew isn’t expecting any, anyway, but Neil hates not being able to answer his questions, solve his problems, make things better. Is it so much to ask that Andrew get to be happy? Get to feel safe in his own head? In his own bed?

But, of course, those questions are equally useless, so Neil discards them.

Instead, he traces hearts on Andrew’s arm, stars, constellations, math equations. Gets tired and closes his eyes, soothed by Andrew’s nearness, Sir’s purring. He’s rocking a little, which he hopes is comforting to Andrew as well as himself. He wants to reach into Andrew’s head and take out those memories, wants to burn them away. Trauma so often makes memories odd, fuzzy—but not for Andrew. And Neil can’t do anything. So many of Andrew’s abusers have been dealt with, one way or another; Neil doesn’t have the power to have Andrew’s nightmares for him.

Neil uncoils that helplessness from around his shoulders and sets it down. Just because he can’t help, doesn’t mean he can’t talk. “I love you,” he mumbles. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think they managed to break you. I’m so proud of you, and everything you’ve done, and everything you’ve accomplished, and the fact that you _survived_ , my love, my Drew, you survived, and I’m so proud of you for being here, for existing, for making it to the next day, every day. Love you.”

Andrew doesn’t answer for a minute, and when he does, what he says is—“I really opened a whole can of worms with that pet names thing, huh.”

“Mmhmm,” Neil agrees. “But only here. Where we’re safe. Where there’s no one else but the cats. Maybe once in a while the kids. Our room, our space. Safe.” He traces swirls into Andrew’s arms. Sir purrs, and purrs, and purrs.

“Be big spoon?” Andrew asks after a few minutes.

“Mmhmm,” Neil agrees, helping Andrew shift out of Neil’s lap and lie down without disturbing Sir.

“He won’t let me just hug him,” Andrew grumbles as Neil settles behind him. “Not like a teddy bear. He wants to have his paws on me. Jackass cat.”

Neil wraps an arm around Andrew’s stomach. “He’s massaging you.”

“My boobs don’t need a massage.”

Neil stifles a laugh. “Sir would beg to disagree.”

“And I suppose I must default to his expertise.”

“Cats are like that.”

“Good night, love.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning, my darling.”

When the morning comes around, it’s rainy, and cold. It’s also 4:45, which is not Neil’s preferred time for waking up. Neil checks the weather in California. Sunny and warm. Well. They’re only going to be there for a few hours. And they’ll be indoors the whole time.

They’re going to be out of the house all day, and on planes for at least half of that. Players don’t stay overnight, this week. Not enough time.

Neil looks at Andrew, who looks like his soul is leaving his body. Neil feels Andrew’s fingers against his, and Neil takes Andrew’s hand.

“Stay with me?” Andrew murmurs.

“Always,” Neil promises.

And then they get up.

The sun isn’t up. The kids aren’t up. The cats are up, and make themselves known, and for the first time in years, Neil has to hush them—there are other people in the house, and they’re sleeping. Andrew insists on feeding them; Neil lets him do it.

They straggle out of the house at 5:30 in the morning.

At the very least, the drive to the airport is easy; no one else is on the goddamn road, because it’s 6 in the morning.

They don’t even bother getting coffee, when they find their team at the airport. No one wants to be awake for this. The flight is going to be six and a half hours long.

“Do you want first shift or do you want me to take it?” Maria asks Neil, blearily.

“For what?” Neil asks, unsure if he’s confused because what she said was confusing or if he’s confused because it’s too goddamn early.

“For Distract Andrew Duty? I’m calling it DADing.”

“I don’t need to be _babysat_ ,” Andrew says scornfully.

“Of course not,” Neil agrees. “You need to be DADded.”

Maria accomplishes half a laugh, too tired for much more.

“No, I mean, on this flight I don’t,” Andrew clarifies. “I’ll shoot back some vodka and sleep through it.”

“Oh,” Maria says. “Why don’t you do that all the time?”

“Most flights aren’t this long,” Andrew explains. “Don’t have time to sober up and wake up.”

Maria gives him a thumbs up. “Thank _god_ , I’m so tired, I just want to sleep.”

“You didn’t have to offer,” Andrew says.

Maria turns her thumbs up into a middle finger. “Eat me. Friends do nice things for each other.”

Andrew looks at Neil. Neil just shrugs.

“Oh,” Andrew says. And then: “Thank you,” he tries.

“No problem,” Maria says, putting her head on Riley’s shoulder and closing her eyes. Riley gives Neil a contented glance, and Andrew and Neil find seats and do what they can to not pass out on the floor.

Andrew takes a shot of vodka before they get on the plane, and then he puts his face in Neil’s shoulder as the plane takes off and falls asleep. Neil puts his head back and does his best to sleep, too. He’s not going to drink—not if Andrew is drinking, not when they’re on a plane, not when Andrew needs him to be _present_ —but he’s not bad at forcing himself to doze when necessary, and in the quiet of a plane full of sleeping people, he manages it.

After they bumble off the plane, pick up their gear, and make it onto the bus, it’s a strategy session—all about the points, don’t forget, don’t forget to pass the ball to me if Alvarez is your backliner, keep your cool, we can’t afford to give them a shot at a penalty—Neil and Maria, that means you—and yes, Charlie and Andrew, we know you can block it, but we wanna save your energy—

And then Clark stands up. He holds his footing as the bus turns. The team goes silent and waits.

“You guys know I’ve been sort of filling in for Coach Leeman for the past couple months, given his illness,” he says, and everyone nods. “Coach has decided to retire—he’s doing fine, but he doesn’t want the stress.”

Everyone waits with baited breath—if their new coach is shitty, Kevin will throw a fit, and while he will be the loudest, he won’t be the only one.

“So at the end of this year,” Clark says, “I’m retiring from exy, and taking up a position as your Coach.”

The team’s cheers are so loud and sudden Clark actually jumps, and then he laughs when Kevin wolf-whistles.

Neil looks at Kevin. Kevin looks slightly surprised by himself. “I’ve been spending too much time with Thea’s friends,” he says in his own defense.

By the time they make it to the court, Neil feels awake. Alert. He looks at Andrew, and Andrew looks at him, and the two of them look at Kevin.

It’s the end of the year.

It’s California. They can beat California.

Neil takes the court, blood thrumming, heartbeat strong, ready to take California down.

It’s not a violent game—Jeremy is on this team; how could it be?—but Neil spends the whole first quarter pushing against his backliner, who seems fueled by the desire to push directly through Neil’s bones. Still, Neil and Maria force through shot after shot, Neil working himself into the ground to get around his backliner. At one point, he dashes directly at Maria’s mark, who jumps, shocked, out of the way—and then Maria puts it into the goal. Another point. They’re doing all right. They’re doing really well, actually.

Neil’s whole body buzzes, straight through the nearly hour-long middle of the game. It’s not just about winning. This week is about _points_ —who can get the most points, who can make the most shots? Winning by one point isn’t enough—and then he gets back on the court, practically running out, feeling nothing short of refreshed, watching Jean and Jeremy throw themselves against Andrew, watching them fail. Watching Andrew reject them, time and time again, catching snatches of Andrew’s voice as he berates Alfie and Athena for letting Jean and Jeremy get that close—“Have you been practicing against Kevin and Neil for _nothing_? Fucking _move_!”—and with seconds left on the clock, Kevin gives up on trying to get around his mark, whirls, and heaves the ball at Andrew, who smashes it directly into Neil’s raised net, and he shoves it into the goal.

They beat California. They beat California by three points. 15-12.

And then Kevin goes to hunt down Jeremy and Jean, and Neil almost joins them, but Maria grabs him. “Press,” she says insistently.

“Not my turn,” Neil says frantically—he wants to go hang out with Jeremy, he has to tell Jean about Ichirou, he doesn’t want to talk to _reporters_.

“You snatched the winning shot,” she says, insistently. “They’ll want to talk to you.”

Neil lets out a wordless whine that could have come straight from Paige’s mouth, but he acquiesces. She’s not wrong, and he’s realizing she’s tired—she wants help, and maybe some fun, and he can provide both those things. He turns, gets Kevin’s attention, and motions at Jean— _tell Jean about Ichirou_. Kevin nods, understanding. Neil waves Andrew off, but Andrew follows anyway, meandering forward and leaning against the doorjamb. 

Neil joins Maria and Clark, and the reporters cheer.

“Neil! Are you a better striker than Kevin Day?” Someone shouts.

“It changes from day to day,” Neil says truthfully. “Some days he’s more on his game, some days I am, we’re so close it’s hard to tell.”

“What’s it like, to steal a shot from Kevin Day?”

“I didn’t steal it, he passed it to Andrew, who passed it to me,” Neil says, slowly, turning towards the new questioner, displaying self-restraint. “He was covered, I could get around my mark, that’s just teamwork. If our situations were reversed, I’d have done the same.”

“Would he have been able to make the same shot, though?”

“Yes,” Neil tells the reporter.

“There’s been a rivalry between the two of you since the beginning, though, hasn’t there?”

“Not really, we both want the best for our team.”

“But—”

“This isn’t a Kevin-and-Riko situation,” Neil says shortly, and Maria’s shoulders start shaking with anticipatory laughter. “We’re not trying to figure out which one’s better once and for all, we’re trying to be better than we were yesterday. It’s called _sportsmanship_ and you can look it up in a dictionary, don’t make me explain it to you.”

“We’re really happy with the way the game went,” Clark says loudly. “Not just in terms of the fact that we won, but in terms of the number of points we earned,” he says, directly into the microphone. Reporters shut up, desperate to not be the one who misses an interview, and then they settle down, kept heavily in check by Clark, who speaks at top volume. Maria maintains an impressive level of detachment as she answers questions tossed in Neil’s directions, skillfully intercepting them after Clark gives her a gentle kick to the shin, suppressing yawns the whole way.

Eventually, though, it’s over, and they stand, and Andrew pushes off the wall, ready to follow Neil back inside and to the bus. They’re not staying overnight; no time to do that, this week.

“Andrew!” A reporter calls. “Andrew Minyard!”

Andrew glances at them, and then rolls his eyes at Neil, a sentiment Neil returns.

“Minyard! Won’t you answer any questions?”

Neil heads in Andrew’s direction. Clark makes a shooing motion at the reporters, but it’s too late—they’re clamoring for an interview, now, or for the ability to talk again about how rude Andrew Minyard is.

One voice makes it through the crowd: “We won’t ask you about the game!”

Neil pauses mid-step—he’s walking past Andrew, and Andrew hasn’t moved. In fact, he’s turned back towards the reporters.

Oh no.

“Andrew?” Clark says, gesturing towards the door.

“No, no, this is interesting,” Andrew says, approaching the tables. Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh. “What are you going to ask me?” He doesn’t bother sitting down, just leans up against the table. This will be a short interview.

Neil glances at the crowd, moving to stand by Andrew. Gianna Rosetti catches his eye and mimes locking her lips—she knows better. The rest of the crowd seems to have caught her nervousness; they’re silent, as Neil steps up behind Andrew. Maybe they’re just shocked. Neil wouldn’t have expected Andrew to agree. Certainly, none of the reporters could have anticipated this.

The shock doesn’t last long, though. A reporter pipes up with: “You don’t seem to actually _enjoy_ this game at all—I guess we all know why you stick with it—” Neil gets several glances—“but why did you start playing exy in the first place?”

Andrew inhales, and then lets it out in a short huff, and Neil’s anxiety shoots through the roof. He knows what that particular breath means—it means Andrew knows what he’s going to say, and it won’t be anything good. Andrew’s done one cross-country flight, he’s looking forward to another one, and he’s still raw, still so raw, it was just last night that he was begging Neil not to leave—he leans in close to the microphone. “Well, there’s only so much you can do in juvie,” he says in a slow drawl, “and I’d already learned how to make shanks and suck dick, so—”

Neil’s head throws back so fast he cracks his neck, letting loose a peal of laughter before dropping to a crouch, hiding from the cameras behind the table, trying desperately to muffle unstoppable giggles. Probably no one can hear him—there’s a bit of a commotion—

“Did you die?” Andrew asks calmly, and Neil gets one look at his angelically innocent expression and dissolves into a new fit of laughter. “Any more questions?” Andrew asks, and then Clark is there, pointing towards the door with a composed smile on his face.

“We have a plane to catch,” Clark politely informs the reporters, at top volume, directly into the microphone.

Andrew offers Neil a hand, which Neil takes, still giggling uncontrollably as Andrew leads him out into the hallway, where they find Maria on the floor, laughing so hard tears are rolling down her face. Andrew offers her his other hand; she takes it, tries and fails to lift herself off the floor, and finally lets Andrew pull her bodily to her feet, which she and Neil find absolutely hilarious, which sends Clark into a laughing fit, and then Andrew smiles, full and _real_ , and Neil swoops down to kiss his cheek, overjoyed beyond the telling, and terrified that this Andrew will disappear on the plane ride home, never to be seen again.

But they head to the bus, where they find the rest of the team in hysterics, radio on, listening to the aftermath of Andrew’s interview.

“Well, we all know Minyard hates reporters—” a voice says, and then the team catches sight of Andrew and the rest of the reporter's sentence is lost in the uproar. Andrew releases Maria into Riley’s custody—not that Riley’s doing much better; she’s clutching her stomach like she’s given herself cramps—and, head held high, pulls Neil to the back of the bus. He turns, takes a bow to the sound of the team’s cheers, and then sits, pulling Neil in after him, a buffer against the rest of the world, and Neil is happy to provide it.

They make their flight on time, so Andrew pops a shot of whiskey, puts his head on Neil’s shoulder, and pretends to sleep for two hours until he gets bored. It’s an overnight flight, so Neil can’t read without waking everyone up, but Andrew puts his headphones in and lets Neil trace shapes over his palm until, at 12:30 in the morning after a day made longer by the change in time zones, they land, drive back home, are met by Natalie and Paige at the door, and shoo them back to bed.

“We wanted to wait for you, though,” Paige protests.

Neil wraps an exhausted arm around her shoulders. “Thank you. But it’s a school night.”

“Are you angry at us?” Natalie asks.

Neil ruffles her hair. “Of course not. But it’s our duty as parents to make you go to bed on a school night.”

“But it’s championships,” Natalie says. “That’s exciting!”

“It is. But that means it’s more important to get sleep, so we can do our jobs.”

“Us getting sleep has no effect on your job performance,” Paige insists.

“It does if we’re worrying about you.”

“What’s wrong with dad?” Paige asks.

Andrew waves a hand.

“Two plane rides in one day. He’s shot.” Neil maneuvers them all towards the stairs. “Not literally shot. Figuratively. Did you guys brush your teeth?”

“We’re teenagers, not babies,” Natalie grumbles. 

“Well, you’re babies in terms of how long we’ve had you, so suck it up,” Neil says cheerfully. “Oh no, we don’t want you to get cavities, your suffering is endless. You never answered the question.”

“We did,” Natalie admits, dragging her feet as she climbs the stairs. “Also, hey, dad?”

“Mm?”

“So you learned to make shanks and—“

“/Bed/,” Andrew says, loudly. “Time for bed, go to bed, good night.”

“Like, you knew we were watching, right?” Paige asks gleefully, raising her voice a little to be heard over Neil snickering. “I mean, you couldn’t keep your mouth shut?”

“I didn’t think about the consequences of my actions. Go to bed.”

“I mean, we’re gonna go to school tomorrow,” Natalie says, “and at _least_ Sandy is going to ask us about it. And a couple other kids have started watching exy, too, cause they know you play.”

“Tell then it wasn’t me, it was Aaron.”

“Aaron’s a pediatrician,” Neil objects. “That could actually be bad for him.”

“Tell him it was Anthony.”

“Who?” Paige asks.

“The triplet we invented in high school to get us out of trouble,” Andrew says.

“Can _we_ do that?” Natalie asks, overawed.

“You’re not identical—although theoretically, you _could_ be triplets, two of whom are identical and one of whom is not—“

“And you’re asking the wrong question, anyway,” Neil says, guiding them gently into their room. “The question you should be asking is: Did it work?”

“Did it?” Paige asks.

“Once,” Andrew says. “And then someone pointed out there was no Anthony Minyard registered at the school, and that was the end of that. Considered dredging him up to get more money out of Palmetto State, but decided to leave him out of things.”

“How many times did you try to blame shit on him?” Paige asks, climbing obediently into bed.

“Five times,” Andrew says.

“Tell us one and we’ll go to sleep,” Natalie says.

“Hmm. Deal,” Andrew agrees. “Once, I was caught buying a bottle of vodka off a senior—he wasn’t legal, either, but he got caught right off, whereas I ran. Stashed the bottle in a bush, looped around, and sat on the curb. Pretended I was waiting for Anthony, who’d promised to meet me there, he just had something to do real quick. I sent Aaron back for the bottle—they caught him, he insisted he was Anthony, and then we both went to the principal’s office, where Nicky was already telling them a sob story about our terrible pasts—“

“Wasn’t it all true?” Neil asks.

“Well, yeah, but that’s besides the point. Anyway, they took the vodka, and instead of sending us to juvie they made us do detention for two weeks straight. I lost 80 bucks on that vodka.” Andrew places one hand on each child’s head. “Now—“

“I want a hug,” Paige demands.

Andrew obliges, and then gives Natalie a hug, too, when she holds her arms up. “Now go to bed,” he orders, and they pointedly pull their covers up around their ears.

“Wait,” Paige says, popping her head out. “Pops owes us. Either a bad story about him, or a good story about you, dad. To keep it even.”

“When he was in college, he had a math class with a kid who was wrong all the time—“

“And wouldn’t shut up about it,” Neil emphasizes. “Thought he was god’s gift to uppity women, with his absolutely incorrect calculus.”

“Which is what Neil told him, along with several choice curse words. Neil also informed him that his hair was ugly, his feet smelled—“

“I could smell them across the classroom.”

“—and his mother only loved him cause he reminded her of her dead father, who, and I quote, ‘was probably as big a piece of shit as you are,’ and when this man said ‘yeah? Let’s take this outside,’ Neil said ‘no’ and then broke his nose.”

“Kept his mouth shut after that,” Neil says.

“And you told me not to punch people unless they hit first,” Natalie says, righteously offended.

“I told you we’d be bad dads. Now go to bed.”

“Good night,” his daughters chorus, and Neil locks the door and pulls it shut behind him.

“How are you holding up?” Neil asks, shutting their own bedroom door behind him.

“Fine,” Andrew says.

“That doesn’t mean anything, Drew.”

“Hurtling head-first towards a bad day.”

Neil taps Andrew’s hand, and Andrew raises one eyebrow in his general direction. “Drew.”

“Fine for now, can see a bad day coming in the near future. I didn’t lie.”

“Drew.”

“Yes?”

Neil links his pinky with Andrew’s. “How are you holding up?”

Andrew looks at him. “I don’t like being scared. I hate flying. I want our evenings back. I don’t want a different job, though, which is odd. I’m tired.” He unlinks his pinky from Neil’s, and then takes his hand altogether. “Want you here. Stay with me?”

“Always,” Neil says.

Andrew wraps a hand around the back of Neil’s neck, and Neil lets his forehead rest against Andrew’s.

“I’m never leaving you,” Neil murmurs. “You can take a day, if you need.”

“Mm. Don’t want to spend the whole day without you.”

Neil considers, and then shrugs. “I’ll stay home too.”

Andrew pulls back and shakes his head. “I’m not making you miss out on exy.”

“Hey. Fuck it,” Neil says. “We’ll make a deal with New York to throw the game. Grab as many points as we need for both of us to beat Denver, and then we’ll go to finals to fight it out for real. No need for you to be there for that.”

Andrew pulls him towards the bathroom.

“No need for me to train for that, either. We’ll just have a good time pretending to struggle as we knock out, just, 80-odd points each? It’ll be a good time. Charlie can just goalkeep the whole game.”

Andrew puts a toothbrush in Neil’s mouth, and Neil shuts up.

It works for all of ten minutes, until they go to bed. Neil tugs Andrew on top of him, wraps his arms around him, squeezes him tight.

“Yes?” Andrew asks.

Neil scrunches up his face. He’s not sure. “Can’t I just hug my husband?”

“Sure,” Andrew says, “but this is a bit much, even for you.”

“Eh. Eat me.” Neil regrets saying it immediately—Andrew leans down and closes his teeth on Neil’s neck, before making _blech, blech_ noises.

“You taste terrible. We’ll need some garlic, some basil, some parsley—”

“Oregano, maybe some bread crumbs—”

“Fried up in canola oil and served with pasta.”

“ _Pasta de Neil_.”

“Delicious.”

“Cannibal.”

“But my name’s not Hannibal.”

“Your name does not absolve you of your sins. Also, do I get a tomato sauce?”

“You’ll have to make some prior to the frying.”

“I will not dig my own grave, but I will make my own gravy.”

Andrew snorts. “Sauce isn’t gravy, I _will_ take this to my grave.”

“This talk is much too grave for one in the morning.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

“You sound a little grave.”

“That no longer sounds like a word to me, you cannot hurt me with it.”

“Grave, grave, grave—”

“The _worst_.”

“You are _welcome_ to shut me up.”

Andrew does, and Neil welcomes it, and then Andrew replaces his mouth with a finger, makes several shushing noises, tucks his head under Neil’s chin, and goes to sleep.

The next day they get to sleep in past when the girls leave for school, and then they head to the stadium, where Clark passes out sheets of notes regarding the other teams’ games—specifically, Denver, whom they’re facing tomorrow.

“Where’s Flannery?” Andrew asks. He receives several looks. Neil and Kevin immediately flip back through their notes—Andrew’s right. “Ian Flannery,” Andrew says. “Backliner extraordinaire. And, for that matter, Kendra Little, Sid Kalyanam—”

“They’ve been keeping all their best players out,” Neil says. “None of them played yesterday, or Friday.”

“A gamble,” Kevin says. “They assume they can win against most teams with less-than-their-best. On the other hand, if they field their best players tomorrow, against us—”

“We spent all day yesterday on a plane, all of us played, we’d have to bring people up from reserves to get the number of players Denver has,” Neil says. “We’re going to go into that game tired, and they won’t.”

“Maybe they’re saving their players for championships,” Riley says, although she doesn’t sound hopeful.

“No sense in that, then they’d be out of practice,” Kevin snaps. Neil snaps his fingers at Kevin. “Sorry,” Kevin says, “but it’s true—”

“Not an idiot,” Riley says.

“I know, but—who are they playing Friday? California? They don’t need fresh players to beat California. We’re their top challenge.”

“Doesn’t matter much,” Athena says. “Even if they beat us, we’re still likely to make it to championships—”

“Psychological,” Clark says. “We’ll be terrified of them if they beat us tomorrow. Go home exhausted, three games in under a week, plane rides and no family time, and they’ve got enough players to split the team in half—”

“We should get more players,” Athena says. “Even just to have as benchwarmers.”

Everyone makes a face, Athena included. _More_ people? They’re a whole team of antisocial assholes, they don’t want _more_ people.

“Speaking of,” Kevin says, looking at Clark, “any idea who’s replacing you? We’ll need a new dealer.”

“Aiming for Allison Walker-Reynolds,” Clark says, and Neil woops.

“Really?” Kevin asks, and if Neil didn’t know any better he might think that Kevin sounded, perhaps, _excited_. “That’s an acceptable replacement.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Clark says drily. “But it’s not finalized yet.”

“I’m sure Al is negotiating her paycheck,” Neil says, grinning. Allison knows what she’s worth. _And_ she can work with Andrew, Neil, and Kevin—good as gold, that woman is, and she knows it.

“Think dad’ll admit he’s getting old any time soon?” Kevin asks Neil. “Maybe he’ll finally ask Dan to come be his assistant.”

“Missing Matt and Dan, huh,” Neil says sympathetically.

“Course not, just wishing my father would take better care of himself. Anyway, they’re gonna slaughter us tomorrow,” Kevin says to the group at large.

“Downer,” Riley says. “Look, fuck what they want. We’ll do what we always do, and they’ll have to deal with it.”

“And they _will_ —”

Neil and Andrew give Kevin a _look_ , and Kevin throws his hands and eyebrows up and shuts his mouth.

And then they get down to training.

It’s not their usual training—they’ve been doing that for months, and so has everybody else. At this point, an extra day or two of working out won’t make a difference.

Instead, they get creative. It’s about the footwork, the strategy. Andrew opens his mouth, and months worth of insight falls out—months spent being only half-interested, knowing precisely how everyone on his team moves, only getting into things when the strikers try something new. It keeps the strikers on their toes, year-round; now, it’s what gives them ideas for new ways of getting around him, of getting around their backliners, of moving the ball from point A to point B. Andrew heads out for therapy, and comes back in time to bring Neil home for dinner—they pick up Thai on the way home.

“Can we come, tomorrow?” Natalie asks as soon as they step through the door. She’s on the floor, holding King off her face with sheer willpower, thoroughly focused on Neil and Andrew as Neil sorts through the mail.

“Sure,” Neil says. “We’ll figure out a way to get you there—maybe Wymack? We’re going to get there before you guys get out of school, or we’d just bring you with us.”

“No need,” Paige says from the kitchen. “Sandra is going to bring us. We figured we have seats still in the friends and family section?”

“Oh, yeah, you do. Is Sandy coming? You could probably sneak her in there, too. I’m not sure if you could get Sandra and Rick in. Maybe?”

“We just have to set aside tickets for them,” Andrew says. “Kevin set aside tickets for Abby and Wymack—I got Bee in on one of mine; I could get Rick and Sandra too, and you could get the kids?”

“Cool. Tell Sandra I said sorry for not thinking about it earlier, maybe I could’ve saved her the money.”

“I think she got them as part of a ticket package,” Paige says. “Also, maybe you should text her, like an adult.”

Neil grimaces at her. She sticks her tongue out at him. He sticks his tongue out at her.

“Oh, _real_ mature, pops,” Natalie says. “Super adult of you.”

“You’re the one who keeps saying I’m old, not me,” Neil says. “I’ll text, but you have to help set the table.”

The kids scramble to their feet, and Neil composes his text to the sounds of utensils and plates.

“Congrats, pops,” Paige says when Neil sits down. “You sent a text! How’s it feel?”

“I send plenty of texts, thank you very much.”

“Wow, really?” Natalie asks. “Kinda figured you just paid a scribe to do it for you. Cause you’re too old to figure it out on your own.”

“I’m really not even 30,” Neil says helplessly. “I’m really not that old.”

“Hey, when’s your birthday?”

“March 31.”

“I don’t know, like, basic shit about you,” Paige says. “Like, I know about the people you’ve killed, but like, dad, when’s _your_ birthday? I think I’ve heard pops say your middle name was Joseph—pops, what’s _your_ middle name? I’m missing _basic shit_.”

“November 4,” Andrew says.

“Abram,” Neil says.

“Oooh,” Natalie says. “Andrew called you that, once. Do you use it as a nickname?”

“No.”

“But Andrew calls you that.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m torn,” Paige says. “See, I _want_ to know, but I also feel like, maybe just this once, I’m too lazy for it.”

Neil shrugs. “When you want to know, I’ll tell you. It’ll be there.”

“Okay,” Paige says.

“If you could have a superpower,” Andrew asks, “which one would it be?”

“See, once upon a time, I’d have asked if this was the kind of dumb shit you talk about when we’re not around,” Natalie says. “Now, I know it _is_. Well. Superpower?”

“Teleportation is excluded,” Andrew says. “ _And_ you need to include your reasoning.”

“Why?” Paige asks. “Do you have rules for this question, too?”

“We consider it a measure of how we’ve changed as people. And teleportation is excluded cause it’s literally everything. Wanna fly? Teleport into the sky, keep teleporting forward and up to make up for height you’ve lost. Need to get somewhere fast? Fuck speed, just teleport. Need to lift something really heavy? Grab it and teleport with it—”

“Now, hang on,” Natalie interrupts. “Can you _do_ that? Teleport shit that isn’t you?”

“When you teleport, do you re-appear naked?” Andrew asks.

“Oh. Okay. Fine. No teleportation. Anyway, I’d want mind control powers.”

“Why?” Andrew asks.

“Make people go away.”

“Fair enough,” Andrew allows. Natalie looks expectantly at him. “My turn? Mm. Ability to eat sugar without side effects. Why must I choose between funnel cake and returning every single one of Kevin’s shots directly to his face for the next 80 years? Paige, your turn.”

“Super strength. Obvious reasons. Neil?”

“Obvious reasons?” Neil asks.

“Hit people I don’t like.”

“Fair enough. Super speed.”

“Junkie,” Andrew accuses.

“No! Different reasons, non-exy reasons.”

“How much can it matter?” Paige asks.

“A lot,” Andrew says. “For instance: You two don’t feel particularly safe, and don’t trust anyone else to keep you safe. Don’t worry, no need to look ashamed, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. When we first asked this question, I wanted telekinesis, so if I was ever trapped I could, say, telekinetically pick up a lamp and bash someone over the head with it, for fairly obvious reasons. And then I wanted stone skin, so I could, theoretically, take a bullet for a dumbass with a gang on his tail. And so on. These days, ice cream giving me a heart attack is—somehow—the most nerve-wracking thing in my life. So. Neil. New reasons?”

“Yeah! Like, if someone drops a glass, I want to be able to grab it before it hits the floor. Or if someone is standing in front of a loaded gun, I want to be able to get them out of the way. You know, the daily difficulties.”

Andrew rolls his eyes.

“How is _that_ different from what _we_ want?” Natalie asks.

“I mean, first off, it doesn’t matter, it’s not like there’s a better or a worse reason to want a superpower,” Neil says, “the one exception being when I wanted super speed for exy reasons. Second of all, the difference is that it’s not that _I_ feel unsafe, it’s that I want to make sure that _you_ three are always safe.”

Andrew snorts.

“What?” Neil asks. “I do!”

“No, not that. See, I made the mistake—rookie error—of thinking that maybe you just wanted to protect people, _in general_. I forgot that the list of people you care about is approximately 20 people long.”

“I’m not apologizing for that,” Neil says loftily.

“Not asking you to,” Andrew agrees. “Just laughing at myself.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Paige asks. “Protect someone else?”

Neil shrugs. “Probably. If they were right there.”

“I mean, we _know_ you would,” Natalie says. “Lorna.”

“Holy shit,” Andrew says. “She’s right.”

Neil frowns.

“She’s _right_ ,” Andrew says triumphantly. “And fuck you.”

“Is this a _problem_?” Paige asks.

“Neil likes to insist that he’s a terrible person,” Andrew says. “In spite of how often I tell him otherwise.”

“I—”

“Keep us safe,” Paige says.

“Sure, but—”

“Hold on,” Paige says imperiously, holding up one finger. She looks at Natalie.

“Wolf pack,” Natalie says with satisfaction.

“What’s that?” Neil asks, unnerved.

“Wolf pack,” Paige agrees. “Ok. It’s something we used to do when we were kids, with our mom, and then when we went into foster care we just kinda—kept it up, any time we had good foster siblings. Here. Hang on. Stand up. We’ll teach you. Well, wait, we have to modify it—”

“Yeah, jesus, we’re taller than they are,” Natalie says. “Should we—switch it?”

“Nah, just take out the jump,” Paige decides.

“Jump?” Andrew asks.

Paige beckons them out into the middle of the kitchen.

“Holy shit, I just got preemptively embarrassed,” Natalie says. “Haven’t even done it yet. Mom really set us up for a lifetime of stupid shit, huh.”

“Coward,” Paige huffs.

“It’s _weird_.”

“What’s weird?” Neil asks.

Natalie waves him off. “We could just… do, like, normal people shit.”

“Wolf pack!” Paige insists. “Wolf pack! Wolf pack!”

“We can’t even do it for real!”

Paige crosses her arms. “So what? You’re _embarrassed_? Wimp! Wimp! Wimp! Wimp—”

“Fuck, fine, jesus—”

“Gij, don’t bully your sister,” Neil commands.

“Yeah,” Natalie says. “Don’t bully your sister.”

“We don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to,” Neil says.

“It’ll be good for you,” Paige tells Natalie. “Cathartic.”

Natalie grumbles.

“You were _always_ the best at it.”

Natalie grumbles some more.

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasseeeeee—”

“ _Fine,_ fine, fine. Okay. Okay. Here’s how it works,” Natalie says, taking charge. “Okay. Get closer together.” Neil and Andrew step closer together. Natalie motions them closer, until they’re shoulder to shoulder. “Step one: Look at the ceiling and howl like a wolf.”

“What’s step two?” Neil asks uncertainly.

“You haven’t even done step one yet,” Paige says. “On the count of three.”

Neil exchanges a glance with Andrew—no one had told him, when he’d agreed to adopt a kid, that _look at the ceiling and howl like a wolf_ would be a sentence he’d ever have to hear, let alone obey. But it’s too late now, because Paige is already counting one, two, three—

Neil looks at the ceiling and lets out a passable wolf howl, one that is _absolutely_ eclipsed by what sounds like a real whole entire wolf in their kitchen. He looks down at Natalie, the source of the sound, just in time to see Natalie and Paige fly at him and Andrew, arms open wide. Neil and Andrew catch them with an _oof_ from Neil and absolutely nothing from Andrew, and that’s when Neil figures out that step two is _family_ _bear hugs._

“So what is…” Neil trails off. Asking _what’s the point_ feels much more rude than he intends to be. Asking _what this is_ also feels like a useless question, because what it is is he’s hugging his daughters and also his husband. He’s not _averse_ to this, he’s just curious. “…the history of this?”

“I don’t know, we just used to do it with our mom,” Paige explains, stepping back. “And Nat had a wolf phase—”

“You had a cat phase,” Natalie says scornfully. “Don’t act like I’m the only one.”

“I’m not, I’m just saying—wolves don’t generally travel alone, they travel in packs, so mom made this up for whenever Nat was sad. I mean, when we were little, we’d literally jump on mom, and she’d just kinda grab us both and throw us on the couch, and then when we were ten and doing this with our siblings it was more of a wrestling match, but I think we’re both a bit big for that. But anyway, we used to do it when one of us was feeling bad, cause it was just _guaranteed_ to solve that problem. So, anyway, did it work? Do you feel like a good person now?”

Oh, jesus. Well, what’s Neil going to do, say no? “Yes. I do. Thank you.”

“You guys give good hugs,” Natalie says.

“I used to use these hands for evil,” Andrew says seriously, collecting empty plates from the table. “Now I use them for hugs.”

Paige laughs, and wipes down the table, and Andrew and Neil go back to work.

They train largely in silence, tense and serious. Clark and Riley try to keep the mood light, but it’s clearly an effort, and not one that’s having much of an effect. It’s not ideal. They’re already a psychological wreck; how are they going to manage tomorrow?

Neil abandons himself to it. He can stand there and fret, or he can train. He chooses training, and does so, taking a deep breath, digging deep, and finding, somewhere, the ability to—

“Don’t fucking wear yourself out, Neil,” Kevin snaps.

Neil glowers at him, but Kevin doesn’t back down.

“We still have a whole entire game to play tomorrow, dumbass,” Kevin says. “Exhaust yourself now and you’ll be useless.”

So Neil frets.

Eventually, though, Clark calls a halt to the practice, and Neil and Andrew get in the car, and Neil spends the whole car ride trying not to fall asleep and failing miserably at it. Andrew, fortunately, stays awake, and they make it home safe.

The house is quiet when they get inside—the cats greet them at the door, King doing his level best to trip Neil and very nearly succeeding, Sir purring softly halfway down the hall. As they climb the stairs, stepping over cats and doing their level best not to step on tails, the girls’ bedroom door opens.

“Good night,” the girls chorus quietly.

“Good night,” Neil and Andrew say, giving the girls hugs as they tiptoe out into the hallway. And then Natalie and Paige tiptoe back into their room, like they’re trying not to wake anyone up, and the door locks behind them, and Neil and Andrew shrug at each other and tiptoe into their own room.

Neil pulls off his shirt, yawning, stretching, half-surprised as he always is at how nice it is to stretch like that, and when he opens his eyes it’s to find Andrew staring at him, heat in his eyes, and Neil is abruptly aware of how distressingly attractive Andrew is, with his broad shoulders and solid biceps and his unfairly lovely face. “You wanna…”

Andrew shakes his head. “You’re exhausted,” he points out. "And so am I."

“True enough,” Neil agrees.

Andrew pulls Neil down and kisses his forehead, and Neil contents himself with that.

The next day, they arrive at the stadium early.

The amount of tension in the stadium is enough to fill the stands before a single spectator even arrives.

“Well, this sucks,” Neil says to nobody as they gather for what promises to be the shittiest pep talk in human history.

“Yeah,” Riley agrees.

“What, not gonna call me a downer?”

“This time, I think you’re just right.”

They sit there in silence.

“Clark? Got anything?” Athena asks.

“Not really. They’re going to bring out fresh players we haven’t seen play in a week and a half, they’ve probably been developing some weird shit we won’t be able to counter, and they’re going to fuck us up.”

“Great,” Maria says. “Just what I was hoping to hear.”

Neil pretends for half a minute that he’s ever spread so much as an ounce of positivity in his life, and says, “Well, look, if they do, then we’ll know what they’ve got and we can beat them, just, straight to shit next week.”

“Upper,” Riley says dourly.

“Upper?”

“Opposite of a downer. Jesus, Neil, right when I need you to be miserable like the rest of us.”

“This isn’t—this isn’t the toughest shit we’ve ever done,” Neil says. “It’s not the best team we’ve ever faced, it’s not the worst circumstances we’ve ever been in. Yes? So let’s go over this shit.”

Riley groans. “Can’t wait til you’re our Captain.”

“Hmm?”

Riley looks at him, surprised, and then at Clark. “I mean, it’s gonna be Neil, right? Your replacement?”

“Well, I was hoping to talk to him first,” Clark says pointedly, “but, I mean, yeah.”

“Why does everyone keep _doing_ that?” Neil asks. “Just, making me Captain?”

“Because we’re smart people. Now. Everyone’s got your packets?” Nods all around. “Great. Now let’s start with Flannery.”

They do.

And they go over it until it’s time to warm up, doing slow laps around the court, watching Denver warm up, all their players on the court.

Neil feels nervous like he hasn’t in years. He can’t understand why. He hadn’t been lying, earlier; even if Denver has new shit up their sleeves, it still won’t be the hardest game they’ve ever played. Still won’t be the toughest shit they’ve ever done. He remembers being backliner against Riko; what could be harder than that game?

He’d also been a lot younger, to be fair, but he’s still not _old_.

Denver wins first serve, and then they take the court.

Aiko Nakamura is Riley’s mark—a Court backliner—and Flannery is Neil’s mark. Flannery has been tentatively marked for Court—he’s like a tank—but he’s also not particularly intelligent, hence, why he isn't Court. He’s still one of Denver’s best. Neil can’t imagine why Flannery is against Neil, instead of Riley; Neil is known for being fast and doing stupid shit, and Riley is a tank herself.

And then they actually start playing, and Neil understands.

Flannery’s technique isn’t to be faster than Neil, or as fast as him, or even particularly to get in his way. It’s to block Neil’s _view_.

Neil can dodge, and run, and get the ball, and that’s all well and good; Flannery is _there_ , making himself known, but it’s nothing Neil can’t handle. All the way up until Neil gets the ball, feints, spins, lifts his racquet—and Flannery’s hand is in his face. Not touching him, not doing anything that could be misconstrued as a foul, but blocking Neil’s view, and in that split second when Neil hesitates, unable to see the goal or the goalie or anyone else that might be in his path, Flannery catches up and blocks him altogether. Hell, even when Neil tries to pass the ball to Riley, there’s Flannery’s hand, right in Neil’s way, and Neil lets out a wordless yell of frustration, whirls, and heaves the ball at Clark to deal with.

By the time the quarter is over, Neil is fuming. They’re losing 5-3, just in the first quarter, and he watches as Flannery gets traded out as well—he’ll be Neil’s mark in the fourth quarter, too, presumably, and the thought makes Neil want to cry tears of frustration. He’d gotten one goal. One. One singular goal, in the whole quarter, and Riley had only taken two—normally, each goal is taken as a team, running across the court and passing the ball back and forth as dictated by the number of steps they’d taken, or how far away they were from the goal, or who had the better shot, or who was free, or—

And instead of that, Riley had been left very nearly on her own.

Kevin gives Neil a look as they pass each other, and Neil does his level best not to glare at him—it’s not Kevin’s fault.

Andrew grabs Neil’s arm. Neil opens his mouth, but Andrew simply says: “Stop.”

It’s the hiccup in his emotions that gets him every time—the annoyance that Andrew won’t specify (stop _what_?), the annoyance that Andrew thinks saying _stop_ is enough, the near-hilarity of it. This is the worst thing: When Andrew says _stop_ , it usually works.

So Neil takes a deep breath and lets it go. He’s not here to whine and complain, he’s here to play a game. He just has to remember how to _play_. How did he play, when he was younger, when there was no relying on anyone else? When there was no one to pass to, no one who would pass to him?

It’s not just Flannery who’s playing like that, Neil realizes, watching Kevin and Maria get increasingly furious. Flannery is better at it, though—faster, more accurate about it, and able to strike the perfect balance between “close enough to block Neil’s view” and “not close enough to risk a foul.” Riley bangs on the wall once or twice, shocking Maria and her backliner out of a fight, grumbling under her breath as Maria’s mark gets a little too close to her.

“He won’t,” Andrew says. “It’s finals. He’s not stupid enough to start something.”

“Easy enough for _you_ to say,” Riley says. “His hand was an inch and a half away from her face. If someone did that to Neil, with Neil jumping around like a jackrabbit, you’d throw a fit.”

“Fair enough.”

When halftime comes around, they’re losing 10-6. Neil and Kevin fume in each other’s general direction, unwilling to take it out on anyone else, while Clark tries to amp them all up for the next half, cajoling and threatening by turns.

And then Riley and Maria and Andrew go on for the third quarter, and Neil nearly throws himself through the glass.

They’re going at Andrew. They’re coming inches away from slamming into him themselves. They’re rotating out strikers like crazy as they get red cards against backliners, trying to get to Andrew. Riley and Maria are making the most of those red cards, taking penalty shots like champs, and it’s keeping the Jaguars afloat, but Denver is really, honestly, trying to either take Andrew out of the game altogether or make him too terrified to play properly—and Neil can’t tell if they’re honestly getting to him, or if they’re just _that good_ , because Andrew misses one shot, two shots, the score is 12-10, and Neil is about to blow his own head off. He dimly remembers loving the violence of this game. He’d slaughter his way through the entire Moriyama empire right now to create a tamer version.

“Don’t forget to communicate,” Kevin says through gritted teeth as they head on for the fourth quarter.

“The more often we have the ball, the less often they’ll have a reason to go after Andrew.”

“If that helps you, I won’t complain.”

It doesn’t.

Or, more accurately, it _does_ , but it’s not enough.

Neil shoves against Flannery, coming centimeters away from a red card, hanging onto the ball for as long as he can, passing to Kevin when even the slightest of openings appears. He runs himself into the ground, trying desperately to get around Flannery—so Flannery starts swinging, like he’s going to hit Neil in the face, and Neil keeps flinching away, like he’s still a child sitting in a room with his father, with his mother, and when Kevin curses in French at the top of his lungs Neil knows they’re doing the same to him, and it’s not red-card-worthy, or even anything the refs would put a stop to, but it’s infuriating Andrew, too, and he’s not as calm as he once was, not as distant, not as apathetic, and if it’s at all possible, things get _worse_ —because whenever Kevin and Neil try to communicate, Denver’s dealer shouts translations. The got a dealer who speaks French—or who learned French—and Denver take another two shots off Andrew, and Kevin and Neil manage one each—and then—with 20 seconds on the clock—Kevin takes another, and it’s the worst and hardest 19 seconds of Neil’s life, trying desperately to get the ball and put it in the net, grasping at the groove he usually gets into with exy, stifling the urge to talk to Kevin, knowing Denver will use it against them, trying to pass the ball to his teammates, turning and throwing it to Andrew in the desperate hope that Neil or Kevin will be able to break away in the confusion and get free for Andrew to throw it, but it takes too long. Andrew smacks it down the court, Neil breaks free, and even as he gets the ball back Flannery tackles him, and two seconds later the buzzer goes off.

And then Flannery disappears, hauled off and literally thrown backwards off Neil, and Andrew drops to his knees beside Neil.

“I’m fine,” Neil gasps. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up. How many fingers am I holding up.”

“Two. I’m in the Jaguar stadium, we just lost the fucking game by one point, and our kids are staring at me lying on the floor. I’m not dizzy or nauseous.”

Andrew helps him up, and then gives Flannery a look that leaves Neil concerned for the man’s future. They all line up to shake hands, and then the Jaguars head off the court, Clark and Kevin already checking their phones.

“California beat New York 10-8,” Kevin says.

“Denver is at 32 points,” Andrew reels off. “We’re in second, with 25. California has 20. New York has 19. Allison must be furious.”

Kevin waves that off. He seems calmer, though, hearing those numbers. “We’re doing all right, then.”

“I mean, we lost,” Maria says. “And unless California pulls off a miracle on Friday, we’re likely to either not go to Championships at all, or to be facing Denver, whom we just lost to. And the only reason we did as well as we did is because they kept getting red carded. If they can keep their shit on the other side of a foul, we’ll be fucked.”

“Well, we’re not done yet,” Clark says. “So keep your shit together.”

They split up to shower. And then they gather in the changing rooms.

“Get some sleep,” Clark tells them. “Go home, eat a good dinner, get some sleep. Come in tomorrow ready to talk about this and train. And, hey, in a couple days, it’ll be the weekend, and we can take a break. Okay?”

“Okay,” the team mumbles, and they head out, quietly, to meet their family members in the parking lot.

Natalie and Paige meet Andrew and Neil at the door, and then they pile quietly into the car.

Neil doesn’t know how many points they need to take from New York in order to make it to finals—won’t know until California and Denver play each other—but he knows that if they get there, they’ll face Denver again, and losing by one point won’t be acceptable. There isn’t any coming back from that, in the final game of the season.

Neil wants to play backliner again. He wants to stand in front of Andrew and prevent anyone from even getting _close_ to the goal.

He sighs. His kids are miserable; they’re dead silent, in a way they haven’t been since Neil and Andrew picked them up in Colorado—scared of adult men in a bad mood, because of course they are. His husband is miserable. _He_ is miserable. Over one point—well, two points, really, because one point would’ve only tied them.

Neil can handle being miserable, and Andrew’s dealt with worse, but he can’t let his kids sit in the backseat and stew in their fear.

Neil summons an image of Nicky, and pretends that Nicky would yell at him for being sad about a sport when he’s got his whole family in the car, and tries to put Denver into context. Losing a game isn’t the end of the world. It’s a job, and sometimes that job involves losing.

It’s not working. He can’t make himself not care.

Well, fine, then. He won’t make himself not care. He just needs a distraction, they all do. He casts around, and his brain lands on poptarts, on Browning standing in his kitchen eating poptarts, and then he opens his mouth and says: “Are poptarts ravioli?”

“I hate you,” Andrew says immediately. “I hate you so much. Shut your mouth.”

Neil grins. “I mean, that’s not an answer.”

“It is. They’re not. Fuck you.”

“If they’re not, why are you so angry about it?”

“Because it’s a stupid thing to say.”

“I mean—it’s pastry, wrapped around a filling. Poptarts are basically just a dessert ravioli.”

“No. Incorrect. I hate every word coming out of your mouth right now.”

“I’m not hearing a counter-argument.”

“Raviolis need to be boiled.”

“That’s your counter?”

“What else do I need to say?”

“I don’t know. I mean, they _don’t_ need to be boiled, toasted raviolis are definitely a thing, but—are you saying poptarts _can’t_ be boiled?”

“Fuck you. I’m getting a divorce.”

“Or are you saying that poptarts don’t _need_ to be boiled? But that’s really only because they’re pre-cooked, right?”

“I’m calling a lawyer right now.”

“I could probably test it. I wonder what boiled poptarts would taste like?”

“They’d taste like divorce papers.”

That breaks through Neil’s boiled-poptart-induced haze, and he frowns. “You’ve never threatened me with divorce before. Are you serious?”

Andrew glances at him. “Are you stupid?”

“I mean, yeah, but this is a new threat.”

“Of course I’m not divorcing you. You’re also not boiling poptarts in my kitchen.”

Neil considers arguing, and then decides against it. He squeezes Andrew’s hand. “That’s fair.”

“If you do get a divorce, do we get to choose which parent we go with?” Paige pipes up. “I don’t want to stay with someone who boils poptarts.”

“That’s also fair,” Neil allows.

They fall silent again, but Neil minds less. The atmosphere feels lighter.

Andrew slides over to the right lane, and then pulls into the parking lot of a Stop & Shop.

“What are we doing?” Neil asks.

“Buying poptarts,” Andrew grumbles.

Neil and the girls put up an immediate incomprehensible outcry.

Andrew points at Neil. “This is your fault.”

“ _How_?”

“ _In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one._ Don’t play dumb. Let’s go, we’re getting poptarts.”

“I’m not _playing_ dumb, I _am_ dumb,” Neil protests as he gets out of the car. “This is _not_ my fault.”

“A little bit it is,” Natalie says, trailing behind them.

They head for the poptart aisle.

“Which flavor do we want to ruin forever?” Andrew asks. Natalie gags. “How about Brown Sugar Cinnamon?”

“Oh, god, too sweet. Chocolate Fudge,” Neil suggests. “Also. We should buy regular raviolis. And then toast them. Just to be completely fair.”

“You’re the worst,” Andrew says, snagging a box of Chocolate Fudge poptarts.

And then they head to the frozen aisle and find raviolis.

Andrew strides with purpose towards the cashier, who smiles at them as Andrew places their two items on the belt.

“Hi, how are you?” She says.

“We’re going home to commit war crimes,” Andrew tells her. Neil snickers.

“Sounds like fun. Do you have a rewards card?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, holding it out.

“You look familiar,” she says, glancing at Neil as she scans the poptarts.

“I get that a lot,” Neil says.

“You do?” Natalie mutters.

“Oh—you’re the guy from that commercial. With all the scars.”

“Yeah, I am,” Neil says.

“Cool. Where’d you get them?”

“Fought a gazelle.”

“Guess I shouldn’t be asking, huh. Couldn’t come up with a better animal than _gazelle_?”

“Not on short notice.” Neil swipes his credit card. “I’ll be better prepared next time. Maybe a mongoose?”

“Maybe just a goose, those things are vicious. Have a nice day.”

“You too,” Neil says, following Andrew out the door, the girls trailing after them. He reaches out as Andrew reaches back, linking their pinkies, and Neil sighs. “You do a whole commercial telling people not to ask questions, and they _watch_ it and still won’t keep their mouths shut.”

“Mm,” Andrew agrees.

They finish the drive in silence.

They walk in on the cats fighting, running in screaming circles around the front hallway until they realize that people are home. They vanish into the living room, while the four humans head straight for the kitchen.

“War crimes,” Andrew mutters, pulling out a pot.

“I thought you said I wasn’t boiling poptarts in your kitchen?”

“ _You_ aren’t, _I_ am.”

“See that, kids? In the divorce, you’ll have to come with me.”

“Maybe we’ll just request emancipation,” Paige says, watching Andrew fill the pot with water.

Neil plugs in the toaster. “Do we want these to come out at the same time, or do we stagger it?”

“Who cares?” Natalie asks, sitting on the counter. “It’s all going to be gross.”

Andrew turns the stove on. “Do we each want our own poptart?”

“No,” Paige and Natalie say quickly. “No, I don’t think we do.”

“Half, then. I’ll boil two. Neil, may as well start the toasting.”

“How long do I put these in for?”

“Better question,” Andrew says. “How long do I put _these_ in for?”

“Any rule of thumb that’ll help us out here?”

“Usually, you take things out of the oven when they start smelling good.”

“Unlikely,” Neil says, startling a snort out of Andrew. “Well, for the poptarts, anyway. Any—I don’t know, any _temperature_ the raviolis should reach?”

“Hot,” Andrew says.

“Are you going to kill us with food poisoning?” Paige asks.

“Food poisoning isn’t usually deadly,” Neil says. “I don’t think, anyway. And regardless, these are cheese raviolis, so no.”

“Is this what you guys did in college?” Natalie asks.

“No, we didn’t have immediate access to an oven,” Andrew says. “If we wanted to pull shit like this, we had to go all the way to Nicky’s, and we were _way_ too lazy.”

“We _did_ have an illegal hot plate, though,” Neil remembers. “And we _did_ use it to do things like cook spaghetti in gatorade. Before you ask—disgusting.”

“Illegal?” Paige asks.

“We weren’t allowed to have hot plates in the dorm, it was a fire hazard,” Andrew explains.

“So, of course, you went out and got one,” Natalie says.

“Well, Neil got a fever.”

“So, what, you boiled him?”

“No. I made him chicken soup. You think I trusted dining hall food? _No_. They can pretend the athlete’s dining hall is healthy, I don’t trust them for a second.”

“It was really sweet,” Neil remembers, placing the raviolis in the toaster and turning the setting to _dark_. “I woke him up at fucking-early-o’clock, coughing and shivering, and he vanished for a couple hours. Came back with a text from Wymack that I’d been signed out of that day’s classes, a hot plate, a whole cooked chicken, a pot, and veggies. We had chicken stock simmering all morning. He skipped practice that day, sat there and spoon-fed me chicken soup. I’ve never gotten over a fever faster in my life.”

“And now he’s going to kill you,” Paige says, “by making you eat boiled poptarts.”

“Again,” Andrew says, “this was _not_ my idea.”

They gather around the pot to watch the poptarts bob.

“It kind of was,” Neil says in the silence. “You bought the poptarts. Hey, how do we know when they’re done, again?”

“How long does it take raviolis to cook?” Paige asks.

“No—that’s too long, poptarts are already cooked.”

“The _real_ test, then, would be to make homemade poptarts,” Natalie says as Andrew prods the pop tart with a spatula.

Andrew grimaces. “Oh, it already feels weird.”

“Take ‘em out,” Neil says. “Stick a fork in them, they’re done.”

“Don’t stick a fork in them, they’ll fall apart,” Andrew mutters, flipping them onto a plate. He uses the spatula to chop them in half. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever done for love.”

“First of all,” Neil says, one eye on the toaster, watching the raviolis crisp up, “I don’t know why you keep insisting this is my fault. Second of all, one time I _did_ dare you to eat a roach, so.”

“Did you eat it?” Paige asks, grimacing as Andrew passes her her half of a poptart. “And do I have to eat this?”

“I did, he was being a douche—”

“Don’t sell yourself short, you were _also_ being a douche,” Neil says, pulling the raviolis out of the toaster. They, at least, look all right. “And no, you probably don’t have to eat it.”

“Coward,” Natalie says, and Paige immediately takes a bite of the poptart.

“Ubluhhg,” she says, grimacing, swallowing the bite with many dramatic facial expressions, stealing a ravioli off the plate Neil is holding. “Your turn,” she says, pointing at Natalie.

“Why are _we_ eating the gross before _they_ are?” Natalie asks.

“I don’t know,” Paige says, “but I ate it, so you have to.”

“Count of three,” Neil says. Natalie and Andrew ready their poptarts. “Three—two—one—”

As one, the three of them take a bite out of their poptarts, and Neil understands that Paige hadn’t been exaggerating. It’s—mushy, grainy, falling apart. It tastes like nothing but _sweet_ , and then, _too_ sweet, too sweet even for Andrew, who in a moment of absolute solidarity, meets Neil’s eyes. Oh, they’re _both_ in pain. They’re _both_ in hell. The innards of the poptart are, shockingly, not too bad—insulated, Neil realizes, by the icing—but rather than making it taste _better_ , it just emphasizes the contrast between what the poptart _is_ and what it’s _supposed_ to be, and what it _is_ is _bad_. And it’s not dry, either, it’s still dripping from the water it was boiled in, and being watered down doesn’t help the taste any.

Making noises just like the one Paige had made, the three of them manage to choke their bites down—and then Paige raises an eyebrow at them, shoves the rest of her half into her mouth whole—Natalie, not to be outdone, follows suit—and Andrew and Neil give in to peer pressure and eat the rest of their poptarts.

And then they dig into the ravioli. It’s the only thing keeping Neil from pulling his mouth out of his skull and dropping it down the garbage disposal.

“So, dad,” Natalie says after eating three raviolis at top speed, “when you said you ate a roach. You weren’t talking about, like, drugs, right? You were talking about the bug?”

“He hadn’t told me he hated roaches,” Neil says in his own defense. “I didn’t know. And then we had one in our dorm, and _I_ hate roaches—”

“Sounds like a bug list failure,” Paige says wisely.

“It is—”

“We’re still soulmates, though,” Andrew says.

“We are—can I finish my story? Anyway, I saw it and _jumped_ , I was all the way across the room in a heartbeat, I have _never_ moved that fast in my _life_ , and Andrew started ripping into me, going on and _on_ about how he thought I was done being a runaway, I was done with avoiding the things that scared me, and going _oh, wow, you’ll stand up to Tetsuji Moriyama but you won’t step on a roach_? Now, looking back, it’s pretty clear that the _intent_ was to needle me into stepping on the fucking bug so he wouldn’t have to,” Neil muses, “but at the _time_ , we weren’t too great at communication yet, and I didn’t understand that Andrew was trying to convey a very real terror of cockroaches—”

“Well, that’s maybe an exaggeration—”

“Maybe—but anyway, _my_ response was _well, if it’s not scary, go ahead and eat it then_ , and he went _you want me to eat the roach?_ And I doubled down and said _yeah, yeah I do, jackass_ , and he _did_.”

“Was it _alive_?” Natalie asks.

“Killing roaches is hard,” Andrew says. “I wasn’t going to prolong the struggle. Also, with what? A shoe? I’m not eating something after it’s touched the bottom of my shoe. Anyway, it did _not_ end my fear of cockroaches, and to this day is the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, although boiled poptarts comes close.”

“And now I kill any cockroaches we get,” Neil finishes.

“Making it worth it. Anyway—”

“Why do you always let pops tell the stories if you’re the one with the perfect memory?” Paige asks.

“Why not?”

“Well, cause you could probably tell them more accurately,” Natalie points out.

“Sure, but as long as he’s telling him accurately _enough_ , why do I care?”

“Well, because—”

“Don’t bother,” Natalie says, waving a hand to silence Paige. “It’s probably something gross, like he _likes the sound of Neil’s voice_ or some shit.”

Neil laughs.

“Yep,” Andrew says.

Neil puts his face in his hands.

“ _Eugh_ ,” Natalie says, but she’s laughing. “Jesus. I didn’t mean to be _right_!”

“What? Am I not allowed to like the sound of my husband’s voice?” Andrew asks innocently, absolutely unconcerned with the rising temperature of Neil’s face. “Am I not allowed to want to hear the sweet tones made by my lover’s vocal cords—”

“We’re going upstairs,” Natalie announces. “We’re going to bed. Good night!”

“Oh, already?” Andrew asks. “What, you don’t want to hear more about—”

“Good night!” Paige calls from the hallway. “We’ll brush our teeth and whatever,” she calls from the stairs.

Neil snorts and leans against Andrew, who eats another ravioli.

“These are good,” Andrew says thoughtfully. “We should just toast them, from now on.”

“Less clean-up, too,” Neil agrees.

“Do you think the girls realize it’s only 7 o’clock?” Andrew asks.

“Nope.”

“Did they forget that they have homework?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Is it because I grossed them out?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe they’re just tired.”

“Sure.”

“You going to join this conversation?”

“Nope, having a good time listening to the sweet tones made by my lover’s vocal cords.”

Andrew huffs a laugh. “I recognize now that, perhaps, that counted as torture.”

“You _did_ say we were going to commit war crimes.”

Andrew sighs. “Nat, Gij,” he calls. “Don’t forget to do your homework.”

He and Neil stand there, munching on raviolis, until the girls appear at the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you guys done being gross?” Natalie asks.

“Almost certainly not,” Neil informs her.

“Are you _temporarily_ done being gross?”

Neil and Andrew give it some thought. Some deep, deep thought. There is much frowning, much sighing, and a wide variety of facial expressions.

“ _Fine_ ,” Paige says. “Fine, you _win_ , you can be gross, help us with our homework?”

“Sure,” Neil agrees, and they sit down at the table, books and notebooks spread out, and Neil gets to work, on both math and exy. His kids are going to pass math, and his team is going to beat Denver. Neil will make it so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> andrew's line about making shivs and sucking dick comes from [thepalmtoptiger](https://thepalmtoptiger.tumblr.com/post/186924377676/interviewer-so-andrew-i-heard-that-you-learned) on tumblr!
> 
> also thank you to Syrren/Shironaii for telling me about the time she and her friends boiled poptarts, thus inspiring literally 2k about andreil boiling poptarts. 
> 
> also while we're on the topic: I have never toasted raviolis. i know toasted raviolis exist in olive garden but i have no idea what that entails. please don't toast raviolis unless that's a cooking option presented on the packaging cause I have no idea if it'll work or be at all good
> 
> ...and of course i would be remiss if I did not again link [syrren's family hugs art](https://syrren.tumblr.com/post/623858027694637056/please-read-blame-it-on-my-youth-by)


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> realism? don't know her. this is some sports anime shit with some trauma in the middle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first and foremost: we are rapidly catching up to where i am in the actual writing of this story; since i started posting it, I have gained a new and time-consuming hobby, so while I have no intention of abandoning this story which is my baby, I may have to move to a weekly posting schedule instead of twice weekly. don't have to do that just yet and I'll def let everyone know once that becomes the case, and i'm trying to put it off as long as possible, but i don't want anyone to be caught off guard by that
> 
> as per usual, i know little to nothing about the foster system. anything i get correct is courtesy of terseink, who is an angel and makes sure that sometimes I say things that are real, like ICPC paperwork.

Neil marches into the stadium the next morning, Andrew right on his heels, and finds the team depressed and unhappy.

“The fuck is this?” Neil asks loudly.

“We’re gonna lose,” Maria announces. There are nods all around.

“Downer,” Neil accuses.

“Hey,” Riley says, offended.

“Shh. Hey. Listen. We’re gonna win. Denver’s a bunch of fucking upstarts, that’s nothing, we can deal with that. Hey. Kevin? I need you to make me fluent in Japanese.”

“What?” Kevin asks, startled.

“Japanese. I already speak a bunch, I need you to make me fluent in it. Or, at least, I need to learn exy terms. If they’re going to come in with a French translator, we’ll come at them with Japanese. Can we get changed now, or are we just gonna fuckin stand here?”

“What did _you_ do that made you all happy?” Athena asks. A smile is tugging at her lips, though, and she looks happier than she had when Neil walked in.

“Ate half a boiled poptart, I highly recommend it. Let’s go!”

Twenty minutes later, they’re on the court, and they’re training, and it’s not enough. It’s their usual shit. And that’s good, but it’s not _enough_. So when they pause, Neil sizes up their backliners. “Frank?”

“Mm?”

“Block me.”

“That’s literally my job.”

“No, but—like how Finnigan did it. Like, block my view.”

Frank stands in front of Neil. Neil dodges to the side, and Frank does too. “No—like, the goal isn’t to block me _bodily,_ it’s to block _my eyes_.”

“Is that what he was doing?” Frank says, shaking out his arms. “All right, let’s go.”

Neil dodges—left, right, spins, around—Frank isn’t fast enough—but he throws up a hand, in Neil’s face, blocking Neil’s view of the goal, and Neil heaves the ball over his arm.

He and Frank watch it bounce off the wall, ten feet away from the goal.

“Hey, Neil?” Andrew says. “Are these the early signs of dementia?”

Neil sighs. “They’re going to put Finnigan up against me again.”

“Yes,” Kevin agrees, holding a hand up to silence Andrew.

“And probably, given how well this worked, they’re going to all be pulling this shit—waving their hands in our faces, coming at us like they’re going to hit us, block our view, make us second guess, make us miss, just by a second. Can’t play blind.”

“Yes,” Kevin agrees.

“Why not?”

“And you’ve lost me,” Maria says.

“Why can’t we play blind? Now—if _both_ strikers are being blocked from _each other_ , and neither of us can see the other, that’s not an opening. That’s fair, that’s fine. If I aim the ball at you without knowing where your racquet is, and you don’t see me do it, you can’t catch it, that’s fine, that’s fair. But—the goal is in the same place, all the time. Goalie isn’t, but the goal is. Why can’t I aim for the goal, even if I can’t see it?”

“That’s crazy talk,” Kevin says, grinning, the light of insanity in his eyes. “And if I can see you, and I can call out to you, you’ll know generally where I am, and can aim, and I’ll just have to catch it.”

“Exactly,” Neil says, grinning, the feel of a challenge taking root in his toes.

“No way to aim around the goalie, though,” Andrew says thoughtfully. “But then, if I wasn’t expecting you to be able to shoot at all…”

“It might not matter,” Neil completes.

The three of them look at each other.

This is batshit.

They’ve got barely any time. A little over a week, to perfect throwing blind? Nothing. But Neil takes one look at Maria and Riley, and he knows they’re down to try.

So they do.

It’s hard to practice—the backliners aren’t used to it, and they’re not great at blocking like that yet. It’s training for them, as much as it is for the strikers. They struggle through it, though, Neil putting extra turns and steps in to try and disorient himself before aiming—that’s basically the same thing, right?

At lunch, Kevin starts teaching them all Japanese. He ropes the whole team into it, and they submit meekly, learning the important words and phrases, the terms for the maneuvers they use.

And then it’s back on the court, all of them trying their level best to recreate Denver’s moves and to get around them, while calling them out in Japanese—and they’ll have to do the goalie half, too, Neil reminds himself as Frank fails to get his hand up in time, the strikers will have to make a run on Andrew the way Denver had. And then Clark drops his racquet—apropos of nothing—bringing practice to a screaming halt as he runs full tilt into the changing rooms.

The rest of the team stands there.

“Did he shit himself?” Riley asks. The team dissolves into coughing.

And then Clark comes running back, waving a fistful of bandanas in the air. “Blindfolds!”

“Now, I know I said we were going to learn how to play blind,” Neil says, “but that’s a little _too_ blind.”

“Not a whole game. Just taking shots. Left, right, hope for the best.”

“After dinner,” Kevin decides, checking his watch. “May as well break now.”

There’s a murmur of agreement, and they shower and head out.

“Blindfolds,” Andrew mutters when he gets in the car. “You’ll end up whacking each other in the head.”

“That’s why we’ve got helmets. We’ll only blindfold one at a time. Not all at once.”

Andrew grumbles wordlessly.

“We’ll be fine.”

“Famous last words.”

“We’ll be careful.”

“ _Less_ famous last words.”

But he holds Neil’s hand the whole way home, so Neil decides things are ok.

“We’re home,” Neil calls into the kitchen, flipping through the mail as Andrew locks the door behind him.

“We’re in the kitchen,” Natalie answers.

Neil pauses, staring at the mail.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asks. “Neil?”

Neil hands them over to him.

Andrew looks at them.

He looks up at Neil.

There’s a letter from the foster agency, addressed to Neil and Andrew; another from the foster agency, addressed to Natalie and Paige. A letter with no return address, written to the Minyard-Josten Family.

“You guys have a letter,” Neil says, taking it from Andrew and bringing it into the kitchen, carrying it like a bomb. “From the foster agency.”

“Why?” Paige asks, reaching up to take it.

Neil shrugs.

“They can’t—take us back, right?”

Neil glances at Andrew, but Andrew looks blank.

Paige opens it, pulling out an official-looking letter. Natalie crowds her, trying to read the letter at the same time.

Paige gasps.

And then she laughs.

And then she’s hysterical, and Neil pushes her head down, drops to the ground next to her. “Breathe. Breathe. What is—”

Natalie forces the letter into his hand, but she’s smiling. Fierce.

Andrew sits behind Neil, and they read:

_To Natalie and Paige Gray:_

_One of the guardians in our system, Trent C. Franklin, was recently found dead. The case is still under investigation, but it appears that the cause of death was suicide. He left a note indicating that he had sexually abused several of the children in his care. If you were among the victims, please reach out to the Agency and/or the police. The Agency has set aside a reparations fund for those victims who can give an account of this type of abuse._

It’s signed by three different people.

“Oh,” Neil says. “Well, that’s _that_ taken care of. Thanks, Ichirou.”

“Ichirou?” Paige asks, turning pale.

“Pedophiles don’t often start feeling guilty and commit suicide,” Andrew says. “Certainly not leaving a note behind admitting their own guilt. At least, not without a solid push in the right direction, maybe by someone who can kill your wife and your whole family.”

“Two people,” Paige gasps. “Two of them. Because of me.”

Two?

“What makes you think that this is your fault?” Andrew asks. “Trent Franklin didn’t rape you because you were you, he did it because rape was what he did, and he raped others before you and others after you, and now he’ll never touch a kid again. If you’d pressed charges, he’d have gone to jail, and someone would have killed him there—pedophiles don’t do well in prison. He’s not dead because of you. He’s dead because of himself.”

Paige keels over sideways, leaning into Neil, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. “People can’t just _do_ that. Can’t just say— _he hurt me_ and have him be _dead_.”

“Not usually, no.”

Andrew pulls himself around to sit in front of Paige. “I’m going to tell you something now. Can you handle it?”

She reaches out, and Natalie takes her hand, and she nods.

“When I was a sophomore, and Neil was a freshman, we both put a shitting ton of energy into keeping Kevin with us, and not letting him go back to the Ravens, no matter what Riko said to him. So Riko decided to take us away from him. He made Neil go to Evermore for Christmas. But before that, he had to get rid of me. So Riko sent Drake to Nicky’s parents’ house. Do you remember who Drake was?”

Paige nods.

“Nicky’s parents invited Nicky home for Thanksgiving, for the first time in years—on the condition that Aaron and I came, too. Neil talked me into it. For Nicky’s sake. So we went. And Nicky’s dad and I argued, and he sent me upstairs, and there was Drake, and I fought, and I couldn’t stop him. And then Neil and Aaron came running upstairs, exy racquet in hand, and Neil broke the door down and Aaron smashed Drake’s head in with the racquet. He was dead, because of what he'd done to me. Are you upset with me for Drake being dead?”

Paige shakes her head.

“Then why on earth are you upset with yourself because Trent is dead?”

“How are you okay with telling me this?”

“Lots of time, and Neil, and you need to hear it more than I need to not say it.”

Paige breathes.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Natalie says. “All of them.”

“Do you like death?” Andrew asks.

Natalie shrugs.

“I need to know if you’re heading towards the mafia, or if you’re heading more towards counseling,” Andrew says.

“I’m not going to go out and kill people, if that’s what you’re asking,” Natalie says, annoyed. “Didn’t you just say we should be happy about this?”

Andrew shrugs. “Sure. But I don’t want to raise you to be the kind of person who pulls legs off butterflies.”

She makes a face. “That’s gross.”

“Good. Now, Paige,” Andrew says, calmly. “When you said _two people_ earlier.”

“Henry Warren is dead,” Natalie says. “Heard it from Arnie. He died in a car crash. Mariana and Justin are moving to Italy.”

Neil and Andrew exchange a glance. Neil feels very little about Henry—it’s taken him a long time to care about whether certain people live or die, and Henry is not one of those people. But—

“They probably won’t kill her,” Andrew murmurs in Russian.

Neil grimaces.

“What?” Paige asks.

“Nothing,” Neil says, rubbing her shoulder.

“Not nothing,” she accuses. “What?”

“Mariana and Justin probably aren’t going of their own accord,” Neil says slowly. “Their family is calling them home, and is likely not happy with them.”

“Ohhhh,” Paige says, low and sad. “Oh no.”

“Still not your fault, though,” Neil says. “Still not your fault. Or Natalie’s.”

“Why isn’t Ichirou like that? Why didn’t he just—drag you back?”

“For one, like I said earlier, he doesn’t need to. I’m in. If I ever fucked up, he’d kill me, but right now, I’m not fucking up. The time to haul me back into the fold would’ve been ten years ago—when the FBI took me, when I was in the hospital with them, when I spent a full day in the FBI’s office and then went back to school. Or even after I watched him shoot Riko. But Ichirou was—new, as a mafia boss. He was having people killed left and right, people who were—leaky. Dangerous. I’d chatted with the FBI and told them nothing about the Moriyamas. Told them nothing about my Uncle Stewart. I’d proven that I wasn’t a leak, and within a few years, he’d start seeing returns on his investment. There was little reason to kill me, and I think he was probably stretched thin—it takes a lot of resources to kill that many people cross-country, without getting caught, and reorganize a whole mafia.

“It made sense, probably, to come to South Carolina to see me in person, ten years ago—no one would expect that; it was probably the safest place to be, for him. And it made little sense to kill someone who’d just fallen headfirst into the spotlight, and wasn’t a threat anyway.

“And now? Why would he, now? I’ve got a couple kids—kids with a proven track record of not talking. A husband, who hasn’t spoken to reporters in years, let alone the FBI. And here I am, paying up yearly to keep us safe. Why waste the resources on me? There’s no point.” And Neil can stop trying to make plans to kill Trent Franklin, now. And Paige doesn’t have to talk. Maybe Neil should write Ichirou a thank you letter.

Or maybe not. “Maybe this _was_ suicide,” Neil suggests. It’s against his every instinct to consider a coincidence, but. “I mean—Ichirou was here Sunday night. Let’s say he immediately dispatched someone to kill this guy, that night, and that’s when he dies. You’re telling me the agency moved this fast? I mean, fuck, it takes three days for mail to _get_ from Colorado to South Carolina. This letter doesn’t say _when_ he died. We could be jumping to conclusions here.” He gives Andrew a look— _back me up._

“That’s true,” Andrew says, with a look on his face that says that, actually, he might outright agree. “We’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean we’re always right.”

“Maybe only one, then,” Paige says.

“Still had nothing to do with you,” Neil reminds her. “What Henry did to us was an insult to Ichirou’s power, Ichirou wasn’t going to just let it go. And it was all his choice, anyway. Not your fault.”

Paige takes a shaky breath. “Why’d any of this have to happen, anyway? I don’t want people to get hurt! I don’t want it! Even if they were terrible! Even if they were terrible to me! Why can’t they just leave me alone! What’s the _point_!”

Neil rubs her shoulder. He has no answers. He never does.

“And I’m _happy_ he’s dead!” Paige bursts out, and then she bursts into tears, and Neil pulls her into a hug. Neil glances at Natalie, who looks—scared? She sees him looking and waves him off, though, so Neil just lets Paige cry on his shoulder. He’ll talk to Natalie later.

“It’ll be all right,” Neil tells Paige as she calms down. “It’ll all be all right. What can we do to help you? Do you want to try—keeping a diary? Writing? Painting? Martial arts? Therapy? Sitting at home and watching Disney movies for three days straight?” She hiccups a laugh at that one. “Do you want to come to work with us tonight? Do you want us to stay home?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. “I don’t _know_.”

Neil hugs her. “That’s okay, too.”

Andrew scoots over to her, kisses her forehead, and then stands. “Help me make dinner?” He asks Natalie.

Natalie takes one look at Paige and decides that, yes, cooking is preferable. She jumps to her feet and joins him at the counter.

After a few minutes, Paige calms down, sniffles, and points at the rest of the mail, sitting next to Neil. “What’s that?”

Neil opens the letter from the foster agency and skims it. “Your ICPC paperwork went through,” he announces. “Which means your case has been transferred from Colorado to South Carolina. We’re no longer supposed to contact Harmony; your caseworker is now Grant. That’s fun.”

“Cool,” Paige says. “And what’s the other one?”

“Possibly, anthrax,” Neil guesses, looking at the one with no return address. “And/or a bomb.”

“Should probably open that one outside,” Andrew agrees. “While wearing hazmat suits.”

“With a bucket of water and fire extinguisher at the ready.”

“Why?” Natalie asks.

“Letters with no return addresses are terrifying and liable to be dangerous. Maybe not for most people, but for us.”

Andrew finishes dumping food into the instant pot, turns it on, and turns to the sink. “Wanna find out?”

“Yeah,” Paige says, sounding less miserable than before. Sweet, sweet curiosity. Curiosity may kill the cat, but satisfaction brings it back.

Andrew puts on dishwashing gloves; Neil fills a cooking pot with water, just in case. Natalie gets the fire extinguisher from the garage. Paige pulls out cooking tongs and hands them to Andrew, who ceremoniously uses them to lift the letter, like Neil hadn't just been holding it in his bare hands. Neil grabs a towel—“wrap this around your face,” he says, and Andrew does, and Paige pulls a pony tail holder off her wrist and uses it to tie the towel behind his head.

“Teamwork,” Paige says happily, and then they follow Andrew out to the edge of the backyard, where Andrew rips open the letter and carefully—holding it at a distance—peeks inside.

“Looks like newspaper,” he says. He takes it out. He goes still. And then he looks to Neil. “Sorry, Neil, everything in our life is yakuza. There’s nothing else in here, though, and this is probably safe, so that’s good news,” he adds, taking off his makeshift mask, taking off his gloves.

Neil takes the paper. It’s an obituary. An obituary for Trent Franklin, which says he died Tuesday, October 1, over a week ago—the day they got the letter informing them that the adoption had been approved, and days before Ichirou had visited them. There’s writing on the side—Japanese katakana, which is good, because Neil never did learn kanji. He sounds it out, searches his memory, and sighs. He knows one of the words; he pulls out his phone and sticks the other one through a translator.

“Threat neutralized,” Neil says. “It says _threat neutralized_. Before Ichirou visited us, before I ever told him anything. That bastard, he _knew_ Trent was already dead and he didn’t say a fucking word. He’d already had Trent killed. Ichirou knew exactly what I’d say, and what I’d do, and what I’d want, and he’d already handled it.”

“Efficient,” Andrew agrees.

“Is that _worse_?” Paige asks. “I didn’t—no one even said anything. I never made anything better for anyone else. I never _helped_. I never—“

Andrew takes her by the shoulders. “Paige?”

“ _What_?”

“You’re 14. You aren’t responsible for a rapist, or for the head of the yakuza, or for men with too much power and too much money. You could have said something; this is true. So could have all of the kids who were in that house before you. But none of them did, for the same reason why you didn’t, which is that people like Trent thrive on making you feel scared and helpless and little and ashamed, and that’s not your fault, either—”

“If I’d been—smarter or stronger or—”

“Nope,” Andrew says. “The antidote to people like them isn’t to put yourself down, it’s to help other people. You didn’t have the opportunity, before, to help other people? You do now. You can be a good friend to your friends. You can help yourself, and let us help you, so next time someone tries to make you feel like that, you’ll be able to talk about it, to tell us, to tell other people who can help. And when you get older, you can volunteer, you can donate to organizations that help, you can foster kids yourself so that at least _some_ kids will be safe. You can’t change the past. So instead of beating yourself up over it, and wasting time berating yourself for not doing better—you do better in the future. Yes?”

Paige sniffles, looking at the sky, blinking hard. “So in the future, I get my own Paige and Natalie—or Andrew and Aaron—because at least then I’m helping. Directly.”

“We all do what we can,” Andrew says. “And sometimes, it’s not a lot—just a kid, just two kids. And that’s not the whole system. That’s not the whole world. But we can work to help on a bigger scale, if we work with people like Renee, who actually know how to do that, and then we can also grab a kid or two, and maybe the two of you aren’t the whole world—but I think, probably, you’d rather we fostered you than decided not to because it was too small-scale.”

“Yeah,” Paige agrees. “Yeah, that’s true. I’ll—can we come to New York with you tomorrow?”

“I—yeah, sure,” Neil says, thrown off. “Shit, that’s—yeah. We’ll get you plane tickets.”

They wander back inside, Neil on his phone.

Their plane is packed; no getting the kids on that one. He checks other flights at the same time. He checks other flights a little later. He gives up and calls Allison.

“The girls want to come to New York tomorrow—”

“You’ll owe me for this, Josten,” she drawls, low and threatening.

“I haven’t even said—”

“I _need_ to know their favorite colors.”

“Oh. Hey—Nat—Gij—what are your favorite colors?”

“Green,” they say, promptly and simultaneously.

“Green,” he tells Allison.

“Lovely,” she says cheerfully. “I’ll get my agent on this. You could just get your own travel agent, you know.”

“Why do I need one?”

“For when your brand new kids decide the day before the last game in the exy finals that they want to fly to New York.”

“I don’t anticipate the situation coming up much in the future,” Neil protests.

“You sound like you’re talking to a reporter. Also, of _course_ you don’t. But, like, just think about it for half a second, Neil, just _think_ about it. You’ve got kids. Hey, do they have a place to stay in New York? Or are they gonna be overnight homeless?”

“They can just sleep in our room,” Neil says.

“Yeah, which I’m sure you got with one queen-size bed—”

“We can sleep on the floor—”

“And go to your Saturday morning interview with a crick in your old man neck. And having _lost_ the game, by the way, you _are_ going to lose to us, but at least the kids will get to see _me_ win. Oh, do Dan and Matt know they’re coming up?”

“No, not yet.”

“Oh, _fuck_ yes, as payment for this I get to tell them. We can take the girls out Saturday afternoon, you guys can—I don’t know, go do something else, we’re not friends with you anymore, we’re friends with your kids. You could probably come along, if you have to.”

“I'm sure they'll be excited to get the whole native view of New York City," Neil tells her. Natalie and Paige give him two thumbs up each and nod frantically.

“Oh, this is going to be fun, I’ll beat your ass at exy and then get to hang out with my nieces, you guys can fly back home or whatever. Be boring.”

“I’ve been instructed not to lose to you, I have an interview on Saturday.”

“All that means is that you have to carry the game, but everyone else on the team has to be shit. Tell Andrew to get back on his meds.”

“Nah.”

“Tell Kevin to quit exy—wait, that won’t work. _Wait_ , yes, definitely do it, and then _I’ll_ call him and tell him he should keep playing and should come up here and he’ll come play for _us_.”

“Aren’t you, like, actively negotiating with the Jaguars?”

“Sure, we only need Kevin to betray you guys for a little while. Like. Two games?”

“If he’s betraying us, it’s to go to California and play with Jeremy.”

“This is _very_ true. Thea better not die young, Kevin’ll go steal Jean’s husband out from under him.”

“Do you think they’d make us send wedding gifts? I don’t feel like going through that again, can we get out of that? Maybe they’ll have the good sense to elope.”

“I mean, Jeremy and Jean basically did, I can’t imagine it would be any better with Kevin.”

“Thank god for Jeremy’s parents, or Renee might have had to experience anger again in her adult life. She might have been upset about missing the opportunity to shower them in kitchenware.”

“Thank god for Jeremy’s parents, or I’d have had to murder Jean myself for making my lovely bride angry. Anyway, my dinner break is over, so I—oh, _god_ I’ll have to tip my travel agent. Anyway, forwarding you their info now. Bye, boy, love you.”

“Bye, Al, love you too. And thank you.”

“No problem. Thanks for asking for help. I really have to go now, though, so—”

The call cuts out, and Neil’s phone buzzes as he receives texts with flight information, hotel information. The travel agent managed to get the girls seats right behind Neil and Andrew’s, on the way home. Neil will have to find some way to thank her.

“On the way there, you’re taking a flight that leaves half an hour before us. Totally different airline, too. Is that all right?”

Paige bobs her head. “I didn’t think before I asked,” she mumbles. “I forgot—I forgot you’d have to find a way to get us there. Should I apologize to Allison?”

“You could probably thank her,” Neil suggests. “She’s all excited to hang out with her nieces, I don’t think she’d want an apology.”

A grin—real and true, in spite of everything—flashes across Paige’s face. “Niece,” she repeats. “All right.”

"Oh—how's Lorna?" Neil asks as they sit down to dinner.

"Apparently, they got a mastiff," Natalie says. "Arnie can't figure out why, he says his mom's never been much of a dog person, but apparently she loves this thing. She named it Spot."

"First dog?" Andrew asks.

"Apparently. Anyway, Arnie says Lorna's been setting up cameras and all sorts of shit, and she's supposed to show him how to use all of it today. He's, just, _super_ fucked up about his dad, so we're trying to make him go to therapy."

"Well, that's good," Neil says. He's not sure what else to say. It's nice to know Lorna's enjoying her security system, though.

"You could probably text her," Paige says. "Lorna. Like an adult?"

Neil shrugs. "Feels like a weird start to a friendship."

Natalie and Paige trade incredulous glances, and then turn it on Neil. "I'm sorry," Natalie says, " _how_ did you and dad meet, again?"

Neil opens his mouth to argue, but takes one look at Andrew and shuts up. Fine. He'll text Lorna. Later, though. Maybe tomorrow.

They finish dinner. Andrew and Neil get the kids set up with their homework. And then they get in the car.

“You know,” Andrew says, “we were going to go to Denver for spring training.”

Neil hums.

“We could’ve killed him then, ourselves.”

“A long wait, though. And in the meantime—we didn’t have to commit murder, we didn’t have to handle clean up, we didn’t have to frame him for suicide, we didn’t have to plan it. We didn’t have to find his house, or find a way to get in, or move mountains to scrub our trail, or do _anything_. We might never have been able to get away with exposing him as a pedophile. Murder we didn’t have to commit is better than murder we did.”

“I don’t like being in debt to _him_.”

“We’re already paying, though. And—I mean, it didn’t matter that I asked him. He’d already _done_ it.” Neil can feel himself getting defensive, and he opens his mouth to defend himself some more—and then he glances at Andrew, and thinks about cockroaches eaten instead of crushed, and reorients himself. “I’m sorry. I’d have discussed it with you beforehand, if I’d known it was going to come up.”

“Were you— _planning_ to ask him? I—Neil, _did_ you ask him? Before he turned up?”

“No. What? _No_ , Drew, I didn’t. I didn’t want to bring him into it, I didn’t want to talk to him, sure as _fuck_ I wasn’t going to ask the mafia to do a hit for us.” Neil stops, shuts himself up, because the next words out of his mouth are going to be accusatory and cruel, and he won’t do it. He counts to ten, slowly, but he’s only made it to nine when—

“I’m sorry,” Andrew says softly. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t.”

Neil shakes his head. He’s never reversed course so fast. “You couldn’t have known. It would’ve made sense. And I _did_ ask Ichirou, in the end, anyway.”

Andrew doesn’t answer that.

They drive the rest of the way in silence, and Neil hates it. It’s not a _good_ silence, it’s not a _comfortable_ silence, it’s specifically an _uncomfortable_ silence, and Neil _hates_ it, but—what else is there for him to say? _More_ apologies? He didn’t do anything wrong—in fact, even the thing he _might_ have done wrong, he’d just been exonerated for by virtue of an obituary dated over a week ago. What does he have to apologize for? If Andrew’s going to invent things, that’s not Neil’s problem.

But by the time they make it to the stadium, Neil’s been able to stew in that resentment for long enough to recognize it for what it is: helplessness. He can’t go back and undo what he’d done; it wouldn’t change the outcome, anyway. He doesn’t know why Andrew is unhappy, or what he can do to prevent it, or—

Andrew parks, but doesn’t turn the car off.

Well, there’s nothing else for it.

“I—”

“I—”

Neil stops, but Andrew stops too.

“You go ahead—”

“You go first—”

They stare at each other, and Neil recognizes his own frustration on Andrew’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew says, before Neil can try a third time. “I’m accusing you of shit you didn’t even do. Like being pissed at you for smacking me in a dream. I’m—really, I’m pissed at fucking Ichirou, and I’m sorry I’m taking it out on you, you don’t—I shouldn’t be.”

Neil’s already shaking his head. “No, you didn’t do anything, you didn’t know—I stopped talking to you about it. I was googling the man, I was considering the options, and maybe if I’d told you what I was thinking we could’ve figured it out together and I wouldn’t have turned to Ichirou when the opportunity presented itself. I—I should’ve talked to you more.”

Andrew opens his mouth, and then he sighs and rubs his forehead. “Yeah, Neil. We really _should_ take care to communicate more often in the future about the murders we might want to do.”

Neil snorts. “Communication is key.”

“And that’s a Bee-approved platitude. This doesn’t sound like us.”

“To be fair, for most families, the mafia is kind of a relationship-breaker. Isn’t that how it always goes? They get into a life of crime and then it gets too dangerous and stressful?”

“Yes, but it’s not going to happen to us, because that’s fucking stupid. Look. This car is the same page, and we are both in it.”

“No mafia. No more use thereof. We do only what is necessary, and try to get out of most of that, too.”

“Why won’t the yakuza just die? Do you think if I sent them a nicely worded letter, they’d just stop being bad?”

“No, they have some big time traumas. So what I’m saying is—”

“Send Bee,” Andrew says.

“Exactly. And _then_ try the nicely worded letter.”

“If I’m handing Bee over, I don’t think I’ll need to send a letter. I think probably she’ll have _them_ sending _us_ apology letters and promises to do better.”

“She’ll have them recognizing their self-worth and vowing to treat themselves better.”

“She’ll be running a mafia recovery program before the year is out. _For the mafia members who—who—_ there’s a slogan there, Neil, help me out.”

Neil chews his lip for a second. “ _Yak Up the Yakuza—For Mafia Members Who Want to Get Mafi-Out._ ”

“Terrible, I love it. _Mafi-out_. Fuck. Maybe if we pitch the concept to Ichirou, the whole mafia will commit suicide. Just to get mafi-out of hearing me say it ten times a day for the rest of my life.”

“All at once? We’ll have to stagger it, to give us—or the FBI, I guess—time to take out the bodies.”

“They’re dead, what do they care?”

“They don’t, but _I_ will. Think of the smell.”

“Enough to make you yak. Come on, let’s get mafi-out of the car and into the stadium before Kevin comes storming mafi-out of that door to hunt us down—”

“I’m never opening my mouth again, I’m sorry I ever said it, let’s go,” Neil says, getting out of the car. He’s not fast enough to avoid hearing Andrew mutter _mafi-out_ again, though, and he laughs as he takes Andrew’s hand. “Keep saying it, and I’ll find a way mafi-out of this relationship.”

“Not before _I_ walk mafi-out of this relationship.”

“ _Stop_ ,” Neil sings. “ _Walk mafi-out the door_ —”

“Don’t you ruin that song—”

“Too late—”

“Just turn around now, Neil, you’re not welcome anymore—”

“Don’t try to break me—”

“I think you’ll crumble—”

“What bullshit are you spouting?” Kevin asks. “Let’s go, we’ve got work to do.”

“We were just yakkin’ away,” Andrew says. “We’re going, we’re going.”

“Well, yak out on the court.”

“Don’t yak on the court,” Clark says. “We have _work_ to do.”

So, one at a time, the strikers take turns being blindfolded.

Neil has never hated anything more in his life.

They’re not _playing_ blindfolded—Neil is absolutely certain that that would result in an injury, and they can’t afford that, not now. They don’t even have anyone in the goal. Most of the team is on the other side of the court, doing drills, and then one at a time, the strikers take turns going to stand directly in front of the goal. And then Clark blindfolds them, and puts a ball in their racquet, and then, for ten minutes, the strikers completely miss the goal.

Neil is in hell. He _knows_ where the goal is. He _knows_ he’s facing it. He _knows_ he just has to hurl the ball straight forward. And every time, he hears the ball bounce off of something that _isn’t_ the net, and he knows he’s missed. The only thing that makes him feel better is watching the other strikers also miss by a country mile. Kevin comes the closest—but even Kevin can’t make it into the net. And when Kevin takes off the blindfold, he turns and looks at Neil, and Neil knows—either they get this, they figure it out, they make this work, or all that’s happened is he’s single-handedly dropped their confidence down the drain. Nevermind that this is way weirder than whatever Denver will toss in their direction—he’s fucked them over.

So, at 11 at night, when everyone’s starting to get tired and hungry and shitty, he stomps over to Riley and takes the blindfold from her. He goes to stand in the middle of the court, and he blindfolds himself, and the court and the goal disappear, and he’s alone, with no points of reference, in a vast, empty, open space, and somewhere in that space is a net he’s supposed to put a ball in, which is _impossible_ , Neil can’t do this, it was a ridiculous idea in the first place, and someone places a ball, unbidden, into his net, with a sigh that says that the person doing it is Andrew, and Neil stops trying to visualize where he is in the room and starts thinking about the split second wherein he turns and hurls the ball at Andrew—he doesn’t have much time, barely enough time to locate Andrew, let alone aim, he just _does_ it, they all do, he knows _exactly_ where Andrew is, so why can’t he—

He blinks, beneath the blindfold, because all he really has to do is trick that instinct into kicking in, isn’t it? Isn’t that the whole point of this—that they _know_ where the goal is, they just have to stop thinking about the fact that they can’t see it?

Instead of trying to throw the ball straight forward, he turns a full 360 degrees and hurls the ball like he expects Andrew to catch it.

The buzzer goes off, and Neil rips off the blindfold to the ecstatic cheers of his teammates, just in time to see the red light behind the goal flick off, and then Riley jumps on him, whooping, nearly knocking him over.

“You did it! _You did it!_ Neil _did it_! Holy _fuck_!”

Neil looks at Andrew, who finally looks away from the goal to raise both eyebrows at Neil.

“Just imagined I was throwing it to you,” Neil says in Russian.

Andrew shakes his head. “Bok choy.”

Neil grins, laughs, euphoric, elated. “Cabbage.”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” Kevin snaps. “Tell me how you _did that_. And _do it again_ , holy _shit_ , Neil!”

“Hang on, what if I can’t do it again? Also, I might only be able to do it while spinning—”

Everyone backs up a couple steps. Neil blindfolds himself again, and this time it doesn’t come with a crushing wave of despair. Someone puts a ball in his net again, and Neil reaches out on a hunch and meets Andrew’s hand—Andrew links their pinkies, just for a second, and then steps back.

Well, it worked once, and Neil isn’t willing to fix what isn’t broken—so he imagines that Andrew is in the goal, ready to catch whatever comes his way, and Neil just needs to get the ball out of this cluster of people, just needs to get it to someone who can move it, and he whirls, heaves the ball at Andrew, and the buzzer goes off again.

“ _Twice_!” Maria is screaming. “ _Twice_! Kevin Day, beat _that_!”

“You can’t, either,” Kevin says, annoyed, but he’s beckoning for the bandana. Neil cedes it to him, and then places a ball in Kevin’s net.

Kevin hits two feet away from the net. He turns to face Neil’s general direction. “How the fuck did _you_ do it?”

“I mean—I pictured myself throwing it to Andrew. You know, when we just kinda turn and fling it in his direction? Now, to be fair, you _could_ picture Charlie, instead, I just happen to be married to Andrew. No offense, Charlie.”

“None taken,” Charlie says. “I don’t want to be married to you.”

“We are in perfect accord, then.”

“What was with the spin?” Kevin asks, still blind.

“I—I was—I don’t have time to _look_ for Andrew, or to _aim_ for him, I just kinda _do_ it, instinctively, so I thought that maybe spinning around would replicate that, force my instincts to work.”

Kevin holds his racquet out, and Neil puts a ball in it, and Kevin spins, and Maria ducks as Kevin tosses it her way.

“Gotta be a full 360, Kev,” Neil suggests, doing his best not to laugh.

“Well, I don’t often _pirouette_ ,” Kevin says scathingly. “Or pass to Andrew, really.”

“What about when you pass to me?” Neil suggests. “I’m always on the move, but you do it, anyway.”

“I usually do that while _moving_ , though.”

“Take a couple steps—hang on, let me face you towards the goal. _Please_ aim properly, this time. You almost took Maria’s head off.”

“ _Don’t_ say something mean,” Riley says preemptively, and Kevin closes his mouth.

“Sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Maria says loftily.

“Oh, not for almost hitting you while I was blindfolded. For almost saying something mean.”

“Just shut up while you’re still ahead,” Frank suggests.

“And close your eyes,” Neil says. “Come on, Kevin, your instincts are better than mine—”

“Instincts are _specifically_ what you are better at than I am,” Kevin says.

“Well, your exy is better than mine, anyway,” Neil tries, slipping into French. It’s what they speak on the court—maybe it’ll help. “So fucking _pass_ it, jackass.”

And Kevin takes a couple steps forward, and the goal lights up red.

Riley jumps on Kevin before he’s even gotten the blindfold off. “Two out of four! Two out of four!”

“You’ve gotta figure this out, too,” Kevin tells her.

“Downer! Downer!”

“Downer or not, it’s true.”

Riley looks at Neil. “ _Help_.”

Neil grins. It’s late. They should go home. They’ve gotta fly to New York tomorrow and play a game. And he knows they’re not leaving tonight until Riley and Maria have both managed this, too. “Whatever—Pavlovian instinct you’ve got, I guess. Want me to talk at you in French? Want Kevin to smack the wall? Should we all stand around and yell?”

They’re there for another half an hour, taking turns. They do, actually, have to stand around and yell for Maria to manage it—apparently, it mimics the situation she’s usually in, when she makes a goal.

Eventually, though, they make it home to find the girls already in bed, all doors but the front one deadbolted shut. They lock up, head upstairs, and barely make it through brushing their teeth before they collapse into bed.

“Neil,” Andrew whispers, jolting Neil out of what was two seconds away from being a good sleep. “Next time we want someone to die, we’ll just kill him ourselves, right?”

“Mm-hmm,” Neil agrees. “Don’t want you to stress about it.”

“The murder, or the mafia?” Andrew asks, letting Neil pull him closer.

“Both,” Neil mumbles, wrapping one arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “Don’t wanna lose you over something as stupid as murder.”

He feels when Andrew relaxes, and falls asleep too fast to know anything else.

The next day, they sleep in and head out early—they have to pick up the girls on the way to the airport. They find the girls’ overnight bags neatly placed by the door with a sticky note— _please bring these with you!!!_

“Do you remember what you said last night?” Andrew asks, apropos of nothing, on the way to the school.

“About not asking the mafia for murder?”

“Yeah.”

“I do, yes.”

“Did you mean it?”

“Yes,” Neil says, shoving down his annoyance. Well, no, it’s not _annoyance_. It’s—Andrew doesn’t believe him. Andrew _always_ believes him. Or always _trusts_ him, anyway, and hasn’t Neil earned that?

“Do we have to kill Roland? Lorna's Roland, not mine.”

Every feeling Neil was having immediately reverses, and he laughs, relieved. “Probably not. I don’t think we could get away without that one—he knows too many cops.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

“I know.”

“You laughed, though.”

“Relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“I thought you didn’t trust me.”

Silence.

Neil glances over at Andrew. “Drew, don’t do this to me, just say it.”

“I trust you,” Andrew says slowly. “I don’t know if I trust _them_ , though. Well, I mean, I don’t. But I don’t want—fuck, I don’t know. It’s got nothing to do with you. No one said shit to them, and they killed Trent anyway. And I’m not fucking leaving you, so don’t offer to let me go,” he snaps. “I just—I want them to be _gone_ and they won’t _go away_ and I’m _pissed_ about it and I can’t do anything about it, and not only can I not _do_ anything about it, but I’m sitting here yelling at _you_ and making _you_ upset about it, and I fucking _hate it_.”

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over,” Neil says again, and Andrew does, and Neil puts the car in park as Andrew hits the flashers. Neil turns bodily to face Andrew and takes Andrew’s face in his hands. “Drew, I’m not inviting them into our life, ever, if I can help it—”

“It’s my fault they’re in it, now.”

It’s Neil’s turn to be thrown off. “What?”

“I wanted kids, and we needed their permission, and I made you ask them, and now they won’t _go away_.”

“Why do you do this shit in a car, where I can’t climb into your goddamn lap without getting arrested for public indecency? Hey, Drew? Jean and Kevin did the same thing, Ichirou isn’t going near them, you had no reason to believe it would be an issue. They’re not your fault, and it’s not your fault the mafia owns me, and it’s not my fault they killed Trent, and, I mean, fuck, we can’t control them, but we can control _us_ and we can deal with _our_ house and we can fucking decide, right here and right now, that we’re not asking them for shit ever again. I don’t think we need to. We’re already in the foster system, we can keep taking in kids if we want to. We’ve gotten permission to adopt two kids already; if we end up wanting more in the future, that won’t be an issue. We don’t need them for much else, as long as we don’t get caught committing any murders, which is the best argument for not murdering that I’ve ever heard. Hey, Drew, light and love of my life Andrew Minyard, _we’re okay._ ”

Andrew wraps a hand around the back of Neil’s neck and pulls his head down to Andrew’s. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I keep dragging shit up—”

“Drew—”

“And being a dick to you about it—”

“ _Drew_ —”

“I know this isn’t on you, I know you can’t do anything about it—”

“I mean, you’re allowed to draw a boundary with how you want us to interact with _the yakuza_ —”

“Neil, just let me apologize, why don’t you?”

“You already did, like, five times. It’s good. I love you.”

“I love you too, Neil. Shit’s fucked up.”

“But not this.”

“No, not this.”

“And you trust me?”

“I trust you, Neil, and I believe you.”

Neil curls a hand into Andrew’s hair and drops his forehead to Andrew’s shoulder. “All right. Okay. That’s all I needed. What kind of comfort can I provide for you? A hug? Reassurance? Please place your order and provide payment at the next window.”

“I’m still the light and love of your life? It has, after all, been seven years.”

“Of course.”

“Okay. What’s the payment?”

“For an _of course_? A forehead kiss.”

Andrew provides it, and Neil kisses him on the cheek. Andrew presses his forehead to Neil’s for a second, and then pulls away, turns off the flashers, merges back onto the road, and takes Neil’s hand.

“We’re gonna be late to pick up our kids,” Andrew mutters.

“Worth it,” Neil decides.

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand.

They make it to the school. They sign Natalie and Paige out. They make it to the airport. It sucks—they have to drop the girls off at a totally different terminal—but Paige takes Natalie’s hand, they promise to stick together, they tell Neil off for worrying, and then they vanish into the airport.

“Next time,” Andrew says as they go through security, “we ask the girls if they want to come with us _before_ we book our flights.”

“I’ll remember to do that,” Neil promises.

“I will, too.”

“Deal.”

They make it to their gate to find the mood through the roof—the backliners are thrilled to have practiced a fun new blocking technique, the strikers are still riding the high of making a shot blindfolded.

“We’re not using any of that today,” Kevin cautions. “None of it. We’re not good at it, we can’t do it consistently—”

“Can’t you just tell us we did good?” Maria snaps.

“No,” Kevin snaps back. “We’re not good enough. We can’t beat Denver, we’ve lost to them _twice_ this year, they’re a good team and we’re not there yet, so no, we haven’t _done good_.”

Clark looks at Neil. “Tell him to shut up.”

“Shut up,” Neil tells Kevin obediently. “Be depressing tomorrow, right now we have a game to play.”

“Not _right_ now,” Kevin says scathingly. “We’re in an airport,” he clarifies, a little less scathingly.

“Fuckin’, _incredible_ observation, there, genius,” Riley says.

“Yeah, well, I’m good at history and exy and this is neither of those things.”

“Have you considered combining the two?” Maria asks.

“Ooh, yeah. Teach a history of exy class,” Riley suggests.

Neil starts laughing.

“Oh. Oh, yeah, that’ll be fun,” Kevin decides. “Hi, students. I’m Kevin Day. I was one of the first people to ever have an exy racquet. My mom invented exy. I’m exy’s best striker. I used to have a shitty half-sort-of-brother—he thought he was better than I was, and I tried to save him from the truth, but he figured it out and broke my hand. So then I went and learned how to play exy with my _other_ hand, played for another team which rose through the ranks thanks to my tutelage, and then switched back to the hand he _broke_ so I could beat him for _real._ And then he committed suicide, because I’m just _that good_. Oh, and my father? One of the best college coaches, capable of turning a bunch of shitty misfits into a championship-winning team and getting half his players onto the U.S. Court several years in a row. I, of course, have known since high school that I’d be Court, and as soon as I was legally old enough, they offered me a spot. I’m just _that good_. This has been the history of exy—”

“What, nothing about anyone else?” Riley asks, thoroughly entertained. “Although you’re right, that story sounds _super_ fake.”

“Oh, you want other people in there? Um, Neil was cool, turned out he was running from a gang but we got him back, so that’s all right. He ended up married to a violent midget who—oh, exy? Yeah, no, this is relevant, because the midget was our goalie and is exy’s best goalie. Neil, of course, is exy’s second-best striker. Yeah, we were all on one team, it was crazy. Me? Oh, I married this badass backliner. She’s _so_ cool. She’s a tank and she is _very_ good at her job. We don’t play on the same team because I’m too good a player to be on her team, though, it’s unfortunate—”

“What about _us_?” Maria asks.

“And then I joined this team, cause Neil is the only person I can yell at without getting punched in the face, and it had a lot of other really good players on it. No matter how you pair us off, we’re always a power team, there’s not a weak point to be found—”

The team cheers. They’re still giggling when they board the plane.

“I’d offer to take a shift,” Maria tells Neil as they situate themselves, “But we’re gonna be in the air for, like, under two hours, so.”

“Also, I’m an adult,” Andrew grumbles, even as Neil shuts the window.

“Eat me,” Maria says, unperturbed.

“You’d probably be really tough,” Andrew says. “Also, I’d have to fight Riley, and that seems like a lot of work.”

“First of all, I’d be delicious, so—eff off,” she says, censoring herself with a glance at the child two rows away. “Second of all, who cares about Riley—well, me, but—you’d have to fight _me_ , and you might have power but I’ve got a heavy racquet, so I could probably take you.”

“I’ve got knives, though,” Andrew says.

“Not right now, you don’t.”

“Sure, but if I’m going to eat you, I’m not going to try anything when we’re in an airport,” Andrew says thoughtfully. “I’m going to wait until I have the upper hand—I’m not going to do it while you’re holding a racquet.”

“ _Unless_ —nope, never mind. We’ll have this conversation when we get home. Remind me, Mr. Good Memory.”

“Why?”

“Not telling.”

Andrew looks at Neil, who shrugs.

They endure the flight, Neil flexing his Russian as he reads _Macbeth_. Halfway through, Andrew puts his head on Neil’s shoulder. It takes all Neil’s willpower to keep reading, like nothing’s happening.

Eventually, though, they make it to New York, and they manage it without incident.

“So, Natalie and Paige are here, too,” Neil tells Clark. “Any chance we could just pick them up at their terminal?”

“You _kept this from us_?” Riley gasps.

“Yeah, well, it didn’t come up,” Neil says.

“Sure,” Clark says, ignoring their side conversation. “Which terminal are they at?”

Neil directs him, and eventually they spot the girls. Natalie and Paige dodge through traffic, giving Neil a heart attack, and climb onto the bus.

“Don’t _do_ that,” he says. “Just—just _wait_ , we’ll get to the curb.”

“We’ll be adults by that time,” Natalie says. ”Hey, Riley.”

“Hey there, kiddos.”

“Sorry we’ve abandoned you this week,” Kevin says. “Been busy.”

“No worries,” Natalie decides. “Our dads have also abandoned us.”

“We’ve done our best,” Neil protests as his teammates do an _oooooOOOOOOOO._ “It’s just a week.”

“And, hopefully, next week,” Kevin says. “Speaking of. We’ll have to watch the game later—”

“Can’t miss an opportunity to watch Jeremy,” Maria says.

“No, I can’t—but anyway, we missed it by being on the plane. Denver won, 18-15. Andrew?”

“Denver’s got 50 points, California has 35. We’re at 25.”

“Eleven points, then. We need eleven points. Hey, how the fuck did California get so many points off them?” Kevin asks.

“Watch the game,” Neil suggests. “I bet they didn’t use their fun new blocking technique.”

The bus grumbles.

“Anyway. The Renders,” Kevin says. “Let’s go.”

The girls don’t seem to mind the exy talk. Natalie gets bored pretty quickly—sticks her head on Neil’s shoulder and starts playing a game on her phone—but Paige is paying attention. Neil can see her filing away questions to ask, later, when she won’t be interrupting, but she’s paying attention.

Neil notices, and files it away for later. He’s busy, right now.

But they hammer out a plan of attack, a plan of action. They review New York’s stats. They go over anything and everything they’ve got. It’s all old, but—usually, they just have to _win_. Right now, they need 11 points. If they get 11 and the Renders get 14, the Jaguars lose, but they’re going to championships anyway.

They do not intend to lose, though.

When they get to the stadium, Andrew sends the kids into the stands.

“Don’t lose,” Paige calls over her shoulders. “I’ll disown you.”

Neil gives her a thumbs up.

He finds Kevin doing breathing exercises in the changing room.

“Good?”

Kevin cracks one eye open at him. “Better before I saw _your_ stupid face.”

Neil grins. “We’ll win.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Don’t drag yourself down. Eleven points.”

“And New York can’t get more than 16. And if they do, we need to get more than they do.”

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks to Charlie.

Charlie shrugs. “I can’t do that cool thing where you go, _yeah, I’ll just shut down the goal_ , but if they manage to get 16 points off me, just fire me.”

“Five,” Andrew says.

“Five what?”

“They can take five points from you.”

“And, what, zero from you?”

“They can take one off me, if they need to. It’ll help them feel better.”

“Five points,” Charlie grumbles, but then he shrugs and takes a deep breath. “It works for you, doesn’t it?”

Andrew shrugs back at him.

Charlie looks at Neil.

“Hey, if you can’t do it…” Kevin says.

“Fuck you,” Charlie says. “I can.”

They warm up. The Renders flash past them, running laps, and Allison waves as she passes by. Neil glances up and finds the friends and family box, and sees Renee, the kids, Dan and Matt.

Two games left, if he does this right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the latest in the boiled poptart saga: poetic_ivy was like "what if you boiled them in milk tho," but is gluten-free and thus could not. and then they talked rhymereason into doing it, resulting in [this.](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJh8NJ24/)
> 
> and THEN syrren passed all this along to the original poptart boiler, who said that poptarts should only be boiled for like 30 seconds, and also corrected my description of the final product: "most of the icing had dissolved in the water, so it was actually less sweet than a normal poptart." i'd apologize for disinformation but as we all know i do no research
> 
> don't think there's anyone else i owe thanks to this time around but lmk if i'm wrong


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a game! nyc!! chocolate!!!

Neil takes his place on the court. He can hear Charlie grumbling behind him. “What?”

“Five points,” Charlie says, a little louder. “Who does he think he is? I’m _older_ than he is. Jesus. Five points.”

“Can you do it, or can’t you?” Athena asks.

“Fuck you, too.”

Neil grins.

“We’ll help,” Athena says. “We promise.”

“You’d better,” Charlie says indignantly.

The Renders’ dealer serves the ball, and then they’re playing.

Neil rushes forward, only nominally aware of his mark, watching the Renders smack the ball around—Allison’s taught them Raven techniques, it’s unfortunate how widespread those are getting, even if the Renders aren’t as fluid with it as the Jaguars are—until Athena bulls into her mark, and the ball hits the ground, and Riley grabs it, scooping it up and whirling around, not even bothering to hold it to her chest, just twirling her racquet like a whisk until she can get to a safer spot—she can’t, though, and flings it at Neil—Neil’s mark moves in, so Neil reaches forward, hurling himself towards the ball, twisting it into his net and pulling it to his chest as his mark barrels into him. Neil doesn’t fight it—that’s a solid way to get injured—instead, he throws himself to the ground, allowing him to control his own fall, to roll, the ball cradled up against him, darting to his feet, passing the ball to himself, and then he bounces it to Riley, ten feet away from Neil and five feet away from her mark. Riley makes the goal, the Jaguars cheer, and then they’re back into it. Ten more points. Neil hears it tick down in his skull.

The Jaguar backliners drive forward—pushing back the Render strikers—but one of them breaks through anyway, and Athena slams into him just a half-second after the ball leaves his net—

Charlie returns it halfway down the court, and Neil is running, running, leaving his mark in the dust.

When he walks off at the end of the quarter, they’re winning, 5-2. He and Kevin clack sticks as they pass each other.

“Two points,” Andrew says. “Four to go. And then New York has reached their limit.”

“You think he’ll be able to stick to it?” Neil asks. “To a five-goal limit?”

“Course,” Andrew says. “Just because no one’s ever given him a limit doesn’t mean he can’t stick to it.”

So they watch. They watch, and they wait, and Neil paces, paces, paces.

Kevin and Maria pass the ball, rapid-fire, back and forth, to Clark and back to themselves—and then it’s in the goal, and New York is caught practically standing still. And then moving, moving, and Neil tracks the ball as it flies, as it’s carried. The Renders carry it more than the Jaguars do. Most teams carry the ball more than the Jaguars do. When Neil went to the Jaguars, he taught them Raven techniques; most Ravens, though, are terrible teachers. They tried to teach their own drills, their own techniques, to their new teams—and failed. In college, the only person Kevin had been able to teach was Neil; it took the threat of Riko and the yakuza to make anyone else willing to learn. The Ravens had never taught Kevin to teach others. And most teams just didn’t have the motivation that the Foxes had had.

Neil watches the ball close in on Charlie. Watches him jump for it, bat it away, dance on one foot until he can reverse course back towards the middle of the goal as he slaps it at Kevin.

Neil watches.

He’s not nearly so concerned about Kevin and Maria as he is about Charlie. And he’s normally not concerned about Charlie, either. Charlie is good at his job. It’s difficult to put him next to Andrew, but—well. No one can stand next to Andrew. But there’s nothing to knock someone off their game like the added pressure of having a limit.

He realizes, though, that he shouldn’t have doubted.

Charlie is _furious_ about being given a limit, and he will not exceed it.

As the game heats up, Kevin and Maria taking goals to the boos of the crowd, New York is getting pushier. The Jaguars’ score is ticking up—seven—eight—nine—and it’s becoming clear that they’re going to get their eleven points. There’s still more than half the game left. But New York is going to end this with the lowest number of points, if they keep going the way they are, and they’re running faster, putting more weight behind their throws, a palpable desperation to—at least—not be humiliated. And Neil can see it in Charlie’s movements that he’s not willing to let them reach that goal. He’s not going to fail.

Neil can’t fucking stand it.

He’s more absorbed in Charlie’s performance than he is in Kevin and Maria’s. When the Renders get their fifth goal, he audibly gasps.

“Are you all right?” Andrew asks.

“Shut up, I’m watching the game,” Neil says absentmindedly.

“This is what I get for marrying a jock,” Andrew mutters.

Neil grabs his arm. “ _What if he can’t do it_?”

“He’ll do it just fine,” Andrew says.

Still, Neil paces, frantic, nervous. There’s three minutes left in the first half. It doesn’t even matter, honestly; how many points can the Renders get, in three minutes? Not many at all. But—

But they’re closing in on Charlie, passing the ball at top speed, and Athena and Alfie can’t stay in the way enough, and—

The striker feints. Neil can see it—can see his back foot, where it’s pointed, knows what he’s doing, but Charlie can’t see the man’s back foot, heads in the wrong direction, and—

Practically falls over backwards, scooping the ball out of the air three inches away from the wall and pushing it away. Clark scoops it up and throws it to Kevin, and Neil can breathe again, and Charlie gets up, shakes out his arm, and gets his eyes back on the ball.

Neil looks at Andrew and waves, frantically, in Charlie’s direction.

“That—that was extremely cool,” Andrew admits.

“Extremely! Cool!”

“That was very impressive.”

“Shit!” Neil considers taking a break. They don’t need him out there. He can take the second half of the game off, just to contemplate that save. Oh, he loves exy, he loves this goddamn game so much, so _much_.

When the first half ends, the score is 10-5, and it has become a low-stakes game. They’re done. They’re in! They need all of one more point to beat California, and the Renders are basically done for the game.

“Did you say you’d let them get a goal?” Neil asks Andrew at the end of their halftime break.

“Yeah,” Andrew says with a sigh. “I suppose I should stick to my promises.”

Neil watches Andrew march in perfect step onto the court.

Allison holds her arms out— _whatcha got_?

Andrew cups his hands around his mouth. “The Renders can have one goal this half,” he calls.

Allison gives him two middle fingers. The crowd _boos_ , a bass-heavy noise that vibrates in Neil’s bones.

He grins. He can’t help it. Kevin raises an eyebrow at him, and he shrugs. “It’s gonna be fun,” he says.

Kevin cracks a grin. “I suppose we can have _fun_ , playing exy.”

“That’s allowed, yes.”

They watch the ball.

Maria scores, and the Jaguar fans in the crowd go wild—that’s it, that’s their 11 points, Maria and Riley clack sticks, Riley refrains from diving on Maria in the middle of the game, and the ball heads back towards Andrew. Andrew lazily wanders out of the goal, to the sound of consternation from the crowd, from the Renders, from a couple Jaguars. He waves the ball in—one goal. The Renders’ score ticks up to six.

And then Andrew moves back into the goal. He holds up one finger. Waves it around.

The Renders don’t get another goal that quarter.

And then Neil and Kevin are on, practically bursting onto the court. Neil is already celebrating. He and Kevin could sit out the rest of the game, and it wouldn’t matter—they’re winning 14-5, and Andrew isn’t going to let another goal in this quarter. Neil grins at him. He’d swear, even though Andrew’s helmet and several yards are between them, Andrew winks at Neil. Andrew’s having fun, too.

And it _is_ fun. Neil forgets that, sometimes, in the rush of trying to win. But it’s _fun_ to test himself, to run, to push, to drop to the ground and get back up, every single time, the ball held securely within his racquet. Counting his steps is nearly meditative, entwined as it is with his usual practice of counting to calm himself, and no matter where he is, he’s got Andrew at his back and Kevin at his side, and what’s the point of playing otherwise?

They win 19-6.

They celebrate in the goal, Andrew taking Neil’s hand as soon as they’ve managed to rip their helmets off, and Neil bumps his shoulder against Andrew’s. Maria loops her other arm around Andrew’s, already laughing—“fucking _walked out of the goal_ you _legend_ —” and then Riley performs her usual maneuver of diving headfirst on Neil, and Neil reaches out and drags Kevin in, Kevin grinning almost despite himself, and they celebrate.

“Championships,” Neil yells in Kevin’s ear. “We’re going. Are you happy yet?”

“Maybe,” Kevin yells back.

Clark is roped into press duty—he’s announcing Allison’s transfer, his own promotion to coach—and Neil tugs Andrew back before Andrew follows everyone else out to the bus.

“We have kids to grab,” Andrew reminds Neil.

“I know,” Neil says. “I just wanted—” He kisses Andrew’s forehead. “We can go pick our kids up, now.”

When they get outside, though, they find Renee, who does what so few people are allowed to do and wraps her arms around Andrew.

Neil locates their children—Paige is interrogating Charlie, who seems perfectly content to be interrogated, and Natalie seems ready to stand there until the end of time.

“ _God_ , Andrew, that was really just _rude_ , did you ever think about _that_?” Renee asks, when he lets her go.

“I did, actually,” Andrew says. “And anyway, Allison pretty much confirmed it, by giving me two middle fingers.”

“As she was right to do. You didn’t have to rub it in,” Renee says, poking him in the shoulder.

“Yes he did,” Maria calls.

Renee flashes a grin—she may be required to support her wife, but she’s Andrew’s best friend. And then she composes herself, loops an arm through Andrew’s, and they wander off, Andrew flicking a glance at Neil, circling the parking lot while they wait for Clark and Alfie to get back from press duty.

That’s when Matt and Dan come sprinting over, and Neil hurls himself bodily at Matt.

“What the _fuck_!” Matt screams in Neil’s ear.

“What!” Neil yells back. “I didn’t even _do_ anything!”

“You’re going to Championships, isn’t that _enough_? What else do you have to _do_?”

“I mean, beat Denver, but I’m just saying, this game—I mean, okay, Andrew and Charlie were awesome, but I wasn’t—”

“If you don’t shut up I’m going to squeeze you until your eyeballs pop,” Matt says cheerfully.

Neil goes obediently silent.

“So how’s your son?” Dan asks as Matt puts Neil down.

“Doing well, I think,” Neil says. “He’s not dead, anyway, which is the extent of my involvement in this.”

“Ah, the archetypal father,” Dan says wisely. “Are you the breadwinner, too?”

“I mean, I married a guy who likes to bake, so sometimes, yes, I do win bread.”

“Andrew cooks, he raises your children… you're a moocher.”

Neil nods. “It’s the ideal life, really.”

“Where’s your daughters?”

She doesn’t need to ask twice, though, because Paige and Natalie are making their way over, intent on Matt and Dan.

“Hi!” Dan says, grinning. “How are my favorite nieces?”

That draws an answering grin out of the nieces in question.

“We’re good,” Paige says. “How are you?”

“Good. Is there anything you want to do tomorrow, specifically?” Dan asks. “Otherwise, Allison and I will just cart you around. We can go shopping, we can go to museums—we didn’t plan this out early enough to go see any plays, and we don’t have much time anyway—do you guys need clothes? I’m sure Andrew and Neil brought luggage—“

“We did,” Neil confirms. “We know what we do in New York.”

“Buy enormous amounts of chocolate,” Matt says solemnly.

Neil nods.

“So if you guys just wanna go shopping, we can do that, since I’m sure Andrew has no idea how to take you shopping and it will never, ever occur to Neil to ask if you want new clothes.”

“Andrew has a good fashion sense,” Neil protests.

“Not gonna argue the second half of that, huh,” Natalie asks.

Neil shrugs. “I mean, it’s pretty clearly true, isn’t it? But Andrew has—“

“He also has a habit of just, kind of, tossing shit in a basket and then making you wear it, which is not how normal people shop for clothes,” Dan says. “And when you take into account the fact that women’s clothing sizes are literal nonsense--can’t just buy things and hope for the best. So anyway, tomorrow Allison and I are going to drag you wherever. Renee is tasked with preventing Andrew from spending his life savings on face-sized Reese’s cups, and Matt is tasked with preventing Neil from cheering Andrew on.”

Neil opens his mouth to argue, and then shuts it. He can’t argue with that. She’s not _wrong_ about what's going to happen.

Paige and Natalie consult, and then Paige turns back to Dan. “We could do some shopping. Neil and Andrew have been giving us an allowance.”

“Oh, you are _absolutely_ not paying for anything,” Dan says. “Oh, no no no. What’s the point of having nieces Allison and I can’t spoil? Everyone else has just given us nephews—anyway, you’re not allowed to so much as take out your wallets tomorrow. So are we looking at clothes? Candy? Toys? The American Girl Doll store—”

The girls suck in a breath so big, Neil’s momentarily worried they’ve popped their lungs.

“That sounds like fun,” Paige says, attempting to remain casual. “Aren’t those expensive?”

Dan waves a hand. “Al and I aren’t exactly living in hardship,” she says, equally casual, knowing better than to make a big deal of it. “It’s no big deal. And it’s not like any of us have kids.”

“We can always take you shopping next week,” Neil agrees. “We might not be as good at it as Allison, but this isn’t your only shot at clothes. And maybe Sandy would want to come?”

“That sounds like fun,” Natalie agrees. “I just—we didn’t leave much—we only brought carry-ons, since we’re only here for a night.”

Neil waves a hand. “Andrew and I brought full-size suitcases. We’ll leave enough space for whatever you buy.”

“Cool,” Paige says.

Neil glances at the door as it opens—Clark, Kevin, Allison, and Allison’s captain head into the parking lot, Allison looking satisfied with herself. Renee and Andrew head back at double their previous pace.

Allison holds up two middle fingers in their general direction. “Not you, wife of mine,” she calls. “The dickwad who wandered out of the goddamn goal.”

Andrew shrugs. “Wanted to make it clear that you were making the right choice, joining a winning team.”

“You didn’t have to be _rude_ about it,” Allison says, dropping her voice to a normal volume as Andrew gets within earshot. “Didn’t have to rub it in.”

“That’s exactly what Renee said,” Andrew tells her.

Allison shrugs. “That’s how I know I’m saying smart things. Anyway. How are my nieces?”

Paige and Natalie grin again. That feeling, Neil knows full well, won’t wear off any time soon—the feeling of being part of a family. “Good,” they chorus.

Clark holds up a hand, and Neil nods at him.

“We’re being called away,” Neil says.

Allison grimaces at him. “Fine. Dan and I are stealing them tomorrow, anyway.”

“We’ve been told. See you tomorrow?”

“I’ve made reservations for lunch,” Allison says. “Your flight isn’t until late—we’ll meet up for lunch, go shopping, and have you back at the airport with time to spare. Yes?”

“Yes,” Neil says obediently.

Neil exchanges hugs, Renee hugs Andrew, and they get back onto the bus.

“I’m dropping you off at the hotel, right?” Clark asks. Neil waves the girls to the back of the bus with Andrew and slides into the seat behind Clark. “Where are you guys staying?”

Neil gives him the address as Maria slides in next to him, Riley taking the seat across from them. “It’s on the way to the airport, it shouldn’t be too far out of the way.”

“Good thing we’ve got tomorrow off, huh,” Maria says.

“And Sunday,” Clark says, setting off an immediate outcry from Kevin. “Tell him to shut up,” Clark says to Neil.

“Shut up,” Neil tells Kevin.

“We’re trying to hit the goal blindfolded, we don’t have _time_ ,” Kevin says insistently.

“And we’ll have less time if we fall asleep on the goddamn court,” Clark says. “Sometimes, human beings need a break. Sometimes, we need to take a weekend off. Sometimes, you need to go home and see your wife and son, Kevin, remember them?”

Kevin twists his wedding ring around his finger. “You guys have _got_ to stop using them against me,” he grumbles.

“The rest of us like to have personal lives, too,” Riley says.

“Speaking of, if we’ve got Sunday off, thoughts on dinner?” Maria asks her. She’s quiet, not inviting the rest of the bus into the conversation, but as she’s sitting right next to Neil, it doesn’t matter much.

“Yeah,” Riley says, grinning. “That sounds good. Anyplace you wanna go?”

“Oh, Maria,” Neil says, abruptly, tugging his phone out, ignoring the fury she’s sending his way. “Sorry, sorry, but—hang on, I just need your help with—look at this,” he says, pulling up his notes app, phone tilted away from Maria, as he types out the name of the Italian restaurant Riley loves. “Does this make sense to you?”

“Yeah,” Maria says slowly. “Yeah, I think you’re good. You can just—send that, or whatever. Anyway, Ri—um, do you like—thoughts on Italian? Have you ever heard of Strano’s? I’ve been meaning to—”

Riley lights up like she’s swallowed the sun. “Yeah, I love that place—have you ever been?”

A second too late, Maria says, “No, I haven’t, but I’ve heard it’s pretty good.”

“It’s delicious,” Riley says, excitedly. “Everything they’ve got is great.”

As Riley continues, Maria reaches behind her and blindly pats Neil’s arm in what he assumes is thanks.

Eventually, they make it to the hotel, and Neil is no longer required to sit next to Maria and Riley while they flirt, which is wonderful, because Neil can only imagine that without him there they’ll actually be able to sit in the same seat, which may well cause Riley to combust on the spot.

Maria gets up so Neil can get out, but waving a hand at Riley to stay, she heads out of the bus in front of Neil. And then she turns and hugs him. “Thanks,” she says quietly. “I’m _so gay_.”

“No problem,” Neil says, patting her. Is that what people do? She doesn’t seem too bothered.

Andrew and the girls join them, and Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil.

“Told Maria to suggest Strano’s for dinner on Sunday,” Neil explains as Maria lets go of him. “Riley was _extremely_ happy.”

Andrew nods understanding. “If you order the sampler, she’ll steal half the food on your plate,” he tells Maria. “And she _loves_ their tiramisu.”

“Can I hug you?” Maria asks.

“No.”

“Okay. Air hug, then,” Maria says, and does that. “I love you both. See you in a couple days. Hey, I’ll bring—do you want that makeup, Neil? I’ll bring it on Monday, you can have it.”

“Thanks,” Neil says. “Yeah, I’ll take it. Wasn’t what I was aiming for, though.”

Maria waves him off. “I know, I know, but I’ve got it and you should have it and I keep forgetting about it.”

“Thanks,” Neil says again, but she just waves him off and gets back on the bus. Neil waves at Clark, who waves back and pulls away.

“What makeup?” Paige asks immediately.

“Don’t worry about it,” Neil says. “Did you guys like the game?”

“I wanna learn how to play exy,” Paige says.

“Oh? Any position?”

“Goalie.”

Neil grins at Andrew, who decides against expressing any kind of emotion. “Why? Not that it matters, I’m just curious.”

“It’s cool," Paige says.

"We can find you—well, the school year’s started—well, George W. doesn’t offer exy anyway—” Neil glances at Andrew, who refuses to respond. “Worst comes to worst, if we’re too late to get you onto a team, you can always train with us, this winter.”

“Are you going to keep training?” Paige asks.

“Not to the extent we do now, no, but we do _some_ stuff over the winter. Just to keep us in practice. And because Kevin insists.”

“And you,” Andrew adds. “You also insist.” He’s pulling out papers, and Neil pulls up the text with the info for the kids’ room, and they check in. They get their keys.

“Meet back down here in 10 to go get dinner?” Neil suggests. “Or—order room service?”

Natalie and Paige’s eyes go wide as plates.

“Room service it is,” Neil says cheerfully.

Paige stops halfway to a full-on cheerleading routine. “Wait. Like. All of us together?”

Neil thinks fast. He isn’t sure whether or not that’s a good thing. “It could be,” he says slowly. “Or… it could not be?” That one seems to be polling better with his target audience. “Andrew and I could definitely use an early night,” he tries, and Paige and Natalie nod along.

“But we can just—we can still order room service, right?” Paige says.

Neil ignores the way Natalie is desperately avoiding looking at Paige, and tries, for a moment, to put himself in their shoes. How often have they been on vacation, been given time unsupervised, unlimited access to food? For Neil, room service was what he and Mary did when they needed to eat and couldn’t risk leaving the room. It was a waste of money and a waste of time and left unwashed dishes behind. For Andrew, though—Andrew likes room service, Neil knows. A luxury. Something out-of-the-ordinary. “Of course,” Neil says. “Whatever you want.”

“Cool, thanks!” Paige says brightly, and she and Natalie scamper across the hotel towards the other elevator, which is closer to their room.

“So—whose card is their room on?” Andrew asks.

Neil opens his mouth to respond—and then realizes he doesn’t know. Or, more accurately, he _does_ know. “Not mine. Allison didn’t ask for my credit card number.” He looks at Andrew, and finds Andrew amused. “They’re gonna put whatever they order on Allison’s card.”

“Don’t tell them,” Andrew suggests. “We can pay her back tomorrow. She’s not going to tell them, ever.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Neil agrees, and they step into the closest elevator.

Neil checks his phone, and finds a text from Riley— _you told Maria about strano’s, didn’t you._ He makes a face and texts back _Yes._ “Riley knows I helped Maria,” he says plaintively.

“Well, I’m sure you weren’t subtle.”

“I—hey! What does that mean!”

“It means you’re approximately as subtle as three bulls in a Volkswagen Golf.”

“Is that a big car or a little one?”

Andrew looks at Neil like he’s never seen him before. “A little one, Neil. A little one. How on earth did you ever manage to escape any kind of pursuers when you had no idea what car they were driving?”

“Color and size,” Neil says. “Big black boxy car. And anyway, it never helped, they could just switch cars at any time.”

Andrew closes his eyes. “Look. I know I have a perfect memory. But I _know_ you have seen a Golf on the road before. How do you have _no_ idea what size this thing is?”

The elevator dings, and they step out onto their floor. “Does it look like a cop car? If not, it has no impact on my life or existence.”

“It does not,” Andrew allows. “Oh, we’re right next to the elevator.”

“True convenience,” Neil agrees, tapping the key card to the lock and pushing the door open. He flips on the light and finds himself in a cramped room—“And this was the _nice_ one,” he complains, glancing into the little bathroom. “Oh, wow, I’m getting spoiled.”

“We’re in New York City,” Andrew says. “And we’re in a Hyatt, how nice can things be?”

“Soap smells nice, though,” Neil says.

“Ooh, let me smell,” Andrew says, and Neil holds the bottle under his nose. “Makes me wish we showered here, instead of at the stadium.”

“We’ll just bring it home with us,” Neil decides, swiping the soap.

“Nice hangers in the closet,” Andrew says. “None of that wire shit.”

“Wanna bring those home?”

“No, then there won’t be enough space for my eight face-sized Reese’s cups.”

“Fair enough. Just so you know, Renee has been tasked with preventing you from buying too many of those.”

“I’m tasking you with preventing her from preventing me from buying too many of those.”

“Matt has been tasked with preventing me from preventing her from preventing you from buying too many of those, and we have to stop there because I’m already losing track of who’s preventing who from doing what.”

“Matt can be distracted.”

“I mean, no, not really.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion.”

“Ah, I see. Punishment if I fail?”

“Why jump straight to the stick, why not start with the carrot?”

Neil shrugs. “Reward if I succeed?”

“Many, _many_ chocolate-peanut-butter-flavored kisses.”

“That’s an impressive carrot.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever even _looked_ at my carrot.”

Neil turns and puts his forehead on the wall. “I fucking hate you.”

Andrew presses his lips to the base of Neil’s neck, and Neil can feel him smiling.

“Over a _dick joke_?” Neil says incredulously, turning around—he’s not going to miss Andrew _smiling_. “Really?”

Andrew shrugs. “Should’ve seen the look on your face,” he says happily.

“Ah— _sadism_.”

“Of course,” Andrew says, tugging Neil further into the room. “What else do we have?”

“Nothing special, it looks like,” Neil says, glancing at the TV, the bed. He grabs the room service menu, controls his reaction to the prices, and sprawls on the bed on his stomach. Andrew joins him. “What’s special about room service? What’s fun about being alone in a hotel?”

Andrew, having glanced at the menu, folds his arms and rests his cheek on them, looking over at Neil. “Independence. Lack of supervision. Lack of responsibility. Anonymity. Freedom. Safety. Novelty. Where do you want me to start?”

Neil tries to resist, fails, and leans over to kiss Andrew’s exposed cheek. He sets aside the menu and mirrors Andrew’s position. “The beginning. None of that has any relation to my experience with hotel rooms.”

“It’s just—it’s not your house, it’s not the house of someone you know. You don’t have to ask permission to use the shower or take a water bottle. Everything is clean—nominally—and you don’t have to clean anything up, as long as you don't make a big mess. You can order food, whatever and as much as you want—it feels like a break, like it’s got nothing to do with your real life. You’re never going to see anyone here again. No one knows who you are, and no one cares, and unless you’re being an enormous asshole, no one _will_ know or care. No one watching you eat, judging what you’re eating. No need to be polite about it. It’s like—existing in an alternate reality, where as long as you don’t destroy things and you tip properly, nothing matters. You can literally suck the icing off your husband’s finger and no one will ever know or care, and you don’t even have to clean the plate when you’re done. For the girls, I’d assume that the flat-out joy of being able to eat how much of whatever they want is a lot like getting high.”

“We always let them eat whatever they want,” Neil says. And then he rethinks that. “Although, I guess it’s not the same. Being allowed to do whatever you want isn’t the same as having the power to do whatever you want.”

“And in a hotel—especially a hotel in New York City—especially when your parents are on the other side of said hotel—they can do whatever the fuck occurs to them.”

What does _whatever the fuck occurs to them_ mean? What does it matter where the hotel is? Are they going to _leave_ the hotel? It’s October—it’s getting dark already, and cold, and sure the streets are numbered but—

Andrew puts a finger on Neil’s lips. “What are you worrying about?”

Neil wants to ask how Andrew knows he’s worrying, but that’s a stupid question. These days, Neil wears his anxiety on his sleeve, and Andrew knows what it looks like. “Our kids.”

The corner of Andrew’s mouth quirks up. “What about our kids?”

“Leaving the hotel. Should I text them? I shouldn’t tell them _not_ to do it, I guess, ‘cause then the first thing they do will be to leave. Or get annoyed at me for thinking they’d leave. But I just want to remind them that they should _tell us_ —”

Andrew runs his hand through Neil’s hair. “Here I thought I’d be the one who worried nonstop. Natalie’s right,” he says fondly. “You _are_ old.”

“You’re older than I am,” Neil points out.

“But _spiritually_ , I’m young.”

“You bought a cactus and called it your son.”

“I wanted a baby.”

Neil pushes himself up on his forearms so he can glare down at Andrew. “We had a whole thing about this! A whole thing!”

Andrew grins, twists, reaches up to grab Neil’s shirt and pulls him down for a kiss. Neil goes, letting Andrew take his weight, knowing Andrew can handle it.

“You’re just trying to distract me,” Neil mutters eventually.

“Is it working?”

“It can.”

“Can I bribe you to make it work?”

Neil hums. “I suppose.”

“What do I owe you? How much dough will it take, huh?” Andrew drawls.

“My prices are pretty high,” Neil warns. “And I _don’t_ negotiate. I’ll drain you dry.”

Andrew snaps his fingers. “Just tell me. Just gimme the bad news. What’s the damage? What do I have to do to clear my debt?”

“I want a _really_ good hug.”

Andrew narrows his eyes at Neil. “Your prices are steep… but I can pay.” He wraps his arms around Neil and lets Neil wrap his arms around Andrew’s shoulders. Andrew completes his twist, shifting Neil until Neil is lying between Andrew’s legs, a comfortable place to be.

A few minutes later, Neil’s brain makes a connection, and it’s so ridiculous Neil almost rejects it altogether.

But, well, the Andrew he’s lying on top of—chest against chest, Neil’s legs between Andrew’s—is not the Andrew of ten years ago. “Drew?”

“Mm?”

“Did you do the whole stepping out of the goal thing because I said Charlie made a cool save?”

Neil awaits a snort. Dismissal. Negation.

He gets none of that.

“You told me to shut up,” Andrew says, shocked. “You were _watching the game_.”

Neil represses a grin. “Oh, my little cabbage, I’m so sorry, I was joking—”

“And anyway, _I’m_ the best goalie in exy! You don’t gasp when _I_ make cool saves!”

“You are, you are,” Neil says, stretching up so he can kiss Andrew’s face. “And I do! It’s just that when you're in the goal, either I’m not on the court, or I’m literally in the middle of playing a game.” Neil sprinkles kisses wherever he can reach. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll give you more attention from now on, you big baby.”

“No need to be rude about it,” Andrew says, but he closes his eyes and lets Neil kiss his forehead, cheeks, nose, eyebrows, the corners of his eyes, his jaw.

“You told him to give up only five goals! He did it because the best goalie in exy told him he could. I’m _always_ impressed with you, my one and only Andrew, I’m sorry I told you to shut up, I’ll never do it again. I’m sorry. I love you so much.”

“You are making fun of me,” Andrew accuses.

“Yup. It’s all true, though. I just think it’s cute that you needed me to say it, because I was impressed with another goalie. Oh my _god_ , Drew, were you _jealous_? Is this _jealousy_?”

“I’m not _cute_ ,” Andrew grumbles. “I’m a cold-blooded killer.”

“That’s not true, you’ve always killed in hot blood. And you’re a _cute_ killer.”

“Oh? And who are you comparing me to, how many killers do you know? Don’t answer that.”

“I won’t. I notice, however, that you did _not_ answer me when I asked if this was jealousy.”

“What, am I not allowed to be jealous?”

“I just never thought that, for the first time ever, you’d feel jealous, and it would be because I thought another _exy goalie_ was doing a good job.”

“Well, that’s a failure of imagination on _your_ part, not a failure on _my_ end.”

“Oh, for sure, for sure. Definitely. Certainly. Hey, you know, we’re right around the corner from the Hershey’s store. It’s early, they’re still open.”

“Bribery,” Andrew grumps. “This is _bribery_. Hey, Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“If I build my whole goddamn personality around being the world’s best exy goalie, what happens when I’m not anymore?”

Neil stops smiling. He presses his cheek against Andrew’s. He wants to apologize. Andrew didn’t want this, worked so hard to never get here, until Neil dragged him in—but Neil knows that’s not true, even if it _feels_ true, knows full well that Andrew had liked exy, in much the same way as he’d liked Neil—absolutely terrified that it would come back to bite him. And unlike Neil, exy has an expiration date—Andrew can only do this while he’s young. And, unlike Neil, exy is fickle. Andrew could quit, now, while he’s ahead, while he’s unbeaten—but if he continues, if he goes long enough, people will watch him lose his status, lose to better and younger players. They’ll talk about his downfall, about him losing his grip.

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek. “Then I think you just—reinvent yourself. Find new things to love, instead of just the same thing, all the time, forever. Spend time with your friends, with me, with the kids. Decide whether or not you want to get another job, or go back to school, or if you want to watch TV for a few years. I think, maybe, you stop letting yourself be defined by exy fans and reporters, and start letting yourself be defined by _other_ people. People who know more about you than your exy stats. You get to decide to be someone different. And I think—you get to be happy. Happy that life is long enough to be more than one thing.”

Andrew is silent for a minute, chest rising and falling steadily underneath Neil, and then he sighs and kisses Neil’s forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Wanna go to the Hershey store?”

“Yeah.”

Neil pushes himself up. “Should we text the kids?”

Andrew stands, and they look at each other.

Neil sees the same impulse in Andrew’s eyes—nah. Freedom. Not telling anyone where they are, where they’re going to be, what they’re doing. Answerable to no one.

“If the kids need us, they’ll call,” Andrew says. “We’ll keep our phones on, volume up.”

Neil nods and takes his phone off vibrate. He discovers, as he does, that Riley has texted him _thank you <3<3<3<3_, and he texts back a _No problem <3._

They head down the elevator, Andrew taking fistfuls of 5s out of his wallet, and out the door.

The sun is setting, and it’s cold in this city, where the buildings block the sun. Andrew takes Neil’s hand and they stride forward, down the busy street and around the corner, ignoring the tourists, acting like they themselves aren’t on the way to the Hershey store, Andrew passing out cash and Neil passing out eye contact and nods to every homeless person they pass. They have the money for that, now, so they do it.

They head into the Hershey store, Andrew glances around to make sure nothing’s changed, and then he heads straight for the Reese’s cups, standing a little out of the way while he stares at them with narrowed eyes.

“Okay. So I have enough space in my bag for eight of these,” Andrew mutters. “If I get _none_ tomorrow, everyone will be suspicious. How many do you think Renee will let me get? Four?”

“That might be pushing it,” Neil says. “ _Especially_ if Allison plans to hold her accountable. And after your stunt today, she will.”

“ _Stunt_.”

“It was a _cool_ stunt,” Neil says, kissing Andrew’s cheek. “But I think we all know it was a stunt nonetheless.”

“Wouldn’t want them thinking they’d gotten their one allowed point off me through their own skills, now, would I.”

“God forbid. They’re a good team, though, they’ve _got_ skills. Finals is just—a bad time for them.”

“They’re not _smart_ enough to beat me.”

“Really tearing them down, huh.”

“They do all the techniques that you and Kevin do, but worse, and older. They’re almost as skilled as the Ravens _used_ to be, and that works against other teams—a reasonably even match for most ex-Ravens, and pretty good against non-Ravens. But they haven’t changed it up at all, they haven’t tried to make their shit better than the Ravens were. So they lose against California—ex-Raven Jean, and Jeremy, smart enough to take Jean's shit and actually teach it properly, smart enough to _lose_ once in a while and get _better_ —and they lose against Denver, which is, just, a batshit good team, and they lose against us, because we used to be them. They never could’ve taken a point off me, not unless I let them.”

Neil forces his eyebrows back down. They’re not even in a stadium, let alone exchanging observations during halftime. “This is true. You don’t have to talk about exy to make me like you more than I like Charlie, you know. I already do.”

“I don’t want you to think I was being mean to them. Or to Charlie. I knew we could beat them, and I knew it would be easy, because they haven’t done what we’ve done, they haven’t put in the work to get _better_.”

Neil lifts Andrew’s hand and kisses it. “I’m very glad that you’re my soulmate.” He refrains from kissing Andrew’s whole face. They’re in public.

But he glances at Andrew, and Andrew is looking at him, and it’s extremely hard not to just let an expression of PDA be everyone else’s problem.

Neil remembers full well why the term _soulmate_ means so much to Andrew. He remembers everyone thinking Andrew was soulless.

“So anyway,” Neil says, getting them back on track, “Renee won’t let you get more than three.”

“But will she let me _get_ three. This is _important_ , Neil. If she’ll stop me at two, I need to get six tonight, or there will be wasted space. But if I get six _now_ , I’ll only be able to get two tomorrow, and if she lets me get _three_ and I only get _two_ then she’ll _know_ something’s up.”

“It could be a joint effort,” Neil suggests. “I’ll start her high—five. Let her talk me down to three. Talking me down further will take too much effort.”

“What if she stops at _five_?”

“If she stops at five, I just get a look of horror on my face— _wait, Renee, you’re supposed to argue with me—_ and point out that there’s only enough room in our bags for three, and you shouldn’t eat too many anyway, and all you have to do is argue with me for half a minute, and then look at me, visibly bite your tongue, tap your wedding ring, and say _okay_. Problem solved.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Andrew says, stepping forward into the crowd, grabbing five of the cups. He rematerializes at Neil’s side. “Anything else we want while we’re here, or do we want to go get some pride flag m’n’ms?”

Neil glances around. “No, I think we can head out.”

They meander around anyway, just in case there’s something Neil’s forgotten. There isn’t, and it’s crowded, and they get into line, and two seconds later, Neil hears behind him—

“No, hold this—for _a second_ , just _one_ , and then we can switch—”

Neil and Andrew twist, and Paige glances up and sees them and freezes. Nat joins her half a second later. Neil glances at Andrew, and finds him making the same exact deer-in-headlights expression.

“So,” Neil says carefully. “If we just… turn and face forward… then maybe… this never happened.” He and Andrew slowly turn to face forward.

And then he gives up and turns back around. “Are you two going to spend _all_ your money on chocolate? No, you’re not,” he decides. “We’ll pay for it. Are you two going to stay out? I’ll stick more money into your account. Do you have any cash for tips? You’ll need some, to tip at the hotel, anyway.”

“This never happened,” Andrew says. “You tell _no one_ you saw us here. _No one_.”

Natalie gets a gleam in her eye. “And what’ll you give us to keep our mouths shut?”

“I won’t ask about any of what you’re holding,” Andrew says.

Natalie gasps. “I thought we already had that one going! We won’t ask you, you won’t ask us!”

Andrew narrows his eyes at her. “You tell no one you saw us here… or I’ll never make you pancakes again.”

This gets a much smaller gasp from Paige, who then seems to catch up with herself and says loftily: “We can make our _own_ pancakes.”

“I won’t pass down my recipe for homemade cake.”

“We are your _daughters_!” Natalie gasps. “You _have_ to!”

“It’s not like I have it written down anywhere. I could just… forget to write it down.”

“Fine,” Paige says, giving in. “We won’t tell anyone you were here. Why?”

“Andrew loves those Reese’s cups—don’t look at me like that, you do—but if Kevin is here, he won’t let Andrew buy too many. Everyone else finds this hilarious, and also thinks that left to his own devices Andrew will be diabetic in under three months, _and_ Dan is basically Kevin's sister, so she backs him up most of the time, and since Renee is one of her best friends, Renee will back _her_ up, so even though Kevin isn't _here_ , we all still feel his influence. So it’s basically a given that we come here and then Andrew picks up as many as he wants while everyone else just… takes them out of his hands, and puts them back. It’s caused a traffic jam in the store, in years past.”

“So—why are you here _now_?”

“I can only fit so many of these in my bag,” Andrew says, shuffling forward as the line moves, “so there’s an upper limit no matter what. So if I just come pick up a bunch _now_ , then tomorrow, Renee can talk me down to three, and I’ll be good to go.”

“So you’re lying to them.”

“Look,” Andrew says, shifting his five Reese’s cups, “I understand what they’re doing. I get that it’s supposed to be for my benefit. I see that they’re trying to take care of me, much in the same way that they take care of Neil, in the only way they know how, and the only way they really can. I won’t take that away from them. I _also_ will not lose the opportunity to grab a half-pound peanut butter cup or two. Or three. Or eight. So it’s not really that I’m _lying_ , it’s more like I’m _conning_ them.”

“That’s worse, though, right?” Paige says. “You get how that’s worse?”

Andrew shrugs. “How nice am I supposed to be?”

“I mean, they’re trying to keep you from chocolate, so probably not that nice,” Natalie muses. “I just want it on record that I have no problem with this.”

“I’ll record it,” Andrew agrees.

“Okay. So. Hang on,” Neil says as they near the registers. “You guys don’t have to tell us where you’re going, but if you’re going to stay out, I _do_ want a text every hour or so, letting me know you’re alive, and you need to text when you get back to the hotel so I know you haven’t died. Don’t spend your cash, that’s for tips. Don’t stay out too late, stay together—”

“You’re worrying, old man,” Natalie says.

“I know. If I wasn’t worried, I wouldn’t be bothering with any of this. The two of you have to _stay together_ , okay?”

“We _will_ ,” Paige insists. “ _Look_ at us, do you think we’re about to split up? We’ve seen horror movies, we know better than that.”

Andrew puts his Reese’s on the counter, and Neil motions the girls forward to dump their haul on the counter too. They refuse to make eye contact with Neil as they do.

“Once we leave, I’m not saying shit about this ever again,” Neil warns, “so you have to put up with me for now—all garbage goes in the trash can, _not_ hidden away; you have to vacuum your room and under your beds _at least_ once a week, take out your trash, we _cannot_ afford to get roaches. We could probably deal with ants, but no one wants to do that, so just—keep it clean, all right?”

“Yes, Pops,” they chorus.

“Should we—should we keep it downstairs?” Paige asks. “In the kitchen? There’s, like, three unused shelves.”

“Oh, the top shelves? Sure, I just didn’t think you’d want to.”

“I mean—you just paid for it, so—”

“Sure, but it’s _yours_ ,” Andrew says. “We’re not going to eat it, we’re not keeping track of it. We’re not buying it for ourselves, we’re giving you a gift. No strings attached. If you want to keep it in your room, make sure you keep your room clean, don’t attract bugs. If you want to keep it in the kitchen, we won’t eat it, it’s not ours.”

“Oh,” Natalie says.

Andrew hands them their bag of chocolate, picks up his own, and leads the way out the door. “I’d give you my knives,” he says, “but I didn’t bring them.”

“It’s okay,” Natalie says, pulling close to a wall. “We’ll be fine. Where are you going next? We won’t go there.”

“M’n’m store,” Neil says.

“Cool, we’re gonna go get clothes.”

“Okay. Just—”

Andrew takes Neil’s hand and squeezes it, and Neil forces down the impulse to give them more safety instructions.

“We _know_ , pops, we _know_ ,” Paige says. “Anyway. You haven’t seen us, and we haven’t seen you. We will disappear into the night. Like Batman.”

“Bat _men_. There’s _two_ of you. And you’re going to stick together,” Neil calls after them as they turn and walk away from him.

Andrew bumps his forehead against Neil’s shoulder, and Neil turns and follows him to the m’n’m store.

“I’m so glad we didn’t have a baby,” Andrew says as they walk. “You’d have been a _wreck_.”

“That baby would’ve lived in a bubble,” Neil agrees.

“Short-term safety over long-term safety.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you never let your kid get hurt, they’ll never learn how to be safe in the first place.”

“Fair. And if you never teach a kid how to handle caring about other people, they become an overbearing parent.”

“Never heard that one before, but I’ll allow it.”

“Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat until his reel breaks. Teach a man how to woodwork and he can replace his reel _and_ build himself a cabin.”

“Was that, in any way, related to what we were saying?” Andrew asks.

Neil shrugs. “Felt like the same sentence structure.”

“Give a man a Reese’s, he’ll find out where to buy more. Teach a man that you’ll prevent him from getting Reese’s, and he’ll learn to commit fraud.”

“Give a man a knife, and he’ll hurt himself. Teach a man how to use a knife, and he’ll teach his kids how to use knives.”

“That one seems a little circular,” Andrew suggests.

“And then his kids will watch him murder a member of the mafia.”

“Do you ever catch yourself about to say something hurtful, and then stop yourself from saying it?”

“Are you asking because I never do that, or because you just did it?”

“Either or.”

“Every once in a while,” Neil says. “But rarely. What were you going to say?”

“It was mean.”

“I can handle it,” Neil protests.

“ _Like father, like son_.”

“Oof,” Neil says, wincing. “Okay, that one seems to be playing out pretty accurately, actually. May my children never have to murder a member of the mafia.”

“That sounds like a reasonably good blessing to pass onto our kids. Do you think we could find a priest who would… you know, I don’t think that that’s how priests work.”

“No, I think we’d need to find a witch, or something. Is that a—potion? A spell? Could we burn a candle?”

“Protection spell?” Andrew guesses. “Although, maybe then it would be something members of the mafia would have to burn. _May I never put myself in a position to get murdered by a furious child of the Minyard-Josten line._ ”

“May our names be whispered in fear by those who would hurt us, may we be the subjects of the scary stories they tell their children at night, because they know that if they come near us we will murder them. You know what? Now _we_ sound like the mafia.”

“Speaking of, should I be concerned about Natalie?”

“Hmm?”

Andrew shoves his way into the store, and they head for the elevator. “Natalie. She seems less distressed by murder and the mafia than she should be,” he says, switching into Russian. “‘ _Why would he do that? That was nice.’_ I just—she was very happy about people being dead.”

Neil shrugs. “You might be talking to the wrong person, here. I don’t care, either, except in the execution of it—the fact that _he_ was involved. _You_ don’t care, either. And, look, _we_ both turned out fine. And Renee is the same way. Really, we should have her talk to Aaron, who is probably the only one of us who ever managed to turn out a little normal. Or maybe Riley. Well, no, not Riley, she doesn’t know about the mafia.”

“Oh, I’m not expecting us to change her stance on murder. I think she’s right. I just want you to put her through whatever _you_ went through that brought you from _who cares if Seth is dead_ to _I don’t want other Foxes to die_.”

“Ah. Got it. So I should set a gang on her tail, make her run for a few years—” Neil breaks off in a grin as Andrew shoots him a look. “I mean, I can talk to her, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say, really. It doesn’t seem like—I’m not really a role model in that department.”

“Aren’t you? Look at us. Two freaks who murder without a second thought, and here we are, happy and in love and raising a couple kids.” Andrew lets go of Neil so they can take bags, and they start moving down the row of m’n’m dispensers.

“I wouldn’t call us _freaks_ ,” Neil says, filling one bag with the colors of the ace flag, the other with the colors of the aro flag, while Andrew goes for a rainbow effect. He adds in turquoise and pink. The nice thing about being rich and using m’n’ms is that Andrew can make the full flag, with all the original colors.

“You wouldn’t?” Andrew asks. “Most people would.”

“And we care—oh, we care _so_ much—about what most people think of us.”

“Well, no, but our kids might.”

“ _Aha_. You’re worrying,” Neil says triumphantly. “Okay. _Now_ we’re on the same page, we can worry together. Worry with me, Andrew, worry with me.”

“Well, you’re worried about whether or not two vicious children will be safe in Hollister—”

“Are you calling Paige _vicious_?”

“Go threaten Natalie, see what happens—anyway, I’m worried about Natalie’s ability to grow up loved in this world.”

“First off, I think we can worry about both things. I think between the two of us, we’ve got enough anxiety to cover both their bodily health and their mental health. Second of all, we are, as you pointed out, the prototypical freaks incapable of being loved in this world, and yet, you are the light and love of my life, and you love me too, and we have literally an international family, so I’m not sure why you think being a little odd—”

“More than _a little_.”

“—is call for being unloved. _Third_ of all, I can _guarantee_ she will not grow up unloved, because she has a sister and also us. So I will talk to her, and I will try to prod her in a more compassionate direction, but I will _also_ point out that the _reason_ she’s so happy about these two dudes dying is _specifically_ because of the extent to which she cares about her sister. I don’t think it’s necessary, really, for her to decide she cares about _every_ life, _all_ of them. I think that’s a lot to ask.”

“Preaching to the choir.”

“So why are you asking me to talk to her about it?”

“Because I’m fairly certain that healthy, happy people don’t grow up to become _me_. Just because _I_ understand what she feels doesn't mean it's a good thing to _feel_.”

Neil pokes Andrew’s shoulder. “Are you healthy?”

“Not according to Kevin.”

“Are you happy? If not, we should talk about that, because if my husband isn’t happy I want to know.”

“I am reasonably happy, excepting the fact that I am required to hide my love for Reese’s from my family.”

“Then what’s the issue? I mean, sure, I guess people with wonderful, perfect, healthy childhoods don’t grow up to be you, but, I mean, apparently people with terrible childhoods can grow up to be healthy and happy, so—so stop giving Natalie your problems when she doesn't even have them.”

Andrew grimaces. “Jesus. You really know how to get to the heart of a matter, don’t you.”

“Always have. _You know, I get it—_ ”

Andrew snorts and kisses the back of Neil’s hand as Neil dissolves into laughter. “Okay. Okay. Will you talk to her anyway?”

“Of course,” Neil agrees easily. “Will you be a little worried about their physical safety with me?”

“Of course,” Andrew agrees, and they find their way into line.

They pay, wander outside, and circle the block a couple times for fun, walking briskly to stay out of everyone’s way, picking their way around construction sites and trash cans. And then they head up to their room, where Andrew very carefully arranges his contraband, covering it up with clothes so that when he adds the other three in, no one will see what he’s already got. He stuffs the m’n’ms in there, too.

“Leave your bag empty,” he says. “So the kids can fill it up. Maybe we should just—buy another suitcase.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Neil agrees. “If they’re getting clothes _and_ dolls—how much shit comes with those dolls?—we’ll need more space than just my suitcase.”

“Realistically, this is our fault for not thinking ahead and bringing another suitcase,” Andrew says.

“This is true,” Neil agrees. They look at each other and sigh.

“Did the girls want to come with us to the interview in the morning?”

Neil shrugs. “I guess I assumed they would—we’re leaving around checkout time, anyway. And I don’t think they’ve got anywhere else to go. Now that I say that,” he amends, “I realize that we _are_ in Times Square. But.”

Andrew kisses Neil, zips up his suitcase, and stands up. “If I asked, would you give me a back massage?”

Neil gapes up at him. “I mean, sure. Are you asking? Or is this for the future?”

Andrew considers for a moment. “I think I’m asking.”

“ _Are_ you?”

“Yes,” Andrew decides, and then he takes off his shirt. “I am.

“I mean, I have no massage experience,” Neil says as Andrew falls facedown on the bed. “It won’t be very good, probably. Are you sure?”

“Said I was, didn’t I?”

Neil takes a deep breath, holds it a couple seconds, and then lets it out. He takes a seat next to Andrew, pulls up YouTube on his phone, searches _massage techniques for beginners_ , and hits play.

Andrew’s shoulders shake a little. “Taking a class?”

“What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that and I’m not risking it.”

Neil does his best to copy the video, albeit with much less pressure. He doesn’t want to push, either skin or boundaries, and he doesn’t want to hurt Andrew. Can’t hurt Andrew. He asked, just this morning, if Andrew trusted him; now Andrew is proving that he does.

But, well—this isn’t too hard. It’s not a real massage, and Neil isn’t a masseuse, but the basic concept—Neil can do this. He can make it work.

And he _likes_ this. Likes having his hands on Andrew’s skin, likes feeling Andrew relax, one muscle at a time, likes watching Andrew twitch a little to shake his hair out of his eyes, likes watching Andrew’s eyes flutter shut.

Neil keeps going, even after the ten-minute video ends. It’s oddly hypnotic, watching his hands move over Andrew’s back. Andrew’s breath is even, comforting.

Neil feels calm. Present. Centered.

He goes until a text snaps him out of it. “Nat and Gij are back in the hotel,” he tells Andrew, who blinks lazily up at Neil. Neil runs a hand through Andrew’s hair. “Drew?”

“Yeah?”

“You are the light and love of my life.”

“I love you.”

Neil stands, stretches, and then turns back towards Andrew, who stretches out a hand. Neil takes it, and hauls Andrew out of bed and to his feet, so they can order room service.

They eat, quietly, comfortably. Andrew doesn't bother putting his shirt back on, so once the food is delivered, Neil takes his off, in solidarity. The food is good. Not as good as the price suggests it should be, but good nonetheless.

And then they get ready for bed. It’s a relief, as it always is at the end of a long day, to fall into bed, Andrew wrapped around Neil like a starfish. Neil takes Andrew’s hand. Andrew squeezes it, and, as they’ve always managed to do, they end another day together, and happy about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know full well that if a bus stopped in the middle of nyc to let a couple people chat that bus would be destroyed by the collective anger of the closest 3000 people, but realism has no place here


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> new york again! gianna interview!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys... did it again... realized that back in the crooked kind i named a dude grant and then proceeded to name their caseworker grant. considered renaming the original guy since probably no one remembers him but decided that that was too big a risk, cause I'd probably end up naming him clark or something. so anyway, there's more grants in this story than braincells in my skull. apparently [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twW_fthpIs8) is me naming men in this story 
> 
> also, on a programming note: I'm moving to weekly updates, so from now on I'll only be updating on sundays. Sorry to slow down the pace but shrug emoji yknow i can only do so much 
> 
> also, thank you all for your comments, I swear I'll get around to answering them but in the meantime: I love you all, you guys keep me coming back for more

Neil wakes up in the morning to a text from Kevin: _King scratched me. Bitch._

He texts back: _Really? That’s odd. He doesn’t scratch Paige or Natalie. Cats must know things, because the kids walked through the door and King fell in love with them. Odd that he scratched you_.

Neil looks to his left to see Andrew’s raised eyebrow. “King scratched Kevin.”

“Did you tell him he _never_ scratches the kids?”

“Of course.”

“God, I love you so much. You are the love of my life, Neil, do you know that?”

“I don’t think so, I think you probably have to tell me again,” Neil says, grinning at him, at his lovely brown eyes, his perfect familiar face. It occurs to Neil that it’s been a long time since he’s thought of himself as _gooey_ —he used to be highly aware of when he was being a sap, of when he was doing something that Nicky would point out as pure unadulterated goop. It occurs to Neil that the reason he stopped bothering is because Andrew no longer cares—Andrew looks just as gooey now as Neil ever has.

“You are the love of my life,” Andrew says, “the love of my life, and all I’ve ever wanted, and all I want. And incidentally you are hot as hell, which is really tough in the mornings because it’s been several hours since I’ve looked at you, and looking at you in my memory is never quite the same as looking at you in real life. I always have to take a second to get used to it. I’ll be honest, I’ve never thought much of immortality, for obvious reasons, but I would be ready and willing to become immortal as long as I got to wake up next to you every day of my life—now, you’d need to be immortal, too, obviously—”

“What’s that Greek story? The one where the guy turns into a cricket?”

“Eos, the goddess of the dawn, fell in love with Tithonus, and she asked Zeus to grant him immortality. Zeus made him immortal, but being a jealous dickhead decided against granting Tithonus eternal youth, so he got old and demented and babbled away at Eos until she gave up and turned him into a grasshopper.”

“Mm, a grasshopper, not a cricket. Still. Drew, if you ever get old and demented, I promise not to turn you into a grasshopper.”

“ _If_?”

“I mean, we might _be_ immortal. Neither of us have ever died, and we’ve never gotten old.”

“This is true. In the reverse situation, I promise not to turn you into a cricket.”

“What about a grasshopper?”

“No promises there.”

“If you make me a fly, I could be a fly on the wall.”

“If I make you a spider, you could eat all the flies that come in the house.”

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand. “Would you make sure I was well fed?”

“You can have the window in the kitchen, the one that faces the backyard?”

“Oh, the fly graveyard.”

“Yeah, then you can keep that clean, too—keep up with your chores. Hey, do spiders eat cockroaches?”

“I’d eat a cockroach,” Neil decides. “If you needed me to. And if I was a spider.”

“And that’s why I love you.”

“We have come full circle, and now it’s time to get up,” Neil decides, leaning over to kiss Andrew on the nose before he gets up. He texts the kids, tells them to get room service for breakfast, and he and Andrew do the same, ordering the most expensive breakfast Neil has ever eaten in his life.

He gets a text from Kevin: _it’s because King knows I can handle it. the kids are weak_

He texts back: _Possibly this is true. The inner workings of King’s mind are a mystery to even the greatest of cat scientists._

The text bubble pops up immediately, so Neil waits until he gets: _did you just call your kids weak_

Hmm.

That was not the intent.

Neil texts back: _YOU said they were weak, I said cats are unknowable. One of us will be judged for our sins if Paige and Natalie ever find out about this and it is not me._

He puts his phone away and starts amusing himself by putting oatmeal on Andrew’s nose.

Andrew wipes it off and dabs it onto Neil’s forehead. “This is hell,” he informs Neil.

“And I am a demon.”

“King of the demons. Our Lord and—what’s an antonym of _savior_?”

Neil thinks for a moment, and then he puts down his fork and rushes to find the answer before Andrew can. Neil pulls up the thesaurus app, thanks smartphones for making this possible when not at home with a computer, and almost chokes on his own laughter.

Andrew pauses. “Yes?”

Neil shows him the phone. The first result: _Satan_.

Andrew sighs. “Our Lord and Satan, I guess. I’d hoped to preserve your name, but—what must be done, must be done. It is as the thesaurus wills.”

“I appreciate the effort,” Neil says, leaning forward to kiss Andrew’s nose.

Eventually, though—and with his forehead wiped clean—they head downstairs, meet the girls, check their luggage with the bellhop, and head outside, Neil calling a taxi.

“I could _drive_ ,” Andrew grumbles.

Neil points at the traffic.

Andrew grumbles some more, but acquiesces. This isn’t Columbia.

Eventually, their taxi pulls up. It’s a long fucking ride. It’s only a few miles to Gianna's studio.

“We should’ve just taken the subway,” Andrew grumbles fifteen minutes in.

“You say that every time.”

“And I mean it more, every time.”

“All talk, nothing to back it up,” Neil says, tsking at him.

“I have _plenty_ to back it up. This is dumb and bad.”

“And yet, we’re in a car, not on the subway.”

“Well, it would suck to deal with the subway with two kids in tow.”

“People do it all the time, you just don’t want to take the subway.”

“Of _course_ I want to take the subway, it’s easier than _this_.”

“Why don’t you, though?” Paige pipes up. “I mean, it’s not like _you_ can get lost. It’s not like you can _forget_ which stop is yours.”

“Don’t want to,” Andrew says.

Neil snorts. “Hey. Drew.”

Andrew looks at him, and Neil leans in, giving him time to pull away, but he doesn’t, he leans in too, and it’s a relief to kiss him, even to the soundtrack of their children retching.

“It’s _dirty_ ,” Andrew says when they separate. “And crowded.”

“Which is why we’re sitting in traffic,” Neil says.

“Which I hate.”

“Sounds like you’re having a tough day, cabbage.”

“Did you just call him cabbage?” Natalie asks.

“And what of it?”

Eventually, though, they make it to her studio, an absolute relief. And they’re a solid 20 minutes early. They’d thought the drive would take longer.

Gianna herself meets them at the door.

“Neil! Andrew!” She gives Neil a light hug and waves at Andrew. “It’s nice to—okay, I kept expecting the taller ones to walk away, but are they with you?”

Neil glances back at the maniacal grin on Natalie’s face.

“Hear that, pops? We are the taller ones. We hold the power here! We are—”

“ _Pops_?” Gianna asks.

“Our fosters, soon-to-be-children,” Neil says. “Natalie and Paige.”

“As in—you have two children.”

“Yes. Not for you,” he says. “They are not for you.” Neil can see her visibly struggling for self-control.

“Could we do the interview, too?” Paige asks, and Gianna grows two feet taller and begins sparkling.

And then she reins it back in. “You’re underage. You can only do interviews and be on TV with parental permission.”

Natalie and Paige turn, as one, to Andrew. “ _Pleeeaasee,_ dad?” They whine. “Please? Please?”

Andrew gives them a shocked look, and as one they deflate.

“Dad said no,” Paige says, turning big eyes on Neil. “Pops?”

“He didn’t say no,” Neil says, “he said he doesn’t talk in front of reporters—”

“Is that new? Is it because of the _make shivs and suck_ —”

Andrew puts his face in his hands, and Natalie laughs.

“No, it’s a general principle. But, anyway, if you’re asking me, the answer is yes, you can be on this show. I just want—” Neil holds up a hand before Gianna can sparkle again. “If they ask you a question you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to answer it. If you get bored halfway through and leave, you can. If you don’t feel like talking at all, you don’t have to. Don’t be rude—Andrew’s the only one with a license to do that—but you don’t have to let them pressure you. Understand?”

“Sure. Dad, why don’t you talk?” Paige asks.

Andrew shrugs.

“He doesn’t talk to reporters,” Gianna says. “Any reporters. Excepting his recent foray into press conferences, which was likely a one-off.”

“Why do the show, then?” Paige asks the surrounding adults in general.

Neil and Gianna shrug in unison.

“He likes me,” Gianna says. “It’s fine, it makes for good ratings—oh! Tina!”

And then, over the course of a few quick seconds, waivers are brought over and read and signed. Gianna informs someone that half the script will have to go—they’re prepared to ditch half the episode and talk to the kids instead. Yarrow comes running out to see the kids, and Gianna turns him back around with a look. And then she turns to the girls and smiles. “If you want stage makeup, it’s the third room on the left.”

“If we want?” Paige asks. “We have a choice?”

“Since Neil, yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means someone once required Neil to put on makeup, and then he got on stage and reamed his hosts out so badly that they scrapped the bit, until an audience member leaked their bootleg recording. So I don’t require you to wear makeup.”

“Why do you _do_ this?” Natalie asks. “I mean, pops is clearly a dick, and dad doesn’t even talk to you. Isn’t this just a nightmare? Like, I realize it’s your job and all, but you don’t _have_ to invite them onto the show.”

“Well, I don’t think _that’s_ true—the part about this being a nightmare, anyway,” Gianna muses. “I mean, as long as I listen when Neil says no, and as long as I don’t pull a Ferdinand, I’m good, really.”

“What’s a Ferdinand?” Paige asks.

“Oh—oh, boy, this one’s a long story. Well—okay. So, years back, before Neil joined the Foxes, Kevin Day and Riko Moriyama were the best strikers in the world. And then, in a skiing accident, Kevin broke his hand. He left the Ravens, joined the Foxes, and then—instead of being a coach— _started playing again_ , with his right hand, because he’s a crazy bastard. And after the first game of the year, Kathy Ferdinand hosted Kevin and Neil on her show—exy’s number two striker, and the most exciting rookie in the game. And—at the time, I was a sports journalist, and I was considering getting into TV, so I was watching this, of course. And then, without having warned Kevin or Neil ahead of time, Kathy brought Riko onstage. Watching it was—unnerving. Uncomfortable. Kevin seemed upset. They were talking in circles. And then Neil blew up at Riko— _went off_ on him. It was a great show. Fans were crazy for that episode. Kathy was pleased.

“And then, months later, Kevin told reporters he’d never been skiing. That was it. That was all he said. But then people started questioning how he’d broken his hand, and looking back at that episode of the Kathy Ferdinand show, and rumors started flying. A little while after that, when the Foxes beat the Ravens, Riko tried to smash Neil’s skull with his racquet, and that pretty much cemented it in everyone’s heads—yeah, Riko broke Kevin’s hand.

“No one was willing to talk much about it for too long, because Riko committed suicide that night. So instead, the discussion ended up being about reporter ethics. Kathy, like all of us, had known that Riko and Kevin hadn’t seen each other in months, and she’d forced them to have that reunion onstage, on camera. She’d inserted herself into that situation without checking with both parties. It was supposed to be an interview, and instead she ended up putting Kevin in, just, this incredibly dangerous situation for him—and of course she didn’t know, but if she’d done the right thing and had asked Kevin beforehand, the whole thing would’ve been averted. And then there was a general uproar, and fans were furious, and there was a boycott, and Kathy’s show was shut down within two months. Now, reporters who do dumb shit like that are considered to be _pulling a Ferdinand_.”

“Sounds like more trouble than they’re worth,” Natalie says gleefully. “Every interview with pops must be like—this could be your last episode.”

“Every time,” Gianna says, responding with equal cheer.

It knocks Natalie off-balance. “Wait, really? Then why bother? Get his official statement and let the other journalists throw themselves into the fire.”

“I _want_ to do this. And, anyway, I—” Gianna glances down at her watch and shrugs. “Look. I’m a sports fan, okay? There’s a reason why I did sports journalism, and it’s because I’m a huge sports nerd. And the—I—the team that Neil whipped into shape the year he joined was _incredible_. I can’t—I mean, even the games they _lost_ were record-breaking. Neil and Kevin were playing full games; they broke records for how many shots were taken by a single player, for how many goals were scored during a single game by a single player. And it’s—that’s _impressive_ , because the Ravens—the Ravens were _batshit_ back then. I mean, one of my all-time favorite games, the Foxes played the Ravens. And the Foxes lost, because they were a shitty team and the Ravens were out-of-this-world good. It was a miserable game for the Foxes. The Ravens were swapping out players every quarter. Riko Moriyama was the only player to get on-court twice. Meanwhile, the Foxes were down to nothing, were as small as a team could get. Kevin, Neil, and Andrew played the full game. The Ravens took 150 shots on the goal—150. Just, exy games are _not that long_ , guys, it was over a shot per minute at the goal, and the Fox backliners couldn’t keep the Raven strikers back. Couldn’t keep them far enough away to give Andrew a chance at blocking the goal, they were really taking shots from three feet away. It was harder to _miss_ the goal than to _make_ the goal. 150 shots. _They took 150 shots.”_

“I’m hearing a lot about the Ravens,” Paige says, “and not much about why this was such a great game for our dads.”

“Well, because here’s the thing. The Ravens didn’t end with a score of 150. They ended with a score of 13. That’s how many shots Andrew missed. Out of 150, he missed 13. That’s it. It was the most impressive display of skill, of talent, of ability—speed, accuracy, endurance, _everything_. Andrew is the best goalie in exy. Undeniably. Internationally, there’s no one who can stand up to him. Just—no one. And—for all that the Ravens had the ball often enough to take 150 shots at the goal, Kevin and Neil still managed to get six goals. One was a penalty, to be fair, but—that they managed to get the ball at all was amazing.

“And then let’s talk about Neil. Because—Kevin Day is probably the best striker in exy, but that’s a _probably_. When Riko was in the game, everyone said he _was_ the best striker—and then Kevin beat him, and everyone knew that that was false, Kevin was the best striker. But these days I don’t trust anyone who says that, because Neil is right up there with him, neck-and-neck. I don’t think you could set one up as undeniably the best; one day Neil might be the best, one day it might be Kevin. But Kevin was also one of the very first exy players. He was born into it, raised in it, did nothing _but_ exy. Neil? Played some little league, and then stopped, and then played for a year in high school, and then went to college and rallied the worst team in exy until they beat the reigning champions, and now he’s one of the best in the game. I’ve spoken to backliners who talk about how frustrating it is to have Neil as their mark—how they think they’re doing a good job, they think they’re holding him back, until Neil decides that actually, it’s time for him to take a shot, and then he’s gone.

“And then, of course, there’s my ratings. 99.9% of the time, Kevin says exactly the right thing. Now, the rest of what he says—amazing, absolutely. But Neil has no fear. He tries, he tries _so hard_ to be polite—”

“It’s hard on my PR agent otherwise,” Neil adds.

“But when something rubs him the wrong way, he’s the most interesting guest I can get. So I want him on my show, at all times, because I’m a huge fan and he boosts my ratings, every single time. Now. That’s enough story time. We actually do have a show to do. I’ll see you all on stage!” Gianna graces them with her brightest smile, and then vanishes.

“Well, that was fun,” Neil says. Andrew twitches. “What, don’t like being called the best goalkeeper in exy?”

“Only until someone else comes along,” Andrew mutters.

“Do I have to treat you guys like you’re cool now?” Natalie asks.

“Nope,” Neil says.

“Oh, thank god, I was about to disintegrate.”

They aren’t forced to change, either, although they’re shown fancier clothes. Neil and Andrew feel plenty dressy, and Natalie lifts an eyebrow so high that Neil’s worried it’s going to leave her face. “We’re teenagers,” she says. “Not, like, really gangly 40-year-old women.”

And then she and Paige are left in peace.

Eventually, they’re shepherded backstage. “Paige and Natalie are going to go on after you two, or with you two?” a harried employee tells them. “Um, we haven’t had time to compile a list of questions, so I’m not sure—they may just ask regular questions about the game and whatnot, I’m sure Gianna will make it interesting, she’s good at that. Ah.” He gives a thumbs up to someone on the other side of the stage, and then a countdown begins, the lights go up, and Gianna welcomes everyone to the show.

There’s a quick, spirited discussion about last night's games, and then Gianna holds up a hand and silences her cohosts. “So we’ve got some special guests tonight, here to talk to us about the season, a very special commercial, and some life choices they’ve made,” she says with a glittering grin. “The best goalkeeper in exy and one of exy’s best strikers—”

The rest of what she says is drowned out by cheers, but Andrew and Neil know their roles too well to be thrown off by it. They head onto the stage, where Neil shakes hands with and greets all four hosts; Andrew stares out behind Gianna’s head—there’s a poster off-stage that, at a glance, appears to be inspirational sayings. It’s just hanging there. Gianna hadn’t been kidding, when she’d said she was going to put something fun behind her head. An inhale brings the scents of lavender and eucalyptus to Neil’s nose—she hadn’t been lying about the aromatherapy, either. Andrew sits when Neil does, making himself comfortable on the couch, apparently still reading the poster of inspirational sayings. One glance shows Neil that Andrew is amused. Wonderful. Neil will have to thank Gianna for that, later. She’ll be thrilled.

Yarrow, Grant, and Jennifer start throwing questions rapid-fire at Neil—“So, about that final shot—”

“I’m not interested in the final shot, really, what about the first one you made in the fourth quarter—”

“More than that, where did you come up with the footwork that allowed you to get around Matsuhana—”

“How did you feel not just going up against an ex-Fox, but actually knocking her out of the running—”

“I play really well because Kevin and I train a lot,” Neil interrupts, “and good footwork is just part of the territory. Knocking Allison out of the running was a great time. It’s unfortunate that she won't get to play again until next year, but if anyone was going to kick New York out, I’m sure she’s happy it was us—given she’s joining us, anyway, I’m not saying she’s happy because we’re ex-teammates.”

“What about—I mean, can you tell us there _wasn’t_ any behind-the-scenes bargaining?” Grant asks. “What about that whole stunt Minyard pulled—walking out of the goal?”

“The _behind-the-scenes_ _bargaining_ consisted of Charlie deciding to stop them at five goals, and Andrew deciding to allow them one. He stepped out of the goal because he wanted to make it clear that the goal they got during his half of the game was a kindness on his part, not a matter of their skill.”

“Did you aim that shot at Allison, in the third quarter?” Gianna asks Andrew. “You seem to do that every time you play her.”

Silence.

“Allison knows how to duck,” Neil says. Watching Andrew sit there in silence is the second most painful thing in the world, second only to the way the temperature in the room drops any time anyone other than Gianna tries to talk to Andrew. “Andrew used to test all our reflexes, it’s why we’re so fast now.”

“You know, real quick—I know we’ve had a bit of a change in program—but Neil, can you talk to us about your _Skin Deep_ campaign?” Gianna asks.

“Anything in particular you want to know?” Neil asks. “I mean, it’s something I’m really proud of. I’ve spent my whole life hiding my scars, wearing shirts on the beach and whatnot, but my friend Renee Walker-Reynalds—ex-Fox—approached me and asked if I’d work with Nadiya Silgaard on a campaign she’d been hoping to do. And at first my answer was no—but then it occurred to me that, actually, these issues aren't _my_ problems. They're _everyone else’s_ problems. Invasive questions about scars, staring—it’s not something I enjoy, but it’s also not something people are going to stop doing until we teach them otherwise. And, well, I may as well take part in that work. After all, I mean, when I don’t like the questions or the stares, I can curse people out and leave, and most people don’t have that option, so if I can take some of that heat, and then help people get a little more conscientious about how they interact with others, then it’s worth a little exposure.”

“Now, I _do_ have a question,” Yarrow says, “because one of those scars was a gunshot wound.”

Neil waits a second. “I thought you had a question?”

“Can you confirm that one of those scars was a gunshot wound?”

“I can confirm that,” Neil says, smiling indulgently at him, like he’s a small child who’d just requested a cookie.

“You’ve been shot? By someone with a gun?”

“That’s where most gunshots come from, Yarrow,” Neil says.

“You know, I was super curious about all the other people in the video,” Gianna says, smiling widely. “Where’d they come from? Who were they?”

“Ah, actually, for anyone who’d like more info, the _Skin Deep_ campaign has a website with all their stories,” Neil says, rattling off the URL. “Skin Deep itself is based right here in New York City, so if anyone in the audience is looking for a local charity to support, that might be a good one. But most of the people in the commercial were from South Carolina—” He ticks off names, stories, places to find their work. “They were all really incredible, and a joy to work with. I definitely made some new friends through that campaign.” And once the season is over, he’ll have to remember to get back in contact with them.

“That’s great to hear—I’m sure all our viewers have seen the commercial, and if they haven’t they’ll see it at the next commercial break,” Gianna says. “And I know the four of us have all donated to the campaign already. It sounds like this was a pretty big life decision for you.”

Neil recognizes a lead when he sees it. “You know, we were already making some major life choices, so this one was weirdly easy to make.”

“I think you’ve actually brought a couple life choices with you today, haven’t you?” Gianna asks. “Why don’t we bring them on stage?”

Gianna beckons to the girls, and without discussing it, Andrew and Neil squash to opposite sides of the couch, leaving space for Natalie and Paige. They wander onstage, Paige waving at the crowd, milking it for all she’s worth. They sit on the couch, not bothering to shake hands with anyone.

“I’m Natalie,” Natalie says without prompting.

“I’m Paige. We’re Neil and Andrew’s best-ever life decisions.”

“You can call us the Minyard-Josten rivalry,” Natalie says, taking a small seated bow as the crowd roars.

Once they settle down, Gianna starts in on them. “So who are you and what are you doing with our favorite exy players?” She asks with a grin.

“I’d say we’re domesticating them,” Paige muses, “but they’re already basically house cats. We’re their wards, soon to be adopted.”

Someone in the crowd shrieks; Natalie twitches.

“So what are they like at home?” Grant asks. “Is it terrifying, living with them?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Paige says emphatically. “They watch, just, _massive_ amounts of HGTV, and have the same complaints for every single show. Does this convince them to watch something else? No! They wait for the next show to come on, and then complain about the same things, just, over and over again. I never knew there were so many episodes of House Hunters.”

“And that’s scary?” Jennifer prompts.

“Yes! Why don’t they get bored? Why don’t they ever move on?”

“They might be robots,” Natalie says seriously. “Do either of you have an off-button?” She asks Neil and Andrew.

“Yeah—if you hit me in the head hard enough, I restart,” Neil says, matching her serious tone.

“What about Dad?”

“No, his skull is rock solid, if you hit him in the head he just stares at you.”

Andrew throws Neil a glance. Neil grins at him.

“But anyway,” Natalie says, “the worst part about living with them is just that they’re _gross_. Really. Like, they’re so mushy you could feed them to babies and the toothless elderly. They just stare at each other _all_ the time, and Pops has this really dopey smile, it’s the _worst_.”

“But, I mean, they have a bit of a reputation,” Yarrow says, trying doggedly to get somewhere.

“Not anymore,” Neil says with a snort. “Paige just told everyone our dirty little secret, which is that most of what we do is watch House Hunters.”

“Nonetheless,” Yarrow says.

“A reputation?” Paige asks innocently. “As what? Like, something we’d be scared of? Killers?” She snorts. “Not of spiders, I’ll tell you that, there was one in the house a couple weeks ago and it was an _ordeal_.”

“Andrew _can_ kill spiders,” Neil says. “ _I_ can’t.”

“Right, right, bug lists, right,” Natalie says.

“Bug lists?” Gianna says. She looks at Andrew. “What are bug lists?”

“Oh, good, you don’t know what they are?” Natalie asks. “I was terrified that they were a _thing_ that we’d just never heard of. Glad to know it’s actually bullshit.”

“But what are they?”

“Yeah, Dad, what are they?” Natalie asks.

Andrew looks at her.

Natalie waits patiently.

“I don’t really need to know—”

“It’s about which bugs which of us can kill,” Andrew tells Gianna. “I’m good with spiders, mosquitoes, crickets, and flies; Neil is good with stink bugs, cicadas, wasps, and horse flies. I’m really hoping Natalie or Paige will turn out to be good roach killers. Right now we have to wait for Abby, the Foxes’ nurse, and she’s not exactly on call.”

Well, at least the look of blatant shock on Gianna’s face—and probably Neil’s face—should lay to rest any rumors that Andrew and Gianna were in it together. She recovers quickly, though. “Are you— _scared_ of roaches?”

“If I drop three encyclopedias on a bug, and then stand on those books and jump up and down, when I pick the books up, the bug should be dead, not crawling up my arm.”

“That’s a very specific fear,” Paige says.

“It’s not _specific_ , it’s _realistic_.”

“Did that—did that _happen?_ ”

“I was a junior in high school and Aaron was no help. Nicky was on the phone with Erik—who, remember, was in Germany, and therefore useless.”

“Oh, wait, is _that_ what sparked your college-era terror of roaches?”

“Well, yes, if I kill a bug it should die. We should all be scared of immortal creatures.”

“College-era terror?” Gianna asks, grinning. She’s having a good time.

“Neil made me eat a roach,” Andrew tells her. “And before you ask, it tasted gross, and did not in any way alleviate my terror of them. I followed it up with a pint of ice cream and a full bag of chips—like when you wash a bug down the sink and keep the water running so it doesn’t come back up?”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Neil wails, grinning. “I didn’t think you’d really _do_ it. When _else_ do you just—do the stupid stuff I ask you to do?”

Paige and Natalie erupt into a fit of coughing.

“Cough it up, cough it up,” Neil says, ignoring the fact that their coughing sounds suspiciously like they’re saying the words _all the time_.

“Is this a thing?” Grant asks Andrew. “Neil asks, and you do?”

Andrew’s already reading the poster behind Gianna’s head.

“It’s really not,” Neil insists, prompting a further coughing fit from his children.

“So do you two have a say in whether or not Neil and Andrew adopt you?” Gianna asks the kids, getting them back on track. “They’re fostering you right now, correct?”

“Yeah,” Paige says. “And yeah, we asked them to adopt us—”

“Oh, really?” Yarrow asks. “Isn’t it usually the other way around?”

Paige shrugs. “Never been adopted before, so I can’t say.”

“So did you ask before or after Andrew spoke at the press conference on Monday?” Grant asks, sparking a laugh from the crowd.

“Before,” Paige says. “Why?”

“Well—I mean, _you_ heard what he said,” Grant says, laughing.

“No I didn’t,” Paige lies innocently. “We didn’t watch that press conference, we were doing homework. I thought dad didn’t speak to reporters, anyway? Why, what did he say?”

Neil glances at Gianna, who meets his eyes. He tries desperately to convey the thought _do NOT expose my child as a liar on TV._ He’s not sure if she gets it.

“He—he mentioned that he learned how to make a shiv in juvenile detention,” Grant tries.

“Oh, that’s it? I mean, we know he went to juvie,” Natalie says. “And, I mean, what do I care if he knows how to sharpen a toothbrush or whatever? _I_ could probably sharpen a toothbrush—”

“I bet you couldn’t,” Paige says immediately.

“I definitely could,” Natalie counters. “I—”

“No making shivs out of your toothbrushes,” Neil says.

“Why not?” Paige asks. “What if we end up going to prison in the future? Do you want us to be unprepared? Also, you need to send us in with several packs of cigarettes, I’ve heard that that’s important.”

“I—Paige—where did you hear that? Don’t answer that. Don’t go to prison and this won’t be an issue, you know.”

“I mean, people aren’t usually given a _choice_ ,” Natalie says in her most sensible voice. “So really, dad, you need to teach us how to make shivs.”

Andrew looks at them, and then gives Grant a glance that freezes him in place. “It was a joke I made,” he says. “I—”

“So you _don’t_ know how to make shivs?” Paige asks.

“I don’t think this is particularly relevant,” Andrew says tactfully.

Paige performs a sigh that lasts a full fifteen seconds, during which Neil aims a desperate glance in Gianna’s direction.

“So did the two of you know who Neil and Andrew were before becoming their wards?” Gianna asks, cutting off Paige’s sigh. “Was it exciting, to get two superstars as guardians?”

“We had no idea who they were,” Paige says. “Never watched a game of exy in our lives. And they didn’t exactly introduce themselves as sports stars, you know? And, I mean, they’re short, look at them—maybe gymnasts, but dad isn’t little enough—”

“Wow, just shredding us, Paige,” Neil says drily.

“—anyway, we had _no_ idea what they did, _no_ clue at all, and then we get home and there’s a couple olympic medals on the wall. We didn’t even go to a game until we’d been there a couple weeks—didn’t even watch it, honestly, we were just at home sprinting around after the cats.”

“The cats?” Jennifer asks.

“Yeah—their cats? King and Sir?”

“King?” Jennifer says, surprised. “Is that a tribute to Riko Moriyama?”

Andrew and Neil snort. “No, no,” Neil says. “Their full names are King Fluffikins and Sir Fat Cat McCatterson.”

Gianna’s laugh is drowned out by the crowd. Once they calm down, she asks: “And who named _them_?”

“Well, when we were in college, I started talking about cats, and decided maybe I could name one King Fluffikins, and then Andrew gave me this look like I’d just suggested starting a cult. So I told him to pick something sensible—”

“I believe you suggested _John_ and also _Spot_ ,” Andrew chips in. “I don’t know why you thought _John_ was a sensible name for a cat, but I’m glad we didn’t pick it, because then we’d have had to differentiate between the cat and Kevin’s son, and I have a feeling that we’d have done it by calling them John and Human John.”

“This is true,” Neil agrees. “Human John would’ve grown up with quite a complex. Kevin—if you’re watching this, which you’d better be—if we start calling the kid Human John you’ll know why. Anyway, _as_ I was saying—Andrew sat there for two minutes straight, completely silent, just staring at me—I don’t think he even blinked—and then said, with a _completely_ straight face—”

“Couldn’t have been, I’m not straight—”

“ _Sir Fat Cat McCatterson_ , which really should have been my warning regarding Andrew’s naming convention—”

“It was based _entirely_ on _your_ naming convention—”

“Hey, Andrew, wanna tell Gianna what you named our son?”

“Your _son_?” Gianna asks, looking like she’s hit the jackpot. The crowd is going wild.

Andrew rolls his eyes. “Andrunior.”

“A— _Andrunior_?” Gianna asks.

“I mean, I came home, and the boy was just sitting there on the counter,” Neil recalls, “and I said _what is this_ and Andrew said _our son_ and I asked if he had a name and Andrew just said _Andrunior_ and the thing is—the thing is, there was a solid five minute period where he could’ve backed down, could’ve turned to me and said _no, I didn’t pick a name, please help_ , but he refused, and now we have a son named Andrunior.”

“It’s terrible,” Paige says, “because we haven’t even _seen_ Andrunior since Andrew brought him home—they took him up to their room and we haven’t seen him since.”

“Wanna see a picture?” Neil asks, pulling out his phone.

“Of—the child you keep locked in your room?” Jennifer asks.

“Yeah. Here.” Neil hands his phone over.

Gianna takes one look and drops her head into her free hand, passing the phone to Yarrow. “Neil, Andrew, I really thought the two of you were admitting to a heinous amount of child abuse on TV. Um. Ah—Dean—could you—could we get this picture up where our audience can see it?”

Jennifer hands the phone off to a crew member, and a few seconds later Andrunior is on the screen at the back of the stage that they use for replays. The crowd makes noises of understanding; Neil hears some laughter.

“Yeah, so, that’s our son Andrunior,” Neil says as his phone is returned to him. “He seems to like the windowsill in our bedroom. I _will_ say that that picture is not accurate—Andrew has since rearranged the rocks a couple times. But you get the picture.”

“Saying that the picture isn’t _accurate_ just because I changed the rocks around would be like saying a picture of us wasn’t accurate because we’d changed our clothes in the two and a half weeks since it had been taken,” Andrew says.

“Well, sure, but are the rocks his clothes or, say, his hair? Because if I shaved my head I’d say that a picture of me with hair was inaccurate.”

“Well, but is that _inaccurate_ or is it just _old_?”

“Those are arguably, in this case, the same thing.”

“See, I would say—”

“Ask them a question,” Paige begs Gianna. “Or else they’ll go on like this for the next _five hours_ and I can’t put headphones in while we’re on stage.”

“Do they do this often?” Grant asks.

“ _All the time_. This is it. This is what it’s like to eat dinner in our house. I can’t—I can’t even tell you some of the things they’ve argued about, because if I bring the topics up they’ll just rehash the arguments all over again, even when they come to an _agreement_ sometimes they’ll keep going just for the sake of making their point, it’s horrible.”

“Oh, to be clear,” Natalie adds, “they’re not, like, yelling. This isn’t a cry for help. They just pick a topic and go back and forth about it the way most people have regular conversations.”

“Now, I _do_ have to ask,” Jennifer says, “because you mentioned dinner. Is it—we’ve had Kevin Day on our show, sometimes with Neil, and Kevin seems to be consistently unhappy with Andrew’s diet—apparently Andrew eats nothing but sweets?”

“Dad? No, he and pops make, like, ten different kinds of vegetables and then—oh, you know what, that’s actually something that terrifies me,” Natalie says, interrupting herself. “One time we went upstairs and came down a couple hours later to find out that, while we’d been doing nothing, dad had made homemade pasta, homemade cake, homemade bread, homemade frosting—meanwhile pops was sitting there reading a book like this was normal—”

“Do you not know how to cook?” Grant asks Neil.

“I do, I’m just not allowed to help with anything that qualifies as baking.”

“Not allowed?”

“One time, I spilled a bunch of flour on the floor—”

“What?” Andrew interrupts. “That’s not—that’s not how I remember this happening.”

“That’s _exactly_ what happened,” Neil insists.

“I really don’t think so.”

“I mean, you didn’t even turn around until I’d already spilled it—”

“I think you’re misremembering—”

“Actually, I think I’m _mister_ remembering, thank you very much.”

Andrew stares at Neil.

Neil grins at him.

“In this family _I_ make the dad jokes,” Andrew says.

“It wasn’t a dad joke, it was a pops joke.”

Andrew pinches the bridge of his nose for a second, and then turns to Gianna. “He’s not usually this funny—”

“ _What_?” Paige gasps.

“Okay, fine, he _is_ usually this funny, but not—”

“No, no, that’s not what she was taking issue with,” Natalie says. “No, I think the issue here is that _that wasn’t funny_. Like, at all. At all, at all.”

“You’ll understand when you’re a dad,” Andrew says, perfectly seriously.

“I—I don’t—I cannot, like, envision a circumstance in which _any_ of what pops just said could be considered funny,” Natalie says. “It wasn’t funny.”

“You shouldn’t be mean to your father,” Andrew says.

“I don’t have one of those, I have a dad and a cereal box.”

“I could be father, it would be better than _pops_ ,” Neil suggests.

“No, you’re pops, that’s settled,” Paige says. “What _isn’t_ settled is the concept of a _pops joke_ , which I’m rejecting _right now_.”

“If Andrew is claiming the _concept_ of a dad joke—”

“Ask them a question, please,” Natalie asks Gianna. “Anything. Anything will do.”

“Okay, uh—ah—have you been fostering for long?”

“They’re our first,” Andrew says.

“You decided to start off with twins?”

“No, actually,” Neil says. “We pretty specifically only wanted one kid—since we both work, we weren’t looking to fill up the house, we didn’t want to hurt the kids by taking in more than we could handle. But when we picked up Natalie, she flatly refused to come home with us, until we managed to get it out of her and her caseworker that she had a twin sister—the system had split them up, which is apparently unusual, but not impossible, obviously. And, well—we weren’t expecting two kids, but we’ve got the space and the means, and we knew we couldn’t split them up. Turned out to be a pretty good decision on our part.”

Paige grins smugly at Neil.

Neil shrugs. “I make no bones about that, you were an _extremely_ good decision.”

Gianna laughs. “Look, as much as I would love to keep the four of you with us for the whole show—and I _will_ insist that you all come back to visit us—we have other things to talk about. So I’m going to wrap this up with one last question. Neil: Earlier, you said that Andrew said _Sir Fat Cat McCatterson with a perfectly straight face_. Does Andrew sometimes _not_ have a straight face?”

“Oh. Yeah. I mean, he almost never does, it’s just that people are apparently really blind to it, there’s not a lot of people who notice. And sometimes he actually smiles outright. But when he named our cat, no, he did none of that. He can do an exceptionally good poker face when he wants to.”

“He _smiles_? Andrew—what would it take to get you to smile for us?”

“I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

“Well, sure, that’s why I asked what it would take.”

“I mean, probably you’d have to propose—that’s how Neil did it.”

What?

“I don’t think my spouse would be particularly happy about that,” Gianna says seriously, “but I’ll keep it in mind if I ever need a quick smile.”

“That’s fine by me,” Andrew says, also serious. “I, also, wouldn’t be particularly happy about that.”

Gianna laughs. “Folks, that’s all for Neil and Andrew—and Paige and Natalie—for now. Thanks to all four of you for joining us today; I can’t wait to have you back again! Let’s have a round of applause as we head to a commercial break—and those of you at home, don’t turn the volume down, you’re about to see Neil’s commercial for Skin Deep. Thank you all again!” She leads the applause, the stage lights drop, the cameras cut, and Gianna takes her microphone off and grins at Neil. “You really are my favorite. I should start paying you royalties.”

Neil stands. “Thanks, but we’re pretty much set.” He waves at the other hosts. “Sorry about messing up all your plans for this part of the show,” he says.

“What, are you kidding?” Jennifer says. “This was _way_ better than what we had planned.”

“And you two did really well,” Grant tells the kids. “You kept it interesting, you kept it moving.”

“Thanks,” Paige says. “Also, just so you know—I _did_ watch that press conference, I just wanted to know if you’d look a 14 year old in the eye and tell me what my dad said.”

Grant opens his mouth. Nothing happens for a moment, and then he says—“Well, thanks for letting me know.”

“We gotta go,” Neil says. “Meeting some friends for lunch.”

“Gianna?” Andrew says. “Thanks for the poster, I appreciate it. Also—is that lavender eucalyptus I smell?”

She cackles. “I told Neil I’d hang something interesting behind my head and I’d get some aromatherapy going to keep you appeased. I’m glad it worked.”

They do another round of final goodbyes, make their way out the door, and head for the restaurant.

“Drew. When you said I proposed to you?”

“Yeah?”

“What the _fuck_ were you talking about?”

“Yeah,” Natalie says. “I thought pops said that _you_ proposed to _him_?”

Andrew makes a face. “Yeah, I didn’t know why he told you that—Neil, do you think _I_ proposed to _you_?”

Neil imagines his face twisting into the shape of a question mark. “You—you literally did. Are you sure about that photographic memory of yours? You _literally_ proposed to me.”

“I did _not_.”

“You got rings? You gave me one and said _marry me_?”

“I formalized it,” Andrew acknowledges, “but you’d already proposed to me. _I_ just did the heavy lifting of actually going to get the rings. I considered waiting until you healed up, because I assumed that’s what you were waiting for, but then waiting got boring, so I just got them myself.”

“What—” Neil searches his memory, and finds nothing. “They didn’t give me enough pain meds to make me high enough to _forget_ proposing—”

“Did you _not_?” Andrew says, and Neil realizes he’s no longer annoyed—he’s getting _anxious_.

“Wait. Wait. Okay. Hang on. What—when did I propose? What did I say?”

“You kissed my hand and said _I’m going to die of old age, stay with me until then_ , what is that if not _til death do us part_? What is that if not a _proposal_?”

Neil _does_ distinctly remember that. “I—Drew! That wasn’t a proposal! That—”

“Did you _not_ want to marry me? I thought I was just finishing up what was already done—is _that_ why you were so surprised?”

“I—why are you worried about _me_ not wanting to marry _you_? I said _that_ and you didn’t even answer! You didn’t say anything! You thought I proposed and _didn’t say yes!_ ”

“I thought it was a given! Of course it was a yes, an assumed yes!”

“When have I ever assumed your yes!”

“Never, Neil, I love you so goddamn much—”

“If you two start making out in the middle of the sidewalk and also right in front of us I’m gonna puke,” Paige says plaintively. “I’m gonna puke right on your shoes.”

Neil and Andrew speed back up to their previous walking pace. “Hey, Drew?” Neil says, slipping into Russian.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to die of old age. Stay with me until then?”

“Yes.”

Neil knocks his shoulder against Andrew’s. “Did you think I was being, just, super lazy about picking up the rings?”

“I mean, mostly, I thought you were injured and didn’t have a car. And also, you didn’t know my ring size.”

“You know my ring size?”

“I sat there picking up various sizes and picturing your hand.”

Neil can’t stop grinning. “Why did you offer to buy me an engagement ring?”

“You asked if it was a wedding ring, I thought you were upset I’d skipped a tier. I thought it was a little rude, since you should’ve bought the rings yourself, given you proposed, but, well, I was willing to overlook it.”

“I’m sorry for that breach of etiquette, then.”

“Apology accepted.”

Andrew shoulders his way into the restaurant, and Neil points to their table, where the other Foxes are already waiting. They do their hugs, they do their hellos, they order.

“How was the interview?” Allison asks. “What did you two do while Neil and Gianna were yakking?”

“Mafi-out,” Andrew mutters under his breath. Neil chokes down a laugh.

“We did the interview, too,” Paige says. “It was fun. Neil found out that, actually _he_ proposed to _Andrew_ , not the other way around.”

This statement is met with consternation.

“Did you—not _know_?” Matt asks Neil.

“Did _you_ know?” Neil asks, more confused than ever.

“I mean—I assumed you had?”

“I didn’t, though,” Neil says. “Or, well, apparently I did—”

Allison points at Paige. “Explain.”

Paige explains.

And then she and Natalie fall over themselves to describe the interview, to grill the Foxes on what Gianna had said about Neil’s freshman year, and then Paige has questions about exy, and then about coaching exy, and then about Matt’s job, and then the check comes.

Neil gets up feeling like he’s about to explode. That was _definitely_ a bigger lunch than he should have eaten.

“We’re going to the American Girl store,” Allison says, indicating herself, Dan, and the girls. “The rest of you are going to the Hershey’s store. You have your orders.”

Matt snaps a salute. “I don’t even know what my orders are, but I’m sure I have them.”

“Help Renee,” Allison says. “Don’t help Neil.”

“Got it.”

They march out and split up, headed for their respective destinations with purpose and intent.

“I’m going to get five Reese’s cups,” Andrew says as they head into the store.

“Abso _lutely_ not,” Renee says. “That is _too many_ , Andrew, Kevin will murder me personally if you come back with that many.”

“Kevin never has to know,” Andrew says reasonably. “I can keep a secret.”

“No, Andrew.”

“Five.”

“No. Two.”

Andrew narrows his eyes at her.

She narrows her eyes right back. “Two.”

“Five.”

“Three,” Renee says. She’s taking the same tactic Andrew’s taken, but from the opposite side—start low, negotiate up higher to the more reasonable number.

“Five.”

“Three.”

Neil gives Andrew a look— _just agree_. This isn’t a fight Andrew needs to win.

“Four,” Andrew says.

Renee opens her mouth, sighs, and says: “Okay, but don’t tell Kevin.”

“Okay,” Andrew says happily.

“Well, wait,” Neil says. “I mean, can you even _fit_ four? Don’t forget, we’re going to have the girls’ stuff, too.”

Andrew considers, and then he looks at Neil and nods. And he’s serious. He’s going to fit the extra cup in that suitcase if it kills him.

Neil silences himself. So be it. He’ll throw out some of his own clothes if need be. He can lose a set of pajamas, that’s not the end of the world.

“This was a very easy experience,” Matt says, throwing an arm around Neil’s shoulders. “So, Neil, what’s it like being a dad?”

“It’s pretty cool,” Neil says. “I mean, it would probably suck if we had crappy kids, but we got some good kids, so it’s nice. It’s—weird, to have other people there, though. In our house. Like, it’s _our house_ , you know? And suddenly, it’s not. And I think it’s probably weirder because we didn’t have any time to get _used_ to it. I mean, if you have a baby, then you have a baby in the house—but like, that’s not a fully grown person, it’s a baby. You have time to get used to the person before you’re competing with them for the TV.”

“You could just get another TV,” Matt says.

“Feels like a waste of money, honestly. And, really, it’s not like I _want_ a baby. I assume a baby is way more work.”

“Probably,” Matt agrees sarcastically. “I can only assume that a helpless human being that’s only been in the world a couple weeks is more work than two teenagers.”

“Sure. I just think that if you have a baby, then by the time that baby is 14, you’ve had time to get used to it. Teenagers aren’t _adults_ , they’re not—fully grown.”

“Neither are many adults.”

“This is fair and true. And, like, they’re our kids, I love them, I wouldn’t trade them for the world, it’s not like I’m unhappy with this. I’m just saying it’s a little odd to suddenly have two teenagers living with us. They just have—all this baggage and trauma, and we’re not just their friends, we’re their parents, we’re in charge of helping them through it all without causing them more, and it’s just—there’s a lot of ways to fuck up,” he says, watching Andrew and Renee reappear on the other side of the store by the KitKats. “And not a lot of ways to do it right.”

“Eh, you’ll do fine. I mean, look at Andrew.”

“He wasn’t a kid I had to raise,” Neil says.

“I know, I know, my point is just—you’re not gonna work through their shit for them, but you can give them the space to do it themselves.”

“I know, it just feels like it’s easier to take that space away than it is to make it.”

Matt sighs. Someone squeezes past them. “That’s how we felt about you, mostly.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious. We very much were terrified that we’d accidentally push you back into your shell. But as it turns out, we did not, and guess what, you have _once again_ managed to do something before Kevin—specifically, kids—and that’s pretty much the definition of success.”

“He had a kid before I did.”

“Sure, but you have _two_ kids, they’re in school, you’ve brought them on interviews, you’re going to teach one of them exy… you’ve beaten him to the punch. It’s awesome.”

“ _Beating Kevin_ wasn’t supposed to be my life’s work.”

“Eh,” Matt says as they watch Renee and Andrew head back towards them. “But it’s certainly something. Get anything good?” He asks Renee and Andrew.

Renee displays two bars of dark chocolate. “Gonna bake.”

“Sounds good,” Matt agrees.

“Chocolate strawberries. Chocolate-covered marzipan. Chocolate pineapple. A myriad of possibilities.”

She and Andrew swap ideas, rapid-fire, as they get in line, until the conversation has morphed into actually building things with chocolate, a conversation that Matt is apparently well-equipped to participate in. Neil listens as they suggest ever-more-difficult things—an exy racquet, the Statue of Liberty, a pillow that’s actually soft—and hopes and prays that his kitchen isn’t about to fall pray to chocolate work. Well, not until the season is over, at the very least.

And then it’s back out into the city, for a brisk half-mile walk until they make it to the American Girl store.

They push through the doors, through the hordes of small children and their parents, and find Paige, Natalie, Dan, and Allison all debating Josephina versus Kit.

“Which one?” Paige asks, looking at Neil. “Kit looks like me, but Josephina is really cool.”

“If the only thing you like about Kit is her appearance, go with Josephina.”

“I guess if I wanted a doll that looked like me, I should’ve gone with a create-your-own,” Paige agrees. “MMMmmm _mmm_ can’t wait to have a _doll_.”

“I didn’t realize dolls were so important,” Neil says. “We’d have gotten you some earlier.”

Paige shrugs. “It’s just, like, we don’t _all_ have an Andrew.”

“What?”

“Soft and cuddly and huggable,” she explains, much to the joy of the group at large and to Andrew’s consternation. “Like, you basically _have_ a doll, you just never _think_ about it like that.”

“Well, no, because he’s a person.”

“Sure, I mean, yeah, but like, look. Dolls have cool hair we can play with—Andrew has hair you can play with. Dolls have little hands—you hold Andrew’s hands. I can fall asleep hugging a doll—you fall asleep with Andrew literally on top of you. I can dress up dolls—Andrew plays dress-up with you. See? Dolls are replacement humans.”

“What the—” Renee slaps a hand over Neil’s mouth before he can finish that sentence, giving him a meaningful glance as she waves her free hand at the many children surrounding them.

"Anyway, if we're ready?" Dan suggests, waving a hand towards the cash register. The group unanimously decides that yes, they are in fact ready, and they head that way.

Neil snags Allison’s arm, pulling her back from the group. “Look. I won’t try to pay for the dolls, if that’s not what you’re looking for—”

“It’s not.”

“But I know their hotel room and flights were on your card, and I know they ordered room service. Send me the bill?”

“Neil Josten, do you think I don’t know that?”

“I’m sure you do, but—”

“Glad we had this talk, Neil.”

“I can’t ask you to spend shitloads of money—”

“You didn’t, so that’s all well and good.”

“At least let me _split_ it?”

“When Renee and I move down to South Carolina, you can take us to the most expensive restaurant you know of. Deal?”

“That seems—”

“Deal,” she says happily. “It’s a double date.”

And then she heads towards the rest of the group, catching up with the rest of them in line.

Neil gives up and follows her, joining everyone else. Dan wraps an arm around his waist, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. Neil makes a note of the way Paige’s eyes are roaming the store, catching on pretty clothes, pretty things, luxurious things, and reaches over and nudges Andrew. Andrew flicks a finger at Neil—he sees it, too, and he’ll remember which things Paige is sticking on. Natalie, Neil notes, is not quite as fixated on the rest of the store; she keeps looking down at her doll, Kaya. Well, Neil can’t exactly get her 18 Kayas for Christmas, but at least Paige will be easy.

Allison pays; Dan venmos her half the price within seconds of Allison swiping her card. Neil vows to get them large Christmas presents, too.

They walk Allison and Renee to the closest subway entrance.

“Will you be—I mean, will you be all right, moving from the middle of the city to South Carolina?” Neil asks.

Allison gives him one delicately arched eyebrow. “I will be all right, _anywhere_ I am.”

Neil gives her two less-delicately arched eyebrows. “That is meaningless.”

“This has been fun,” Renee elaborates, “but I’m happy to exist on a street where I can stop walking without completely blocking traffic.”

“And it’s hard to get beauty sleep with _this_ right outside my window,” Allison adds. “So, yes, it’ll be all right. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t make myself miserable on your account.”

Neil grins at her. “Good. I’d hate that.”

Andrew hugs Renee, Renee and Allison jog down into the subway, and then the remainder of the group heads to a parking garage down the block, where Matt and Dan left their car.

“Allison and Renee seem like a really sweet couple,” Natalie muses as Matt points the car towards the hotel.

Neil snickers. “You’ve never seen one of their arm-wrestling competitions.”

“Remember that time we walked in on them?” Dan asks. “They’d started out arm wrestling, and ended with Allison putting Renne in a headlock?”

“Most of what I remember was Renee then jabbing Allison in the stomach so hard she actually let go,” Matt says.

“A lot of people forget that, sure, Al is extremely feminine and Renee is adorable, but they both love—and play, or played—one of the most violent sports around. And Renee might not play it anymore, but she was Andrew’s sparring partner, when they were in college, and still is, any time they’re around each other for more than a week.”

“Oh. So, like, reverse Neil and Andrew.”

“Sorta,” Matt agrees. “Adorable on the outside, down-and-dirty on the inside.”

They make it to the hotel, grab their luggage, and get back in the car—the airport is twenty minutes out of the way for Matt and Dan, headed home.

Neil watches as the girls start to fade—it’s been a tough couple days. Paige asks a couple questions about what they pass on the way to the airport, but she falls silent. Natalie puts her head on Paige’s shoulder, and Neil fights the urge to wake them up; it’s not like they need to be alert, in the car, it’s not like Neil needs to keep track of their sleep schedule. It’s not like they need to get used to working through exhaustion. So he cajoles Dan into talking about the team she coaches for the rest of the drive.

When they make it to the airport, they pull their luggage to the inside of the sidewalk and pack the dolls into Neil’s bag along with the girls’ clothes; Neil’s clothes end up squashed into the girls’ carry-ons, which seems a little unnecessary to Neil—why couldn’t they have just put their own clothes in their own bags?—but he’s not going to argue. Andrew takes a deep breath and fits his Reese’s cups in his bag, which is certainly unhappy about it, but closes nonetheless.

The girls slog through the airport, through security, and fall into chairs, playing games on their phones. Neil, again, has to resist the impulse to put them on their guard—he must be getting tired; it’s getting harder and harder to rein in the impulse to whip them into shape, to shove survival skills into their brains. So Neil looks at Andrew instead. Andrew doesn’t look back—he’s armoring himself, Neil knows, for the flight ahead—but he also doesn’t argue. He lets Neil read to him on the flight home; Paige and Natalie fall asleep as soon as the plane starts moving, and don’t wake up until the plane goes into descent, when Neil puts _Macbeth_ away and Andrew grabs his hand.

“Want me to drive?” Neil asks as they head for the car, luggage in tow.

Andrew shakes his head, but he looks exhausted, so Neil stays awake the whole ride home, pointing out random shit on the way home—trees with tops that look like fans, bushes that poke out onto the road, cars with personalized license plates, the stars as they pop out of the sky.

They make it home safe.

Neil is, as he so often is, thrilled and shocked to see his house, untouched and still standing, perfectly empty except for the cats, who greet them at the door.

“Can we leave laundry until tomorrow?” Paige asks, yawning. “We’ll do it as soon as we wake up, we swear.”

“It can wait until tomorrow night, even,” Neil agrees. “But—hang on—help me get the dolls out of their packaging?”

“Oh yeah,” Paige says, mustering a grin.

It takes two pairs of scissors and a steak knife, but they get the dolls open. Paige hugs hers, lets out a happy sigh, hugs Neil and Andrew, and heads up to bed. Natalie tucks her doll into the crook of her arm, gives Neil and Andrew one-armed hugs, and follows Paige.

“We could stay up,” Andrew suggests. “Watch TV.”

Neil shakes his head. “You’re exhausted, and so am I.”

Andrew nods. “This is fair.”

So Andrew feeds the cats while Neil scoops their litter box, and then Andrew joins Neil in the bathroom.

Neil hears the sink turn off in the other bathroom—the girls must be done getting ready for bed. Sir and King slip into Neil and Andrew’s bedroom for the night, and Andrew shuts the door behind them.

Neil falls into bed, lets out an _oof_ as Andrew falls on top of him, and kisses Andrew’s forehead.

“We made it,” he says quietly. “One more game to go, and then we’ve made it through another season.”

“One more to go,” Andrew agrees.

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Thank you for being my personal doll."

"I hate you."

Neil snickers, kisses Andrew's forehead, squeezes Andrew tight, and closes his eyes.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this one is like... half porn. the whole first half is porn. 
> 
> after that they watch some youtube videos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i went and looked up Neil's birthday and... he was born in 1988... why did i think this series was set in the 90s??? would've explained why he was so short. turns out he's actually 6 years old. life is hard when you're a little boy playing exy. anyway mostly what this means is that based on how old I'm saying they are, this fic is set in like 2017??? so 1) nice to know my cultural references are actually probably reasonably spot on and 2) the reason they don't talk about politics is because of the law of equivalent exchange: creating a whole new sport fueled by the yakuza made politics obsolete. anyway this is a long way of saying that for the first time in 250k i looked something up and it did in fact rock my whole worldview
> 
> also, I'm realizing that my decision to make the exy season spring-fall instead of in line with the school year fucks up the whole entire crooked kind timeline. pretend that instead of a christmas party they were at. like. a mid-season party instead or some shit. look i did not plan ahead

Neil wakes up, warm and safe, absolutely comfortable.

Andrew is half on top of him, breathing softly, a soothing presence. Neil isn’t tired enough to fall back asleep. He’s also not antsy enough to move. He’s—content. Perfectly content. He wants nothing, needs nothing, nothing but what he’s already got. Andrew is here; Neil is too lazy to check, but he assumes his kids are where they’re intended to be. Doors are locked. Windows are closed. Neil closes his eyes again—not to fall asleep, but to be more aware of the weight of Andrew’s arm across his stomach, Andrew’s leg across his thigh, Andrew’s chest against his back.

Neil exists like that, for a little while. Not drifting; not awake. Surrounded by Andrew, held by Andrew, loved by Andrew, warm and safe and whole.

And then Andrew shifts, removes his leg.

Neil considers the risks. The rewards. How deeply is Andrew sleeping, right now? How likely to wake up? Neil considers his options.

The potential rewards outweigh the risks.

Neil turns, slowly, careful not to roll away—if Andrew loses contact with Neil, he _will_ wake up, and it’ll all be over. Halfway through, Neil bumps Andrew’s leg, and he freezes—perfectly still, barely breathing. Has he blown it?

Andrew’s breath doesn’t so much as hitch.

Neil resumes his careful turn, annoyed at how his shirt is twisting around him, struggling with it—he can’t straighten it out without dislodging Andrew’s arm, but he also can’t breathe with it twisted around him like that. He accomplishes the untwisting with care, and completes the turn, and finds himself face to face with Andrew, and he actually _does_ stop breathing, because Andrew is beautiful.

Andrew's face is rarely so relaxed, so absolutely calm, so smooth. His hair falls over his forehead, backlit by the weak sunlight peeking through their curtains. His face is so endlessly familiar, and perfect in that familiarity, and it doesn’t matter, because Neil can’t stop staring at it, doesn’t want to miss a moment of its existence, doesn’t want to miss even the most minimal change. Andrew is so beautiful it makes Neil want to yell. His brain has short-circuited. He can’t think thoughts that aren’t _beautiful—so, so beautiful—_

And _now_ Neil has everything he wants. He gets to watch Andrew sleep; what else is there?

He also gets to see the moment when Andrew wakes up—the way he scrunches his nose up, the way his eyebrow twitches, the tiny noise he makes as he comes around. Gets to watch his eyelashes flutter open.

Andrew stares at Neil, eyes flicking back and forth, unguarded, wide open, and—Neil can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but stare right back, because all that’s in Andrew’s eyes is love, nothing behind it, nothing hiding it, and Neil experiences a level of gratitude he never realized was possible. He, Neil Josten, has, somehow, _earned_ this. Has become worthy of it. It would be—he can’t discredit Andrew by assuming Andrew would bequeath this to just _anyone_.

“You are so pretty,” Neil murmurs. “You’re so beautiful. I love you so much. How did I find you? Why do you decide to wake up next to _me_ every day? Drew, Andrew Joseph Minyard, light and love of my life, I would walk through fire and ice for you, you could set me ten trials Hercules style and I’d do them, and you just—you don’t ask me to do _anything_ , you just let me _stay_. I would go though hell to get to you, if that’s what it took, and instead all I have to do is _wake up_. I could stare at you forever, and you’d still be worth looking at, and you’d still be all I want to see, and all that would happen is I’d fall more and more in love with you. And I know that’s true, because all I do all day is fall in love with you, again and again—”

“I think that’s called _drowning_ ,” Andrew says, but there’s a smile hovering around his lips and a softness around his eyes that Neil would die for and kill for.

“Then tie a rock around my waist and drop me in the ocean,” Neil says. “I’d drown forever, for you.”

“When did you get all romantic?”

“I think just being around you for more than a day and a half did that to me.”

Andrew closes his eyes, huffs something like a laugh, and opens his eyes again, and still Neil sees nothing but love, and if this is what drowning feels like, maybe he doesn’t mind.

Andrew pushes away, and for once, Neil doesn’t mind the absence of contact. There’s no sense of loss. Andrew is right there; Andrew is as close to Neil as it is possible to be, albeit in a less tangible sense. Neil has no fear that something might come between them, that Andrew might not come back—they’re in a closed system. In their own space. Their room, their bed, their few cubic feet of oxygen. Neil has an odd feeling that the yakuza and the Italian mafia could band together to batter the bedroom door down, and would find themselves incapable of it.

Andrew returns with breath mints, and places one in Neil’s mouth, and Neil runs a hand through Andrew’s hair, pushes it back from his forehead, runs his fingers down Andrew’s neck to make him shiver, across Andrew’s shoulder, down his arm, briefly tangles Andrew’s fingers with his own. Neil lifts Andrew’s hand, kisses his palm, his scars. Andrew takes his hand back, grabs Neil’s hip, and rolls him, putting Neil on top of Andrew, which Neil considers to be an extremely advantageous position, because instead of having to reach for Andrew’s lips, Neil can just let gravity do the work.

With tiny noises of encouragement from Andrew, Neil lets his hands roam. He keeps one hand up by Andrew’s face—he can’t help it, loves the silk of Andrew’s hair, the way Andrew loses his breath when Neil ghosts his nails over Andrew’s throat. Neil lets his other hand do what it wants, though—tripping down Andrew’s arm, over his ribs, down to his hip, back to Andrew’s wrist to slide over the scars there, to reassure himself that there are no new ones. Neil had been nervous about that, when Andrew had first started falling apart. He’d known better than to try and talk to Andrew about it—no sense in yelling about the symptom when the problem was out in the open, three elephants in the room, and Neil was ready to leave that to Bee—but nonetheless, whenever he’d gotten the opportunity to check, to check without alerting Andrew, he had. Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand, and then lets go, letting Andrew put that hand on Neil's face, where Neil can lean into it.

“Can I—” Neil says, hand on the hem of Andrew’s shirt, and Andrew looks up at him with pupils blown wide and lips parted, and nods, and Neil ducks his head, presses his lips to Andrew’s neck, slides his hand up Andrew’s shirt, traces Andrew’s ribs. It’s a tight squeeze—Andrew’s shirt is trapped in place between his and Neil’s bodies—but the shirt is loose. Neil makes it work, walks his fingertips over Andrew’s skin, nips at Andrew’s pulse point, ears straining for every noise Andrew makes, and Neil is lightheaded, but he doesn’t know why—from the kisses, probably, or maybe the feeling of Andrew’s skin, or maybe the way Andrew gasps, or maybe the way Andrew’s hips are twitching, almost involuntarily, just barely brought back under control at the last second, or maybe it’s the way Andrew’s fingers are sliding along the top of Neil’s shorts, settling in the dip of Neil’s spine, a move Neil feels in the pit of his stomach.

Neil drags his hand back down to curve around Andrew’s hip, almost losing it when Andrew arches up against him. “I just want you,” he whispers into Andrew’s ear. “You, you, nothing but you, my Andrew, my love—” Neil smiles as Andrew’s hips twist, as Andrew’s fingernails scrape across Neil’s back—“if we live forever, I’ll be happy as long as you’re with me, my Drew, my Andrew—” Neil pauses for a moment, because Andrew makes a noise that makes Neil’s lungs nonfunctional, because Neil is _desperately_ turned on and he can’t tell whether he or Andrew is _more_ turned on and that, too, is a turn-on, so Neil makes the best of this moment wherein he can neither breathe nor think and sets his teeth against Andrew’s throat. Despite accusations to the contrary, Neil doesn’t have a neck fetish—he has a fetish for anything at all that will make Andrew grab at Neil’s hair, that will make Andrew push up against Neil, anything, whatever it takes. Neil steals the opportunity to push himself up onto one knee, giving Andrew more room, more space, and Andrew takes it, arching his back, and Neil slides his hand up Andrew’s back, up his spine, and watches Andrew’s eyelashes flutter half-shut as he moans.

“I love that,” Neil tells him, quiet and close. “I love that I can make you feel like this, I love that you let me, I love that you like it, I love you, I love you, I love you, my Drew, Drew—”

Andrew drags his face around and pulls him down for a kiss.

Neil almost forgets what he’s doing.

Almost.

But not quite.

His free hand, the one that isn’t busy supporting his weight, skirts the waistband of Andrew’s pants. Neil feels an odd thrill—this was forbidden for so long—but now Andrew breaks away, gasping, so lovely Neil can’t handle it, and then Andrew says—

“Please, Neil—Neil— _fuck_ —”

“What?” Neil asks, halfway to a panic. “What?”

Andrew rolls his eyes, which might mean something if he didn’t look so far gone. “Neil, if you don’t jerk me off, I’m going to _die_.”

Neil manages half a laugh in relief, kisses Andrew’s nose, laughs quietly when Andrew scrunches it up, and stretches over to retrieve the lube. And then Andrew slides a hand all the way up Neil’s shirt to his chest, and Neil jumps—

“Payback,” Andrew says, satisfied. Neil can’t tell if Andrew is entirely unaware of how hot Neil’s skin is, or too aware, but Andrew seems disinclined to take his hand away, or make things at all easier for Neil.

And then Andrew moves his hand, and Neil hisses, and Neil _knows_ Andrew knows what he’s doing.

“Why ask, if you’re just gonna make this hard for me?” Neil grumbles under his breath.

“It already _is_ hard,” Andrew says, raising one eyebrow.

It takes Neil a second, but he gets it eventually. “Was that _necessary?_ ”

Andrew smiles, pulls Neil down for a kiss.

“Maybe you don’t deserve this,” Neil snarks against Andrew’s lips. “For making bad puns.”

Andrew shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth is still tipped upwards. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

Neil sees his chance. “Actually, I think _you’re_ the pain in _my_ ass,” he says, sliding his fingers across Andrew’s stomach. He leans down to bury his laughter in Andrew’s shoulder as Andrew rolls his eyes in a gesture of extremely real annoyance, gasps, and grabs at Neil as Neil moves his hand down, down, to the waistband of Andrew's shorts.

“If I didn’t love you so much I’d hate you,” Andrew says.

Neil, snickering, kisses his neck, his cheek, his nose. “So, wait, if you loved me any less you’d hate me?” Neil works his fingers under the waistband of Andrew’s pants—by his hip, though. The top of his thigh. Not the inside. “Or if you didn’t love me, at _all_ , you’d hate me?”

“Do you want to have a conversation _now_?” Andrew asks.

Neil can’t help but grin. Andrew is trying so _hard_ to sound annoyed. _So_ hard. But they’re trying to stay quiet—there’s people in the house—and Andrew is breathless, absolutely lost, and Neil revels in it. He takes his hand back, tracks a line up Andrew’s arm. “Payback. Remember when you asked me if I’d be okay with you fingering me and then we had to stop to have a lengthy conversation?”

“That was _necessary_ —oh _fuck_ , Neil—”

Neil grins against Andrew’s neck. “Every time,” he says slowly, letting his lips move against sensitive skin. “This really works every time, huh.”

“ _Neil_.”

“Yes?”

“N—” Andrew gasps as Neil cups him through his pants. “ _Sadist_.”

“Hey, you never answered my question.”

“Love and hate can coexist, I think,” Andrew says after a second.

“In equal measure?”

“ _Yes_.”

“How much do you love me, Andrew?”

“You know when you’re in the middle of the ocean, and all you— _fuck_ , Neil—”

Neil slides his hand back down Andrew’s pants. “Go on.”

Andrew tightens his hold on Neil’s hair. “And all you see is water, and you can’t even… can’t—Neil—”

Neil kisses his cheek. “I’m listening.”

“Are you— _slowing down_?”

“When you go for a run, you’re supposed to be going slow enough to speak a full sentence without running out of breath,” Neil explains patiently. “You seem to be having trouble with that.”

“I—I hate— _Neil_ —”

Neil kisses him. Neil may, generally, have a horizontal line for a learning curve, but when it comes to kissing, he had a very patient and involved teacher. “You still haven’t finished your sentence,” he whispers after a minute.

“And you can’t even begin—begin to measure how much water there is?” Andrew continues, rushing through it. “That’s how much. That’s how much I love you, you bastard _ah—_ ”

“Bastardah?” Neil asks, but he’s exhausted his store of cruelty for the day. He won’t make Andrew answer that one. Instead, he kisses the corner of Andrew’s mouth, kisses his cheek, his nose, his temple, his jaw, his throat. It’s quiet, so quiet now that Neil has shut up, so insistently quiet that even the sound of Andrew’s breath doesn’t seem to be making it far. Neil watches Andrew—not ostentatiously, not blatantly, Neil doesn’t want to disturb him, but Neil has always liked watching Andrew climax, and he likes it more and more as he has more of a hand in the matter. And today—this is a good day. Not just an _okay_ day, not just a _not bad_ day—Andrew is having a good day, or at least a good morning, and as he turns his face to the side, shuddering, he looks like an angel, absolutely wrecked, like a god, and Neil can’t believe it, can’t understand it—why does _he_ get to see this? Why does _he_ get to do this? How did _he_ earn this privilege? Andrew is still holding onto Neil, even after Neil takes his hand back, still holding Neil in place, so Neil doesn’t bother trying to pull away. Instead, he kisses Andrew’s cheek, temple, jaw, listening to his breathless panting, waiting until Andrew has his shit together enough to turn towards Neil so Neil can get to his mouth.

“Do you love me?” Andrew murmurs, when Neil pulls back.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“More than you love me,” Neil says, voice hushed. Still silent.

“Impossible.”

“ _Impossible_ just means _I’m possible_. I’m love you—” Neil sighs as he realizes what he’s just said.

Well. Fuck it. Time to double down. “I’m love you more than… you’m… love me.”

“You know, I think that just became true,” Andrew says, giving a look that tells Neil that he’s starting to come down from his post-orgasm high. “Based on what you just said, I think it just became true.”

“It’s early,” Neil protests.

Andrew blinks lazily at him, cat-like, loving, lightly annoyed due to grammatical causes. “You know, if you take your shirt off, you can just wipe your hand on that,” he suggests. “Also, _time of day_ is no excuse for the words that just came out of your mouth.”

“You just wanna see me shirtless,” Neil grumbles, but that’s not stopping him from following the suggestion, which is a reasonably good one. He won’t deign to answer that second bit, though.

“Mmhmm,” Andrew agrees, and when Neil’s shirt is out of the way he looks down at Andrew and forgets how to think for a minute, because Andrew is looking at him with a blatant appreciation that Neil doesn’t really know what to do with, and Andrew is so, so beautiful, and Neil doesn’t know how to handle this, any of this, it’s been years and still Neil has no idea what to do with this gift, this honor, because Andrew is everything Neil has ever wanted, and the fact that Andrew hasn’t tossed Neil out—has, actually, repeatedly invited Neil in, opened up to him, allowed Neil to live inside Andrew’s heart—Neil doesn’t know what to do with that. And the way Andrew is looking at him makes it hard to think long enough to figure it out.

“Hey, Neil?” Andrew says softly, reaching up to cup Neil’s face.

“Yeah?”

“I love you. So much.”

“Andrew,” Neil whispers, and it’s not a sentence, he’s not saying anything, he just wanted to say it.

“I love how you say my name,” Andrew says, the corners of his mouth tilting up in a way that is slowly becoming more and more familiar to Neil. Neil loves that this is something he can be familiar with. “Do you know that that’s why you’re the only person allowed to call me _Drew_? You’re the only person I trust with my name. I love the way you look at me, and the way you look at our house, and the way you look at fucking exy stadiums, and the way you look at your friends, and the way you look when I—” Andrew slides his hand down, down Neil’s arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “I love you like trees love the wind, like worms love grass—”

“Feeling very poetic today,” Neil murmurs. He doesn’t know why he’s commenting on it. He’s certainly not trying to put a stop to this.

“I woke up and the first thing I saw was your face, what else was I supposed to do? You’ve sat here for years while the waters built up, and up, and up, and you never tried to open the floodgates, you never tried to bring them down, Neil, I love you so much, if you took all the sand out of all the world’s beaches and replaced it with the love I have for you I’d still have enough left to myself to make my heart beat fast when I—” he props himself up on one elbow, reaching up, and Neil meets him there, feeling like nothing, like air, like light, and the next thing he knows is Andrew’s hand, waking up Neil’s skin, just in case Neil has forgotten where he is and what he’s doing, and when Neil gasps, arms on the verge of giving out just because his muscles have stopped bothering to function, Andrew rolls Neil off of him and over and pushes him into the bed. Andrew’s fingers slide up Neil’s side, tracing scars and ribs, grazing a nipple, making Neil jump, press up against Andrew, searching for more contact.

Andrew removes his hand, and waggles his fingers in front of Neil’s face. “Thoughts?”

Neil has never before in his life switched moods so fast. “ _That’s_ how you ask?”

Andrew ducks his head, pressing his face into Neil’s shoulder. Neil can feel his lips twitching upwards.

“No, you’re sitting here talking about the ocean and the sand and how much you love me and how your heart flutters when you see me, and then you can’t even find a way to ask if I want you to finger me? And, I mean, yeah, the answer is a pretty enthusiastic yes, but I mean, maybe it’s a no until you can ask me using your grown-up words.”

“What counts as grown-up words?” Andrew mumbles next to Neil’s ear. “Ass? Is ass a grown-up word?”

Neil muffles a snort. “I think that’s one of them, yeah. Do we have a grown-up-word compendium around anywhere? A grown-up lexicon? I think _dick_ is another one.”

“You _think_? You’re asking _me_ to use _my_ grown-up words and _you_ don’t even _know_ them? Mr. _I’m Love You More than You’m Love Me_ doesn’t know how to speak grown-up?”

“I understand more than I can speak.”

“See, I always thought you were the other way around—better with your mouth than your brain.”

“Well, one day, maybe you’ll let _me_ blow _you_ , and then we’ll fucking find out, won’t we?”

“Is that a challenge?”

“No, and, actually, I take it back. Actually, I take back my take back. The _offer_ is on the table. The _challenge_ is not.”

Andrew kisses right under Neil’s ear, and Neil exhales slowly, maintaining control, he has self control. “Would you like me to finger you, darling?”

“I would like that very much, my love,” Neil agrees, a little breathlessly.

“Then I’ll be right back.”

Neil follows him, albeit reluctantly. “We should’ve planned ahead. We could’ve had the towel _ready_ instead of making me use my shirt.”

“You could’ve just stayed there, I didn't mean to make you get up.”

“I’d have to get up to put the towel down, and anyway, I want to wash my hand.”

“Yeah, that way when you grab my hair you don’t get cum in it.”

“ _That’s_ thinking ahead.”

“I love your forethought.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek. Andrew wipes down his stomach and takes his shirt off, which is extremely nice. They both wash their hands. Andrew finds the condoms. Neil takes Andrew’s hand and leads him back into the bedroom, trying to pull his pants off one-handed and without accidentally kicking Andrew, who seems perfectly content to let Neil struggle. Neil glances at him, ready to rag on him for it, but Andrew still looks so perfectly peaceful, so utterly calm, he can’t. The amusement is annoying, but Neil will tolerate that for the rest of it.

And then, once Neil’s pants are off, Andrew kisses Neil’s hand, and then _lets it go_ to put the towel down.

“Couldn’t have done that ten seconds ago?” Neil asks. Quietly. There are other people in the house. He needs to remember that.

Andrew gives Neil a look of pure mischief. “It was fun.”

“Watching me struggle?”

“Yup.”

“No love. No love for your poor, suffering husband.”

“Much love for him. Also, much love for watching him struggle to pull his pants down.”

“I make myself vulnerable, and this is what I get?”

Andrew turns and pulls Neil into a kiss so good Neil forgets what he was complaining about, and then he tugs Neil onto the bed.

Neil hesitates for a second.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asks.

“Last time,” Neil says slowly, “I believe I was _extremely_ loud.”

Andrew’s eyebrows fly up in understanding. “You very much _were_.”

Neil purses his lips for a second, and then shrugs. “You’ll have to keep me quiet, then.”

It’s Andrew’s turn to hesitate.

“What’s wrong?”

“I—I don’t think I’m tall enough for that.”

Neil suppresses a laugh so hard he chokes on it, pressing his face into Andrew’s shoulder.

“It’s not funny,” Andrew says. “I think this qualifies as a disability.”

“There are aids for that, right? Maybe—like—” Neil waggles his fingers. “Like, skeleton fingers you can attach to your own fingers? To make them long enough to finger me and kiss me at the same time?”

“Ske—Neil, _skeleton fingers_? Do you want to be fingered by a _skeleton_? Neil, do you have the _weirdest_ necro kink in the _world_?”

“First off,” Neil says, as soon as he’s gotten his laughter under control, “I can’t imagine that that’s the _weirdest_. Second of all, no, but the idea of _rubber_ fingers is _worse_.”

“Neil, that’s just called a dildo. I mean, they’re not usually jointed, but what you’ve just described is basically a dildo—”

“I—I didn’t—I didn’t think about that, I just thought about like rubber masks, like face masks, but as fingers—”

“So your alternative was _skeleton fingers?_ You’re not just looking for boners, you’re looking for _bones_?”

Neil puts his face back on Andrew’s chest for a second, while he does his level best not to wake the whole fucking neighborhood. “Like, plastic ones, not _bones_ —”

“You want _plastic fingers in your ass_?”

“ _God—_ I mean—no, but—can you just finger me?”

“You’re barely even hard! Which is kind of a relief, I’d hate to think you were turned on by plastic skeleton fingers—”

Neil plants kisses down Andrew’s nose. “Only your fingers, I promise. I could get hard again. If encouraged.”

“If you make _any noise_ capable of traveling outside these four walls, we have to abandon this place, get new names, and move to New Zealand.”

“That’s fine,” Neil agrees. “I’ve got a pillow.”

“Don’t smother yourself.”

“Gotta find a way around this,” Neil grumbles, choosing a pillow. “Wanna kiss you.” He’ll work on this problem. His contemplates the idea of Andrew kissing him while inside him, and then his brain fills in the obvious method by which this could be accomplished—

“I haven’t even touched you,” Andrew says, surprised.

Neil flushes so deep he must look like he’s caught fire.

“What?” Andrew asks, drawing a nail up the length of Neil’s cock. Neil shudders and puts his face in the pillow, but Andrew doesn’t stop, scraping his nails down Neil’s thigh, and then, unexpected, the warmth of Andrew’s breath on Neil’s ear as he whispers: “ _Payback_.”

Well, if there’s anything more guaranteed to get Neil to talk—“Well, you could be inside me and also kiss me at the same time if you used your dick instead of your fingers,” he says.

Instant regret. “This is _not_ a challenge. It’s not—it’s not even—you don’t even have to think about it—”

Andrew shrugs. He pokes Neil’s dick. “I mean. I can already see the results. But I _will_ note that you’re raising a lot of ideas, this morning.”

It must be a _very_ good day. “I mean, I found out recently that we’ve both been onboard with you fingering me for a while now, and were just tiptoeing around it, so—I'm just putting stuff on the table. You don’t have to look at the table. But if you feel like browsing—there’s shit there.”

Andrew flattens his hand against Neil’s stomach. “I see,” he says thoughtfully. “I’m going to put my mouth on your dick now, though.”

Before he can push Neil down, Neil pulls him in for a kiss. When Neil pulls back, he’s relieved to find that Andrew’s good mood seems unaltered—he’d hate to have wrecked it for no reason. Andrew pushes Neil back, presses him into the bed, follows him down—possibly just an excuse to reach forward and grab the lube—Neil doesn’t care much, though, because it gives him an excuse to kiss Andrew a little longer—and then, after kissing Neil on the forehead, Andrew pulls away, pulls down, slow, so slow, so slow that by the time Andrew made it to Neil’s dick Neil is losing his mind—“You _like_ this,” he gasps, trying to maintain some composure, trying not to pull on Andrew’s hair.

“Mmhmm,” Andrew hums, lips against the tip of Neil’s dick, and then his head slides down and Neil gives up on the pillow and just sticks his own hand in his mouth.

This time around, when he feels Andrew’s fingers, it’s not a surprise—it’s expected, if not yet familiar.

Andrew pulls back a little, kisses Neil’s hip, and murmurs—“The pillow, Neil.”

Neil grabs the pillow and presses it over his face.

“Don’t smother yourself,” Andrew says again, and he’s _laughing_ at Neil, Neil can _hear_ it, and then Andrew’s fingers _move_ and Neil doesn’t care anymore, he’s biting the pillow, legs wrapped around Andrew’s shoulders, and then he has to remove the pillow to breathe, because this would be the stupidest way to die, but Andrew doesn’t seem nearly as invested in Neil’s silence as Neil himself is.

Neil has never suffered like this in his life.

Eventually, though, the torture ends, his head twisted sideways to push his face into the pillow, aware of nothing but what he can feel, knowing nothing but that he has to stay quiet.

He lets Andrew’s hair go, hand fluttering uselessly against the sheets instead, hearing the sound of latex being pulled off fingers, slapping into the garbage can. He looks over in time to see Andrew take another mint before coming back to Neil.

“Are you okay?” Neil murmurs.

Andrew nods, still peaceful, still happy, still having a good day. “And you?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, grinning, tugging Andrew closer.

“Wanna kiss me?” Andrew says. It sounds like Andrew was intending to mock Neil, but if so, he failed miserably.

“Yeah,” Neil says, pulling Andrew on top of him, wrapping his arms around Andrew’s shoulders.

Neil very nearly just goes back to sleep, after a few minutes. Why not? It’s a Sunday, they’ve got nothing to do, nowhere to go. Neil is reasonably certain that his body contains no bones, so it’s not like he can stand up; why try? 

“We should get up,” Andrew murmurs.

“It’s the perfect time to take a nap,” Neil counters.

“It’s—it’s 9:30 in the morning.”

“The nightingale, not the lark. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.”

“It was the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale.”

“Exactly. Herald of the morn. It’s not _really_ morning yet. _Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops_. Dawn, and only just barely.”

“Neil, love, it’s time to get up.”

“And do what?”

“Go lie on the couch and take a nap.”

Neil considers this.

It seems silly to move so far, just to do what they’re already doing, on a much smaller surface. But he looks at Andrew, and Andrew looks so happy—Neil can’t _argue_ with him. “It is, it is. It is the lark that sings so out of tune. You’ll need to move, if you want me to get up.”

“I don’t remember _that_ line from _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” Andrew muses, but he shifts to kiss Neil’s cheek and then rolls off the bed. He offers Neil a hand.

They head to the bathroom. Brush their teeth, wash their face, behave like adults, except when Andrew flicks water at Neil and Neil splashes him in retaliation. There’s only so much Neil can be expected to do. They get dressed, like adults who have a whole day of existence to deal with. And then Neil follows Andrew as he wanders over to Andrunior, turns him a quarter turn, allowing him to catch the light at a different angle, and Neil can’t help it, he’s sure Andrew doesn’t intend to stand there long, but he rests his chin on Andrew’s shoulder, wraps his arms around Andrew’s waist. “How’s our son?”

“Doing all right, I think,” Andrew decides, pinching a leaf.

“Does he need to be watered?”

“He doesn’t get watered until he’s been here for a month, and then—well, it’s winter, so pretty rarely after that, too.”

“ _Extremely_ low-maintenance.”

“ _Nothing_ like a baby, thank god.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s neck.

“We just _had_ sex, are you looking for more?” Andrew asks, apparently more amused than annoyed.

“I’m not,” Neil says.

“And the neck kisses are just…?”

“Can’t I kiss you? Does it have to be sexual? Can’t I just—want to touch your skin? It’s my goal to kiss you a whole bunch, not spend every conceivable moment having sex.” Neil kisses Andrew’s shoulder. “But I’ll stop.”

After a second, Andrew hums, and puts a hand on Neil’s face.

Neil closes his eyes.

And then he sniffs.

When he lifts his head, Andrew is frowning—he smells it, too.

Neil takes a second to mourn the Andrew of this morning, takes a second to hope he comes back, and takes a second to love this new worried Andrew, and then gets back to the problem at hand—the fact that it smells like coffee.

“Who the fuck is in our house and making coffee?” Andrew mutters. “I didn’t hear the girls get up.”

“Me neither.”

Neil flicks through several options—Wymack? Kevin? Abby? None of these seem likely. Browning? Maybe.

Andrew taps Neil’s hand, and Neil lets go of him. Andrew heads to his bedside table, grabs knives, hands one to Neil.

“Probably, if whoever it is is making coffee, they’re not a threat,” Neil suggests.

“I don’t trust like that,” Andrew mutters. “I can see the headlines now. _Andrew Minyard blows up house with family inside. On an unrelated note, Ichirou Moriyama has expensive taste in coffee._ ”

Neil shrugs; he can’t argue with that. He leads the way out of their room, padding softly on the carpet, silent. Andrew taps him on the shoulder and points at the girls’ bedroom door—Neil shakes his head no, don’t wake them up—if it’s someone friendly, there’s no reason to wake the kids, and if it’s someone unfriendly, Neil doesn’t want them in the way. He doesn’t trust Paige to stay where he tells her, and if Paige moves so will Natalie. May as well let them sleep.

They tiptoe down the stairs, avoiding the creaky board, perfectly silent, and then Neil peeks around the wall and—

Pulls backward at top speed, nearly headbutting Andrew’s nose, trying desperately not to laugh. He waves Andrew forward, and quietly, carefully, they lean out together.

How Neil and Andrew had missed it, Neil will never know, but the girls are awake, dressed, and downstairs. Natalie is hand-whisking something—or was; they seem to have taken a break to do an odd little dance. Neil hears no music, and they’re not wearing headphones, but they also don’t seem to be doing anything particularly planned—every couple seconds, one of them will change the wiggly move they’re doing, and the other one will pick it up. They’re barely looking at each other. And then, as one, on no cue that Neil can see, they stop. Paige resumes putting bacon on a tray; Natalie picks up the whisk. They glance at each other and smother giggles.

“Are they ever gonna wake up?” Natalie whispers. “I haven’t heard _anything_.”

Neil ducks back behind the wall, dragging Andrew with him, as Paige begins to turn.

“I don’t know. Jesus, if they’re not up in, like, ten minutes, do we have to wake them up? I call not me.”

“ _Rude_ , we have to do nose goes.”

“With only two of us? Absolutely not, I already called not me, you’ll have to wake them up. Anyway, I’ll be cooking the pancakes, so it _can’t_ be me.”

“What are you, scared?”

“No, I just don’t want to be rude.”

“So you’re going to make _me_ be rude?”

“Yeah. What, are you _scared_?”

Neil leans back out in time to see Natalie wiggle her arms in what, apparently, is an acceptable rebuttal.

Andrew pulls gently on Neil’s arm, and Neil goes, following him silently back up the stairs and into their bedroom. Neil closes the door behind himself, silently, and watches as Andrew slides on his armbands. He returns to Neil, though, taking the knife he’d given him five minutes ago, sliding it into an armband, and then he slowly, carefully, gently, presses Neil back against the door, tangles his hands in Neil’s hair, kisses him, kisses Neil until he’s a jumble of nerve endings that begin and end at Andrew’s mouth, and then Andrew pulls away, pulls Neil’s forehead down to rest against Andrew’s until they’ve both got their shit together.

Neil smells the bacon, as well as the pancakes. The pancakes might be a little bit burnt. He commits to eating them regardless. He tugs Andrew up for one more kiss, feels Andrew’s lips curve up, and then jumps halfway out of his skin at a knock on the door. He turns and opens it, doing his level best to look neither like someone who’s just been kissed out of his mind or like someone who’s just been startled out of his socks, startling Natalie, who clearly didn’t expect such a prompt response.

“Morning,” Neil says politely.

“Hi,” Natalie says. And then she gathers herself. “There’s breakfast. We made breakfast. Do you want it? It’s hot.”

Neil watches her face as she hears herself speak—the confusion, the surprise, the embarrassment—and gathers that that was not, in fact, what she’d intended to say. “It smells great,” Neil says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and tugging her down the hallway. “When did you guys get up? We didn’t hear you at all.”

She grins at that. “We got ready in the downstairs bathroom so we wouldn’t wake you up.”

“You didn’t have to go to all that trouble,” Neil says, following her down the stairs. It really does smell good. He reaches back and finds Andrew’s hand, waiting for him.

He should buy Andrew a ring.

He doesn’t know Andrew’s ring size.

Neil watches his future lay itself out—a series of wacky hijinks, all of which are intended to trick Andrew into telling Neil his ring size, all of which fail miserably, only to get to the end of it and find that Andrew’s already bought rings for both himself and Neil.

Paige grins at them when they enter the kitchen, and showcases with her hands a table full of food, glasses of orange juice already poured.

“What’s this for?” Neil asks.

“Cause we got up and were like, hey, we have the best dads, remember how we really have the best dads?” Paige says. “Remember how dad said he wouldn’t make us pancakes ever again if we ever told anyone about his Reese’s? What if we made them pancakes? And then we found bacon in the fridge and were like, yeah, we could probably make this too.”

Neil pauses halfway through uncapping the peanut butter. “So—are these pancakes-to-be-nice, or pancakes-as-a-threat?”

Paige and Natalie shrug. “Either-or,” Natalie says.

“Both,” Paige suggests. “Oh. Dad. Why won’t you teach us how to make shivs?”

Andrew stares at her. “Were you—were you serious about that? Why do you _want_ to learn to make a shiv?”

She shrugs. “Why won’t you teach us?”

“I mean—do you want a weapon? I can just give you a knife, why ruin a toothbrush?”

Paige and Natalie burst out laughing, Natalie slapping a hand to her mouth to stop herself from spitting pancake across the table.

“The _weirdest_ reasoning—pops—what the _fuck_ are you doing?” Natalie asks, mid-laugh, mouth full.

Neil looks down. “Eating my pancakes?”

“He always does that,” Andrew says. “Explain why you were laughing.”

“I mean, we were laughing because you wanted to give us a more dangerous weapon— _why do you eat pancakes like that_?” Paige asks.

Neil looks down at his pancakes. The Foxes had once spent three hours making fun of him for this. He still doesn’t understand why it’s so bad. “Peanut butter sandwich,” he says.

Natalie and Paige look absolutely lost.

“Like a sandwich?” Neil says. “A peanut butter sandwich? But instead of bread, pancakes?”

“He’s done this for as long as he’s felt comfortable around us,” Andrew says. “Don’t give him any attention, you’ll just encourage him.”

“Does that mean there was a time when he _didn’t_ do this?” Paige asks.

“Oh, yeah, he was normal for a year and a half and then one day we went to brunch and he did _this_ and we were all sitting there in shock.”

“I thought you guys _liked_ me,” Neil says, injured.

“Love the sinner, hate the sin, pancakes are not bread.”

“I _know_. That doesn’t mean they can’t perform the same _function_.”

“Doesn’t it, Neil? Doesn’t it?”

“It fits the purpose of a sandwich!”

“ _Does it_?”

“It’s something the Earl of Sandwich could eat with one hand while gambling!”

“No he couldn’t, because he’d have been stripped of his title for _that_ monstrosity.”

“We’re talking _in practice_ , not _in eyeshot of his constituents_.”

“What does gambling have to do with anything?” Natalie asks.

“He invented sandwiches because he was gambling all the time and didn’t want to stop to eat. So this works!”

“No, too floppy,” Paige says critically. “It would just flop over.”

“Sure, but since there’s _just_ peanut butter, it probably wouldn’t fall out of the sandwich. Unless you used chunky peanut butter, which, you will note, I did not.”

“Was that a sandwich-based choice, or just the fact that you hate chunky peanut butter?” Andrew asks.

“I don’t _hate_ it,” Neil says loftily.

“In much the same way as you didn’t hate _any_ food when you came to Palmetto.”

“Oh,” Paige says. “You were like us.”

“Hmm? Oh. I guess,” Neil allows. “I mean, I had preferences, and I _prefer_ smooth peanut butter to trying to crunch something sticky.”

“You hate chunky peanut butter. That’s not _shameful_ , I’d just like to point out that if you _liked_ chunky peanut butter, this would be an unacceptable sandwich, and since it can be changed by the filling, I’d argue that this is not a sandwich.”

“Then _any_ sandwich can be made not-a-sandwich by the filling,” Neil argues. “Soup.”

“No one puts soup on some bread and pretends it’s a sandwich,” Andrew shoots back.

“Then _all_ sandwiches can be changed by the filling, and _my_ sandwich is no different.”

“That is _not_ a logical follow-up to the argument I just made.”

“Okay, fair, but also, we’re having soup sandwiches for dinner tonight—”

Neil is drowned out by a three-person protest.

“Don’t encourage him,” Paige shouts, looking at Neil and pointing at Andrew. “You’re gonna make that joke and dad’s gonna get pissed about it and then we’re going to have soup sandwiches for dinner tonight—”

“And _you’re_ gonna be sitting there going _well maybe we should have sandwich soup too just to keep it even and also this isn’t my fault_ —” Natalie adds, mocking Neil, voice hitting a pitch Neil’s voice hasn’t hit since he was eight years old.

“I mean, we could definitely try soup sandwiches,” Andrew says at a much lower volume.

“Maybe those little bread bowls?” Neil suggests. “Stew instead of soup?”

“I mean, that’s not a soup sandwich.”

“Sure, but a soup sandwich is going to be soggy bread with some chicken and carrot and whatnot on it, we don’t need to experiment with that. But a bread bowl? And stew? That could be fun.”

“I don’t think we have—whatever I’d need for that, I honestly have no idea,” Andrew muses while the girls yell in the background. “Do they _sell_ bread bowls at the supermarket? They’d probably taste way better if I baked them. How—how does one make a bread bowl? I assume I’d have to cook it in that shape… some Irish stew would probably be good…”

“Are you ignoring us?” Natalie asks plaintively.

“A little,” Neil says. “But only a little.”

“So anyway,” Paige says, “knives won’t help us in prison.”

“We’re still talking about this? You’re not going to prison,” Neil says. He waves a hand as they, for reasons he doesn’t understand, begin to protest. “As long as Ichirou is alive—and if his successor is willing to uphold his bargains—you’re not going to prison. You could commit multiple homicides and you wouldn’t go to prison. I wouldn’t recommend it, because that means mafia interference and if you annoy them enough they might just drag you into the mafia whether you like it or not, but you’re not going to prison. This is a non-issue. If you want to play with stabby things, use knives, which won’t splinter or break, are properly balanced, and if you stab yourself with them, it’s likely to be a way cleaner cut than if you stab yourself with hand-filed, non-sanded, unsealed plastic.”

“Oh, is that why?” Natalie asks.

“Why what?”

“That’s why you won’t teach us how? Because they’re—all the shit you just said?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You don’t usually say no to things,” Paige says. “We wanted to know why.”

“Oh,” Neil says, taken aback. “Well—we say no to things, sometimes.”

“Oh, yeah,” Natalie says hurriedly. “Yeah, you definitely do. You’re very strict.”

Neil glances at Andrew, who is visibly searching his memory.

“One time I told you I didn’t want to tell you why I don’t like the word _please_ ,” Andrew says.

“That doesn’t count,” Paige says.

“Yes it does,” Natalie says. Neil sees Paige jump, and surmises that Natalie has kicked her under the table.

“Why are you trying to convince us that we’re strict?” Neil asks.

“Because if we think we’re going too easy on them, we might start trying to be stricter,” Andrew says.

“Why would we do that?” Neil asks, bemused.

“I love you so much,” Andrew says. “I can’t believe this. Holy shit. No, hang on,” he says, as the kids strike up a protest. “No, hang on, because Neil, Neil, your parents were _so bad_ , your upbringing was _so devoid_ of any examples of other parents, you _don’t know what regular bad parents do_. Neil, Abram, many parents _want_ to be strict. They _want_ to strike the fear of god into their children. Being called _too light on your kids_ is an _insult_.”

“What, do you want me to cut the girls?” Neil can’t keep the annoyance out of his voice. So what, if he was never around people’s parents? “What does that even _mean_? Strict on them about _what_? Am I supposed to _invent_ shit to be strict about?”

“She punched a kid once and you told her you were proud of her,” Andrew says, smug.

“I was, it was the right thing to do, you were _also_ proud of her, and again, what was I supposed to do, cut her?”

Andrew closes his eyes, _bliss_ written in sharpie marker across his face. “Fuck, Neil, I did it, I married the kind of parent I always wanted to have. I think I have to talk to Bee about that sentence I just said. I love that, for you, the idea of _being strict_ involves taking an axe to a child, and therefore you will never be strict. I love that the idea of _good parenting_ has never wormed its way into your brain. Once a week, Neil, once a week if I could.”

“I just—I just want to say,” Natalie says, squeezing into the conversation, “that mostly what I was aiming for was a groveling apology.”

Neil takes one glance at the look on Andrew’s face and bursts into laughter.

“For _what_?” Andrew asks. “We are _model parents_.”

Neil gives him two raised eyebrows.

“Put those down,” Andrew snaps at him. “We are. I’d have loved to have me as a dad.”

“We’re getting off-topic,” Paige says. “By which I mean we’ve been off-topic for five minutes now.”

“What was the original topic?” Neil asks, smothering his laughter.

Paige’s mouth opens for a second, and then she looks at Andrew. “Yeah, dad, what was the original topic?”

Andrew shrugs.

“Don’t you pull that, I know you remember.”

“Sure, but what qualifies a topic as the _original_ one?”

“You’re the most annoying person I know,” Paige says, pointing at him. “Whatever we were talking about before _this_.”

“What’s _this_?”

“There is no _this_ ,” Neil snarks, and Andrew kicks him under the table. Neil kicks him right back, and Andrew tosses him a glare.

“Stop flirting,” Paige says. “We’re _right here_.”

“Who said that was flirting?” Neil asks.

“This is true, I don't think they were flirting,” Natalie agrees. “They weren’t even speaking Russian.”

“I know flirting when I see it,” Paige insists.

“You’re three steps ahead of Neil, then,” Andrew says.

“Is that a good place to be?”

“No clue. Let me know if you figure it out. Anyway, did this all start with us making fun of Neil for eating his pancakes like a sandwich?”

Neil holds his sandwich closer to him. He’d forgotten about it. “Leave my sandwich alone.”

“No,” Paige says.

“This is aphobic.”

Andrew grins.

“What! Wait—dad smiled! Oh, it’s gone. Anyway, _what_?”

“It’s easier to eat this way,” Neil defends himself. “No utensils, no cutting anything, no mess. It’s not like I’ve got _syrup_ on it. Anyway, you guys are lucky I didn’t put banana slices on this and make it a _real_ sandwich.”

“Or cranberries,” Andrew suggests. “Dried apple slices, maybe.”

“You’re just encouraging him,” Natalie says.

“Yep,” Andrew agrees cheerfully.

Neil grins at him. It’s nice to hear Andrew be cheerful. Nice to know that this morning’s Andrew hadn’t gone forever. Nice to know that Andrew’s good days are getting better and better.

“Real question,” Paige says, as though she’s ever asked a fake question, “how did you two ever manage to pretend to _hate_ each other? How did people _not_ see through that in a literal second?”

Neil shrugs. “You thought Andrew hated me, too, remember?”

“That’s different,” Paige says. “He wasn’t around for the first couple days, and then he was _off_ for a few days after that. But like. The two of you end up in the same room together and the first, second, third, and last thing you do is flirt with each other, so like, how did you manage to fool anyone? At all?”

Neil and Andrew shrug at each other.

“I mean, you could watch some of our old interviews,” Neil suggests.

“I thought dad didn’t talk to reporters?” Natalie asks.

"Oh, yeah, that would explain how no one noticed," Paige says, half to herself.

“Only since I came to South Carolina,” Andrew says. “Before that, I didn’t have enough—clout, essentially. And once I told people I was married to Neil, I knew that would be all they’d ever ask about, so I was a lot more insistent about never letting them talk to me. But there are a couple interviews from college, and we had an interview together right before Neil graduated.”

“Shit yes,” Natalie says. “Let’s _go_. Where are these interviews? VHS tapes? Cassettes?”

“ _Cassettes_? No,” Neil says. “Youtube.”

“Oh. Then can we just hook the phone up to the TV?”

“If you know how to do that, you’re welcome to it,” Neil agrees.

“Also—I know it’s expensive,” Paige starts, scooting surreptitiously away from Natalie to avoid her laser eyes, “but—could we get a laptop? I mean—we’ve been using the computer to type up papers, but there’s two of us, and—”

“Oh, shit, yeah,” Neil says, surprised, getting up, bringing his plate with him into the living room. “It’s not that expensive—well, I guess it is, but we’re rich. Yeah, we’ll get you laptops. I didn’t think—I didn’t think.”

“We’re not techies,” Andrew says.

“No shit,” Paige agrees. “Got an HDMI cable? An adapter?”

Neil pulls a basket of wires out from under the TV. “Nicky got us these.”

Paige puts her face in her hands.

“Old,” Natalie accuses. “You’re both _old_.”

“I am _not even 30_.”

“I _am_ 30,” Andrew says. “Does that make me old?”

Neil shrugs. “Almost certainly.”

“So do you get old in January or in March?”

“Physically, in January. Spiritually, in March.”

“What’s the difference?” Paige asks, glancing at the ends of wires. “Also, Nicky had a lot of faith in you, I think these are adapters for the phones, too.”

“I have two birthdays,” Neil says. “The day Nathaniel Wesninski was born, and the day Neil Josten’s license says he was born.”

“You told us your birthday was in March,” Natalie says. “Which one is that?”

“That’s what’s on my driver’s license. It’s the one I celebrate. But, technically, I’ll have been alive for 30 years on January 19.”

“You’re really fucking weird,” Natalie tells him.

“Everything he says is weird,” Paige opines, sorting the remaining wires and putting them back. And then she takes the ones she's chosen, and uses one of the little sockets in the back of the TV that Neil has never bothered caring about.

“This isn’t, like, hard, you know,” she tells Neil and Andrew.

“It’s really fucking easy,” Natalie clarifies.

“Yeah, but then Nicky might want us to do things like… screenshare.”

“Which has what, exactly, to do with the concept of an HDMI cable?” Natalie asks.

“I don’t know, that’s the point.”

“You could just lie to him,” Paige suggests.

“I try not to do that these days.”

“What do I look up?” Paige asks. Andrew gives her a title.

Thirty seconds later, there’s a video up on the screen. A news segment—local station—about the Foxes, and how well they were doing, gearing up to start the season. Neil’s sophomore year. Paige fast-forwards through most of the interviews, watches portions of the practice, and then hits play for Neil’s interview.

_“Last year was rough for you,” the interviewer says. “How do you think it’ll affect your play this year?”_

_“I’m hoping to have an easier year,” Neil quips, “so hopefully, this year will be even better.”_ He doesn’t smile. There’s half a hint of humor around his eyes—Neil, now, knows that that’ll grow into real laughter some day, into laugh lines, but at the time—nothing.

Neil remembers, suddenly, what comes next. “We don’t have to watch this one,” he suggests, but Paige and Natalie are already waving him down.

_“You’re Vice Captain now,” the interviewer continues. “How do the other players take it, being captained by the Butcher’s son?”_

_“How does it feel, to know your ratings are reliant on saying as many buzz words as is conceivably possible?” Neil snaps. His jaw twitches, a sure sign of worse things to come._

_“I don’t think those are buzz words, I think it’s a question people want the answer to,” the interviewer says. “I think plenty of people are worried that maybe your team will be the next to be run like the Ravens—”_

_Neil’s face splits into a grin, cruel and knifelike, and Paige and Natalie jump right along with the interviewer. “Well, if you catch us living underground like rats, driving matching cars, and only making public appearances for classes, then you’ll know, won’t you? In any case, my father didn’t run the Ravens, did he. So as long as I don’t take after Riko, you probably won’t get much—”_

_Kevin calls Neil away—a distraction, freedom. The smile slips off Neil’s face. He offers the interviewer a different smile—polite, small, uncomfortable, fake—and takes off, pulling his helmet on._

Paige fast-forwards through Aaron’s interview, through Matt’s, and then Andrew appears on the screen.

_“You’re a very different person than we saw last year,” the interviewer says. “How will being off your medication affect your play?”_

_“It won’t,” Andrew says, infinitely bored, infinitely apathetic. Nearly robotic._

_“You seem very sure of that. Do you think you’ll have less energy than you did? Are you concerned about your focus?”_

_“No.”_

_The interviewer gives it a second—waiting to see if more was forthcoming—and then moves on. “How do you like your new Vice Captain? Obviously, the two of you played together last year—do you think he’ll be a good fit for the job?”_

_Andrew doesn’t so much as blink. “I hate him. I don’t care if he’s a good fit or not.”_

_“You—hate him?”_

_Andrew stares at the interviewer. “Is that not what I just said?”_

_“Why?”_

_“He’s a rude, interfering bastard, and more trouble than he’s worth.”_

_“Well, thank you for your commentary—and there you have it, folks—”_

Paige hits pause.

“You were _already dating_?” Natalie asks.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Wasn’t that cute, though? He talked way more about me than he did about that other shit.” He grins at the way Andrew frowns at the word _cute_. “Absolutely adorable. Frankly, sweet—” he ducks, snickering, as Andrew aims a smack in his general direction

“Were you two—like, were you guys _okay_?” Natalie asks.

“I mean, yeah,” Neil says. “Well, no. Well, I mean, compared to the year before? Yes, absolutely, definitely, we were doing great. Compared to now? No.”

“You looked _miserable_ ,” Paige says.

“We weren’t,” Neil assures her. “I mean, we’d just had probably the best summer of our lives, and exy had started up again—we just weren’t thrilled about being interviewed.”

“You know,” Andrew muses, “if I was still like _that_ , Denver wouldn’t be able to do _shit_ to me. They could get in my face as much as they wanted, I wouldn’t budge an inch—”

“I’d rather lose,” Neil grinds out, rage flaring strong and sudden, strangling him with the urge to preemptively murder ever single person on Denver's team. “I would _rather lose_.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow at him. “Lose the championship?”

“Are you asking me if I’d rather have a trophy or you? Because the answer’s you.”

“You just said it yourself, it wasn’t like I was miserable. I could—”

Neil turns bodily to face him. “Drew? I’d rather have you happy. I’d rather have you happy, and lose the fucking game, than have you—” he waves a hand, miserable, because he’s fairly certain Andrew’s joking, but he remembers Andrew being upset that Neil was so impressed with Charlie’s shot, and Andrew isn’t willing to stop being the best yet—“than have you _dead_ for fucking _exy_.”

Andrew’s other eyebrow rises to meet the first. “Did you just say _exy_ with a tone of _disgust_?”

“Yes! So what!”

“I was mostly joking. I don’t think I can make myself dead again.”

“Good.”

“I won’t threaten it again.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“Are you guys done?” Paige asks. “Where’s the interview of the two of you together?”

“We can be done,” Andrew says.

Neil narrows his eyes at Andrew. “Did you just want to know what I’d say?”

“No, actually,” Andrew says, tapping his fingers against Neil’s hands. “I think it’s a good idea. If you’re all trying to throw blind, maybe I need to come up with a way to deal with them, too. I’m not used to people getting in my face. Most people are too scared to do that.”

“Well, lovely, but if you start—pulling _that_ shit,” Neil says, pointing at the TV, “I will sit in the middle of the court and refuse to play.”

Andrew taps Neil’s hand with more force than is perhaps necessary, and Neil realizes his hands are in fists. He takes a deep breath, uncurls them, and takes Andrew’s hand.

They jump when Paige snaps her fingers at them—she looks guilty about it when they look at her, but doesn’t apologize. “Where’s the interview of the two of you together?”

Andrew gives her a title, and thirty seconds later, it’s up on the screen, the interview they’d done with a guy named Morgan Pines, for some Southern news station. Andrew had been about to start his second season as a professional player; Neil had been about to start his first.

Paige skips through whatever Morgan did in the beginning, and by the time she hits play again, they’ve already missed Neil’s introduction, and he’s sitting there on the couch, perfectly still, looking incredibly uncomfortable, smiling politely.

Neil remembers being impatient, that day—Andrew had been coming to town, and Neil hadn’t wanted to waste time doing an interview, nevermind the fact that Andrew wouldn't be able to make it to Neil's until after the interview regardless. They’d been married for a year and seven months, and Neil remembers holding that fact in his head at an awkward distance—this had been in the middle of a phase of his, wherein _married_ had felt like something he couldn’t be. The concept of _marriage_ had brought to mind a house, 2.5 kids, spouses nagging spouses, and mowing a lawn. The only frame of reference he had was Nathan and Mary’s marriage, which had _also_ never struck Neil as much of a marriage. There had been a dissonance in his head. Expectations unmet. And he’d wanted to see Andrew so bad his eyes had ached with it—his hands had missed Andrew, his arms had missed Andrew. That hadn't fit into Neil's idea of marriage. It had also made the concept of sitting onstage and doing an interview torturous. 

_“So how are you feeling about switching from college to a pro team?” Morgan asks._

_“I’m excited,” Neil says. “The Jaguars are a great team, I’m looking forward to learning from them.”_

_“Not sad to stop being a big fish in a little pond?”_

_“I wouldn’t call all of NCAA exy a little pond,” Neil says, “but no, I’m not sad to move up. This is what I’ve wanted, and I’m thrilled that the Jaguars have asked me to sign on.”_

_“Still—you'll be a rookie again. Like going from being a high school senior to a college freshman.”_

_“Of course,” Neil agrees. "But that's what keeps things interesting."  
_

_“I know we’re all excited to see you move into the big leagues—my colleagues and I have been following you from the beginning, and we’re looking forward to following you for the foreseeable future.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“Speaking of the beginning, though,” he says, apparently unaware of how Neil tenses at that, “we all watched your rivalry with Andrew Minyard develop. What do you think will happen now that you’re both in the big leagues? Do you think you’ll put that behind you?”_

_“He’s in Oregon, I’m in South Carolina,” Neil says. “I can’t see that it’ll matter much.”_

_“So you don’t plan to make up?”_

_“I can’t see that being on two separate teams on opposite sides of the country will lead to much change in our… relationship, no.”_

_“Interesting,” Morgan says. “I wonder if he feels the same?”_

_Neil smiles. “I can’t say. You’ll have to ask him.”_

_“You know what, Neil? That’s a great idea. Let’s get Andrew Minyard in here—folks, I’d like to introduce Andrew Minyard, goalie for the—” And then the cheers drown him out._

_Andrew walks onstage, eyes glued to Neil._

Neil remembers that, the shock. Andrew hadn’t told him about the interview; to be fair, Neil hadn’t told him, either, given it was for a smaller station and Andrew had said he wouldn’t be getting in until a little while after the show. Clearly, he’d meant _get in_ to Neil’s apartment, not get off the plane—but that hadn’t hit Neil until he’d seen Andrew walking towards him, and by then any annoyance was tempered by the fact that his eyes had finally found a place to rest, and it was on Andrew’s face. And tempered by the hell that was having Andrew sit down right next to him, but being incapable of so much as linking their pinkies. It had struck him as weakness, at the time—he’d gone most of his life without even knowing Andrew, let alone being capable of touching him, and now he couldn’t handle so much as a ten-minute wait?

Watching Andrew make it to the couch and sit next to Neil is painful. They were so obviously struggling not to stare at each other, and failing so miserably.

_“So, Andrew,” Morgan says, “How are you looking forward to your second year as a professional exy player?”_

_“I am,” Andrew says._

Neil watches himself suppress a smile. How _had_ no one caught on?

_“We were all impressed by your performance this past year, we’re looking forward to seeing where you’ll go from here.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“Now, I don’t know if you heard what Neil here just said—”_

_“I did.”_

They were being so obvious—the way Andrew’s eyes flicked to Neil after every word he said, checking to see if it had made Neil laugh; Neil trying so hard not to laugh, knowing that if he did it would be over—Neil watches on-screen Neil-and-Andrew fight the urge to turn towards each other. He'd been at his gooiest at the time, a problem exacerbated by how rarely Andrew and Neil saw each other, and he'd known that if he'd let the mask slip even a little bit no one would miss it—only a few months after the interview, after all, he would smile at Andrew and out them to both of their teams.

“We should’ve started making out on the couch,” Neil whispers.

“When he said _you don’t plan to make up,_ you should’ve said _no, but we plan to make out_ ,” Andrew whispers.

“Oh, that’s way better than what I said,” Neil agrees.

_“How do you think your rivalry will change, now that you’ll have to see each other a couple times a year again?”_

Neil watches Andrew’s nose flare on-screen, remembers hearing the little huff that meant Andrew was about to say something bad.

_“I think it’ll give me more opportunities to lay him out flat.”_

_“Oh, you wish,” Neil objects. “Flat? Absolutely not.”_

_“What, you want me to lay you out crooked? I could make that happen.”_

_“I think, this time, I might come out on top.”_

_“I doubt it.”_

_“You’re in for a goddamn surprise, then.”_

_“Don’t be rude.”_

_Neil dips his fingers in his glass of water and flicks it at Andrew. “Melt, oh Wicked Witch of the West.”_

_“You are the worst human being I’ve ever had the displeasure of being seated on a couch with.”_

_“My pleasure.”_

Morgan intervened with another question, and Paige hits pause.

“Nevermind,” she declares. “I understand why no one figured it out. I _don’t_ know how you managed to refrain from flirting for so long, but whatever—”

“That was _all_ flirting,” Neil objects.

“Did you _hear_ that wordplay?” Andrew asks. “That innuendo? We were three seconds away from making out at any given time.”

“What the—oh, _ew_ ,” Paige says, crinkling her face up. “I mean, I _guess_ , but—jesus, you are _different people_ from those people.”

“Nah, we just got old,” Neil says.

“Hey! You argue with me whenever _I_ say that,” Natalie says, sitting up straighter.

“Well, you’re not allowed to say it,” Neil says primly. “The point is—hey, what videos _did_ you watch, back when you said you were watching Minyard-Josten Rivalry videos?”

“Oh, fan stuff, not many news clips or anything. Do you know people thought you were in rival cults?”

“Really?” Neil asks.

“Yeah. They also thought that maybe, Neil, your dad killed Andrew’s mom, and nearly killed Andrew, which was why he hated you so much.”

“That’s a fun theory,” Andrew says. “It would be _really_ fun if it was _true_. My father-in-law killed my mother? Actually, now that I say that, it sounds pretty bad.”

Paige levels a look at him, and he shrugs.

“What’s that video?” Natalie asks. “ _Neil Josten Falls in Love with Gianna Rosetti_?”

Paige clicks it.

It’s a press interview, post-game. Neil’s up there alone—this was back when players were allowed to do interviews alone. 

_“So what do you think of Andrew Minyard?” An interviewer calls._

_“I don’t want to talk about him,” Neil says, annoyance flickering over his face._

Neil remembers this interview immediately—they'd been needling him for several minutes already, trying to push buttons, and he'd been slowly crumbling.

_“Do you hate him as much as he hates you? It seems like it’s gotten worse. Why do you think that is?”_

_“I feel the same way about him as he feels about me,” Neil dodges, annoyance turning to anger. “I don’t know why it’s gotten worse. I don’t want to talk about him.”_

_A woman’s voice makes it halfway through a word, and then—_

_“How did you manage to spend so many years on the same team without tearing each other to shreds? Neither of you are known for your nonviolence.”_

_“I used up all my self-control keeping it together,” Neil snaps. “And now, I don’t want to talk about him.”_

_A woman’s voice calls out something about footwork, but was overshadowed by—_

_“Is this an average feud?” Someone yells. “Are you going to order a hit on him, Butcher Boy?”_

_Neil stands, nearly knocking his chair over, the threat on his face palpable even through the TV screen. “Clearly, not one of you is capable of asking questions related to the actual game, the Jaguars, the season, or even, somehow, exy, the sport I play,” Neil spits. “And since my job is only to answer those questions, I think my job here is done. Goodbye.”_

_Finally, over the uproar—_

_“Where’d you learn the footwork that allowed you to evade Steinway in the fourth quarter?” A woman yells._

_Neil halts in his tracks, face wiped absolutely, terrifyingly blank. He dips down so his voice will reach the microphone. “Gianna Rosetti, right?”_

_“About to start a new show, Coffee With Rosetti, channel 8,” she calls back._

_Neil slides back into his seat. “Well, Gianna, it was a combination of—”_

The video pauses, and Neil glances at Paige, who turns to look at Neil.

“Hey, pops?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re _terrifying_.”

“I mean, yeah, that’s why people leave me alone,” Neil agrees.

“No, like, I thought it was about to be like an action movie scene, where you pull out a machine gun and just mow everyone down.”

“I don’t like machine guns, they’re loud. And anyway, I’m not a fan of killing for killing’s sake, and _third_ , you’ve literally seen me kill a man before, this can’t be _that_ bad.”

Paige makes a face. “That’s true, I guess. Jesus, though.”

“I didn’t kill _Jesus_ ,” Neil protests.

Natalie laughs.

Paige rolls her eyes. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?”

“ _A Very Merry Neil Josten Christmas_?”

Neil shrugs.

Paige hits play.

It’s a compilation of times when Neil’s hit the ground during a game. And every time he does, a tone plays—all the same note, for a solid ten seconds, and then Neil is falling over to the tune of Jingle Bells, and Neil on the couch is laughing so hard he can’t breathe. Andrew puts a hand on the back of Neil’s neck and pushes his head down, and Neil allows it, if only because if he keeps watching the screen he’ll never be able to stop laughing. As is, though, he can hear guilty smothered laughter from Natalie and Paige, and it only makes him laugh harder.

Eventually, though, it ends, and Andrew lets Neil back up so Neil can lean against his shoulder and wipe his eyes on Andrew’s shirt.

“Really makes me want to break Riko’s arm again, honestly,” Andrew says.

“Oh, man, though,” Neil agrees. “But, on the other hand, _that_ is a brand new Christmas tradition. I want to be woken up _every_ Christmas morning from here on out by that video. Andrew, I’m entrusting this duty to you.”

“As you wish,” Andrew murmurs.

“Uh-oh, kids, don’t look,” Neil says, leaning in to kiss Andrew.

“A room! Get one!” Natalie yells.

Neil glances at the TV at the sound of a familiar tune, and finds that a video called _Andrew Maxyard Donkey Kong_ is playing. It consists of Andrew aiming the ball directly at other players’ heads, set to the Donkey Kong theme song. Neil recognizes clips from Fox practices, mixed in with the actual hits performed in-game. Neil laughs—the video keeps going; he laughs some more—the video keeps going—“How long _is_ this video?”

“Four minutes,” Paige says blandly.

Neil cackles. “Do they repeat footage?”

“They could get four minutes of footage out of every time I’ve done this,” Andrew says, apparently bored.

“How long did it take you to get your aim that good?” Paige asks, watching Kevin get hit in the head while running at top speed.

“A couple years? I focused much more on aim than I did on much else, to be honest. And I had the drive to do it. And I didn’t care if people knew I was doing it.”

“It’s not generally considered good form, though,” Neil says. “I mean, he could do it to the Foxes because we’d do it right back, but that doesn’t really fly on the Jaguars.”

“Well, but aim is still useful, right?”

Neil watches the video run. “I mean, yeah.”

Paige changes to a video titled _Is Andrew Minyard Homophobic?_

The four of them watch as a man spins to look at the camera. “Hi all! Welcome back. Today’s topic: _Is_ Andrew Minyard, goalie for the Oregon Selkies, homophobic? Now. This might seem like a big assumption for a guy we know so little about. But consider the evidence.” He reaches behind him and taps a whiteboard. Some solid editing work follows, wherein the words appear as he taps it: “One. Aaron Minyard is homophobic. This is depressing, since their cousin is gay, and yes, I know that brothers can have different opinions, but I’m just saying.

“Two.” He taps the board. “Andrew Minyard hates Neil Josten, everyone knows about it, and for all that Minyard likes to insist that Neil is rude and awful in every way, Neil seems to have a _lot_ of friends, and that’s in _spite_ of the fact that he goes all evil-and-terrifying-and-confusingly-hot. So he can’t possibly be _that_ bad.

“Three.” Taps the board. “Minyard seems to hate everyone, but no one gets quite the level of hatred Neil does. Hmm? What’s that about? Could it be— _prejudice_?

“Four.” Taps the board. “We have just discovered—this is _breaking news,_ everyone—that Neil is _married_ to a _man_. Now, he also said he wasn’t gay, but he _is_ married to a man, and homophobes don’t discriminate, baby. They’re not here for all that good terminology. Anyway, this news doesn’t seem to be a shock to any of the other Foxes, so my guess is—Neil was dating a guy in college, and Minyard hated it, and that’s why neither of them want to talk about it. If _you_ were a demi-ace in college just trying to have a good time, and _your_ teammate bitched at you nonstop and then went on to hate on you all the time post-graduation, and _you_ were a supremely private dude just trying to play a sport, would _you_ look reporters in the eye and tell them it’s because you’re married to a guy? _No_. So. Anyway. This brings me to my next theory, which is this.”

He taps the board. It wipes clean and starts again. “Andrew Minyard isn’t homophobic, he’s _jealous_. I know this is contrary to the premise of this video, but hear me out. My thoughts go thus: Neil is super hot; Neil went and got scars and got _scary_ and hot—”

Natalie and Paige make _blech_ noises.

“—and then he turned Minyard down, because who would want to date scary-and-mean Mr. Never Smiles?”

“Oh, I don’t like this anymore,” Neil says.

“And again, that would explain why no one talks about it. So. Andrew Minyard. This is a challenge to _you_ to tell your PR agent to _stop_ turning me away and tell the world the _truth_!”

They stare at the ending screen for a minute.

A video pops up titled _Follow Up: An Apology to Gay Icon Andrew Minyard_

Paige clicks it.

The same guy turns to face the camera. “Hi all! Welcome back. So our topic for today is me apologizing for slandering the good name of Andrew Minyard. Apparently, the person who wants to date and marry scary-and-mean Mr. Never Smiles is Neil Josten himself, because that’s what he _did_ —”

Paige and Natalie sigh as Gianna's footage of Neil jumping on Andrew pops up in the corner.

“—because apparently they’re, like, in love, and they like Thai food. I don’t know. I don’t know anything else. I can’t find anything else from anyone else and I have no theories, except that I will again point out that none of the Foxes seemed particularly surprised about this. Or the Jaguars, or the Selkies. Not sure about all of you, but I am _extremely_ confused about when all of this happened, because everyone else who follows their rivalry knows that back in Neil’s sophomore year, Andrew’s junior year, Andrew got on camera and said he hated Neil for being a rude bitch, so somehow, they went from there to having been married for _two years_? And, guys, I’ve done the math, that means that _two years_ after Andrew Minyard called Neil Josten a _rude, interfering bastard_ on _camera_ they got _married_. Anyway, I can’t tell if Andrew’s just so goddamn smooth he managed to completely reverse track and make Neil fall in love with him in _two years flat_ , or if they started dating and were like _yeah if anyone asks we hate each other_. If anyone has any info—you know how to contact me.”

“So, anyway, Uncle Aaron is homophobic?” Natalie asks.

“He used to be,” Andrew says. “He got better.”

“How’d Nicky handle that?”

“Didn’t care much. Or, at least, he _did_ care, but that never stopped him from being as flamboyantly gay as he felt like being. His parents sent him to conversion therapy and he survived, he didn’t go through all that just to let his teenage cousin shame him into shutting up.”

“How did _you_ handle that?”

Andrew looks at Natalie. She doesn’t withdraw the question. He sighs, and shrugs. “Didn’t care much. I had my own problems, I didn’t need Aaron’s help to make me feel bad. And then I had fewer problems, and Aaron was already getting better. I think Katelyn had something to do with it, but don’t quote me on that.”

“You can quote _me_ on it, though,” Neil says. “She told me straight out she’d given Aaron a dressing-down about it. After that, Aaron was _noticeably_ improved.”

“You never told me that,” Andrew says.

“That was back when you were still being a shithead about Katelyn, I wasn’t going to bring her up.”

“Fair enough.”

“Why were you being a shithead about Katelyn?” Paige asks.

“Didn’t in the slightest trust her not to hurt Aaron. What did _she_ want with him? Pretty, smart cheerleader? Could’ve had anyone, and decided she wanted Aaron? Maybe she just wanted someone to abuse. I wasn’t going to let him find out the hard way.”

Neil closes his eyes. Oh, Andrew and Aaron are _so_ alike, and if he ever told them that, they’d tell him to fuck right off.

“Sounds sexist,” Paige objects.

“It was, but I got better. Anyway, and then Aaron told me to let him go or let Neil go, so—I let Aaron out of his deal. And told Katelyn that. In what was possibly an intimidating manner—”

“You slammed her into the wall in a nigh-abandoned section of the library, if I recall properly,” Neil says, grinning.

“—and then told her she’d never be part of _my_ life,” Andrew continues, undaunted. “Anyway, now we cook together like best friends.”

“When you’re a kid, they call that _a tough time adjusting_ ,” Paige says sympathetically.

Neil laughs.

“Help us with homework?” Paige asks.

“‘Course,” Neil and Andrew agree easily.

“Laundry first,” Andrew says.

“Oh yeah—yeah, we’ll get that going—we forgot—sorry—” they yell, already halfway up the stairs.

“Hey, Mr. Sometimes Smiles,” Neil murmurs.

“Does that make you Neil Sometimes-Smiles?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, already there, kissing Andrew deep and slow, and, oh, they _earned_ this. They _fought_ for this. They dragged themselves here over hot tarmac and through lava, and they _deserve_ this.

Eventually, the kids return with their homework.

It’s a long, lazy day.

The hours turn over, one after the other. Homework gets done. Laundry gets done. Neil and Natalie go for a run. The girls vanish upstairs. Neil and Andrew smoke bubbles.

Eventually, Andrew starts hauling out food. Neil helps where he’s allowed, and then he sits back with his book, content to read and watch Andrew do whatever he’s doing with dough.

“This’ll be good for next weekend,” Andrew says eventually, putting it in containers. “Until then, I’m not up for it. And dinner’s ready, anyway.”

Neil trails his fingers up Andrew’s arm on his way out of the kitchen. “Nat! Gij! Dinner!”

Three seconds later, they’re on the stairs. Neil hadn’t heard the door open or close. He’s not sure if that means they were in the hallway, or if they’ve discovered a new level of silence.

“Smells good,” Paige says.

“There’s caramelized onions involved,” Neil tells her.

“Oh, _hell_ yes,” Natalie says, serving herself a plateful. The rest of them follow her lead.

They sit down, and then—

The doorbell rings, and all four of them freeze.

“Are we expecting anyone?” Neil asks.

Blank stares all around.

“Well, if someone with a gun comes in, get under the table,” Neil says, standing. He’s mostly joking, but that doesn’t stop Andrew from following him to the door.

Neil looks through the peephole. He’s learned his lesson.

There’s a man standing on the porch. He looks nice, a button-up tucked into clean jeans. Salt-and-pepper hair. He looks oddly familiar. He looks nervous.

Andrew touches Neil’s hand.

Neil looks at him.

Andrew gives him a raised eyebrow.

Neil shrugs, and opens the door. “Can I help you?”

The man looks at Neil, and goes from _nervous_ to _trying not to appear terrified_.

Salesman? Salesman who is new on the job? No briefcase, though. Neighbor? Neil knows what all his neighbors look like, though, and they don’t have any new ones. Someone who's never seen Neil's face before? Neil is abruptly conscious of the fact that he is not wearing makeup.

The man opens his mouth, but it takes him a second. Neil finds himself tensing up. Who is he? What does he want? Neil doesn’t know, and he doesn’t like that.

“My name is Patrick Gray,” he says, voice cracking a little. “And I—”

Paige bursts past Andrew. “Daddy?”


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you know what this chapter's about 
> 
> tw neil's personality crises, tw discussions of abuse and other issues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanna say here that like. i know I've said before that this is all made up but I just wanna reiterate that: this is all made up. particularly with regards to the foster system. I don't think there's any arguing that there are adults out there who should not be fostering kids--the system gives people a bunch of power and potentially very few consequences, and that will always attract shitty people. but there are legitimately people out there who are providing housing and food and care for kids who otherwise wouldn't have any of that, so it's worth emphasizing again: the shit that happened to paige and natalie is based on nothing. anyway i'm getting off this soapbox now, please enjoy whatever soapboxes I get on during this chapter

Andrew freezes, hand halfway to Paige’s arm, ready to haul her out of the way.

Neil wants, badly, for her to be wrong, but denial doesn’t stand a chance. Patrick Gray looks familiar to Neil, because he’s been staring at this man’s face for months—since he and Andrew saw Paige on the curb by the airport in Colorado. There’s the nose, the shape of the eyes, the cheekbones. There’s Natalie’s hair, albeit with more grey peppered in. Neil shoots a look at Andrew, and knows that Andrew’s seen it too.

Andrew looks gutted.

Paige looks—she looks like she’s seen the light for the first time after months of darkness.

They’ve lost her.

This is it. The knock on the door, so highly coveted; their father, come back for them, managing to reconnect with them after so long. It’s what Natalie and Paige had wanted. 

Neil feels it. He’s carved out a chunk of himself to make space for Natalie and Paige, and now they’re going to leave, and Andrew knows it.

Neil looks back at Natalie, and feels worse. Because she’s furious. Grieving. Grieving and furious, and she doesn’t want to go, he can see it, but would it be worse to leave or worse to stay, if Paige is leaving?

Neil steps back. He opens the door. “Come in,” he says, careful, oh-so-careful not to let anything reach his voice. He can put on a mask. He can put on a mask so seamless that only Andrew knows it’s there.

“Thank you,” Patrick says, stepping in. He takes in Natalie and Paige, nerves practically radiating off him, but he smiles, proud, amazed. “You look just like your mother,” he says, holding out a hand to Natalie.

She steps back. Not a good sign. “Well, you wouldn’t be so shocked by that if it hadn’t been eight goddamn years since you’d last seen us,” Natalie snaps.

“I know,” Patrick says. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

Neil breathes. Natalie’s fury can be quieted, If Patrick is willing to work with her.

“We were just eating dinner,” Neil says. “Do you want to join us?”

“I—that would be great, yes,” Patrick says, nervous. He drops his hand. “You girls look so grown-up,” he says, stepping further into the hallway so Neil can shut the door.

Andrew turns and heads into the kitchen, and Natalie and Paige follow him, Paige glancing over her shoulder, like she’s worried that Patrick might disappear. They take their seats around the table. Patrick sits next to Paige. He looks overawed by their existence—as he should be, Neil decides. The fact that the girls are alive and well is no small miracle.

“I’m sorry to spring this on you,” Patrick says, a little self-consciously, “but your grandma emailed me yesterday, letting me know that you were on TV, and I booked the earliest flight I could. I tried to find you before this,” he says, “but the foster system doesn’t exactly hand out details.”

“Oh,” Paige says.

Natalie says nothing.

“We have a grandma?” Paige asks.

“And a grandpa. On your mother’s side,” Patrick clarifies.

“What about on your side?”

“My dad died around a year after—he died around seven years ago,” he says. The evasion is a mistake. Neil can see that Patrick’s lost ground, in Natalie’s eyes. “In a car crash. My mom died not long after. Liver failure. I’m sorry. I don’t want to bring up tough topics—not today,” he says, with a smile that tries to be a grin. It fails in the face of Natalie’s laser eyes. “Your mom’s parents are both alive. They’d have come themselves, but your grandpa’s health isn’t up to it, and your grandma doesn’t like to leave him alone.”

“That’s good,” Paige says, grinning, her joy very nearly making up for the black hole that is Natalie. “They sound nice.”

“They’re wonderful people,” Patrick says. There’s an evasion in there, too—it’s hard to lie to a liar, and Neil has never grown out of that habit—but Neil can’t figure out precisely what the lie is.

“Why didn’t you give us to them, then?” Paige asks, in precisely the same tone as when she’d said _they sound nice_. “Instead of putting us up for adoption?”

“I—wasn’t thinking very clearly,” he says.

Neil is watching him lose face. Paige, clearly, doesn’t care; her dad is here, and she wants this to work, he can see it. But Natalie? Natalie is measuring him, weighing him, and he’s coming up wanting.

Paige opens her mouth, but Natalie gets there first. “What do you want?” She asks, voice sharper than one of Andrew’s knives. “Why are you here?”

This clearly isn’t going how Patrick wanted it to go. What was Natalie like as a kid? Patrick isn’t prepared to deal with her. Maybe the six-year-old child he abandoned had been sweet, loving, kind, but Natalie doesn’t give that away for free anymore. She’s a trial by fire.

“I—assuming your guardians would be—”

“Parents,” Natalie says, hurling the word at him like she expects an injury to come from it.

“Yes,” Patrick says, soothingly. “Assuming they’d be amenable to it, I’d like—I’d like to bring you home. Take over your care. I’m working on getting in contact with a representative of the foster system, to see what can be done.”

“Home?” Paige asks, and Neil is drowning, drowning, the words _this is your home_ lodged in his throat where they can never be said. He and Andrew love the girls—and this is it, it’s drowning him, this is why Andrew never let himself get attached to anyone. Neil understands, now.

“In Colorado,” Patrick says. “Denver. It’s nice there—beautiful, really, I don’t know—I don’t know when they took you out of state, I don’t know if you remember much about Colorado. I—I remarried. Your step-mom is a wonderful woman. We have two kids—a three-year-old and a one-year-old. I think they’d love to have older sisters. And they’re so sweet, too, I think you’d like them.”

Paige tilts her head to one side. “That sounds really nice. Neil and Andrew are adopting us, though. It’s not—you can’t just—come get us.”

“I’m sure there’s a way,” Neil says, voice steady. Voice very steady. He wants to scream. “A way to give you back.”

“ _What_?” Natalie shrieks, and then everyone’s standing, because Natalie has turned and shoved her chair halfway across the room. “What do you _mean_ , give us _back_?”

“ _Natalie_ ,” Patrick says, a reprimand. If Neil had been holding a thermometer, he’s sure he’d have been able to watch the temperature rise as Natalie turns a furious red.

She doesn’t bother looking at Patrick, though. She’s looking at Andrew. “You promised.”

Andrew stares at her.

Natalie transfers her stare to Neil. “What do you _mean_ , give us back?”

“If you want to go,” Neil says, feeling nothing, experiencing nothing, pulling himself away from the scenario, “we’ll find a way to make it happen.” This can’t be what kills him. He’s not even really their dad.

She storms up to him, looking hardly aware of it, glaring him down. “And what if we don’t?”

“Then you’re not going anywhere,” Neil says. He takes a deep breath. “But it might mean splitting the two of you up.”

“Wait, what?” Paige asks, surprised. “Why?”

Neil looks at her. “We won’t stop you from going.”

“Why are you sending her away?” Natalie asks, voice on the verge of breaking. She ramps her fury up half a notch, keeping tears at bay, leaning into Neil’s space.

“She—” Neil looks over Natalie’s shoulder at Paige, but she really, sincerely, looks confused. “Don’t—don’t you want to go?”

Paige laughs. “What? _What_?” She points at Patrick. “With _him_?”

“Yeah,” Neil says.

“Why would I want _that_?”

“He’s your father,” Neil says. He glances at Andrew, looking for backup, but Andrew isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at Paige. “And you said—you said Colorado sounded nice.”

“Yeah, sure,” Paige says. “It does. It would probably be a fun place to visit. I don’t want to go _live_ with the actual person who abandoned us. I don’t want to leave my _family._ Pops, you’re really stupid.”

Natalie whirls on Neil, victorious, and immediately deflates. “Why do you look so relieved?” She twists, and Andrew looks at her. “You, too! Why?”

Neil can feel his heart releasing. The lump in his throat is still there, but any tears he can find now would be more for catharsis than for grief. “We thought you were leaving.”

She smacks his arm. “Then fucking _fight_ for us, jackass!”

“We’re not going to make you stay if you want to go,” he says.

“You’re so fucking _stupid_ ,” Natalie snarls, and then she throws her arms around him. Neil feels like he’s going to fall over, his bones melting as it hits him: They’re staying. He squeezes his daughter, a word he still gets to have, and plants a kiss on her hair. He glances at Andrew, and this time Andrew looks back at him, relieved, exhausted from those five minutes of hell. They’re losing their stamina. They used to be able to handle hell for a lot longer than five minutes. Natalie forms fists in Neil’s shirt, and then she steps back, dry-eyed, and turns to look at Andrew. “You’re stupid, too.”

Andrew just stares at her.

Patrick takes a deep breath. “I can’t—I can’t let you two stay here,” he says.

“And why’s that?” Neil asks, standing up straighter. More importantly, maybe: how is he going to take them away? Patrick doesn’t seem to be armed—but then, Ichirou never is, and he’s still more dangerous than any man should be. Paige is too close to Patrick, much too close, but Natalie holds out a hand, and before Patrick can react, Paige flees him, grabbing Natalie’s hand. Andrew’s fingers are twitching, ready to pull a knife out. Unwilling to give away the fact that he’s armed. But Neil needs to have a knife. He’s the one who can throw. He moves to Natalie’s side, closer to Andrew, no longer behind the kids.

Patrick visibly steels himself. He looks at Natalie and Paige, and points at Neil. “I looked them up,” he says. “And that man is Nathaniel Wesninski, and his father was known as the _Butcher of Baltimore_. He was raised by criminals. The fact that he ran away doesn’t make him a good person—and what if he decides to go back to that?”

The girls shrug.

“We know,” Natalie says. “He told us. Also, his name is Neil.”

Neil’s heart warms.

“He flatly refused to agree to adopt us until we knew who his dad was, actually,” Paige says. “It was kind of ridiculous.”

“Have you _seen_ —maybe you haven’t, but I’ve _seen_ videos of what happens when people upset him,” Patrick says, refusing to look at Neil. “It’s _terrifying_ , he shouldn’t have _children_. He shouldn’t have _you_. That’s why that interviewer was asking if living here was scary. Because that man is a known murderer.”

“He _is_ scary, right?” Paige says, but she sounds more pleased about it than anything. “They both are. And, like, we _understood_ why the interviewers were asking us that, we’re not dumb. We weren’t gonna sit there and be like, _well, he’s never killed someone while we’ve been there_ , or like, _well, it’s not like they beat people up in front of us,_ like, that’s stupid, we weren’t there to be like _actually, hurr durr, Neil isn’t his dad,_ we were there to have some goddamn fun. We’re fine here, really, we’re safe. And anyway, between the two of us, we’ve got four pinky fingers, and Neil and Andrew are, like, slinkies. Pinky slinkies.”

“Are you trying to—are you saying we’re wrapped around your pinky fingers?” Neil asks, bemused.

“Pinky. Slinkies.”

Natalie laughs.

“That sounds obscene,” Neil says. _We’re safe_. That hadn’t been a lie; it hadn’t been a joke. She feels safe here. A minor miracle.

“It sounds like a new party drug,” Andrew says.

“You’re just kids,” Patrick says. “ _Please_.”

“Fuck off,” Natalie suggests, already calming down. She’s not going anywhere; she’s not being split up from Paige ever again. The knowledge is as soothing to her as it is to Neil and Andrew.

“You shouldn’t curse,” he says.

Natalie doesn’t respond—she looks shocked to her core, looks like she’s absolutely lost her shot at cooling off. This is worse, Neil can see, than the general rule she follows not to curse in front of her friends’ parents or at school—they, at least, have some kind of authority, or have earned some kind of respect, in Natalie’s eyes. Patrick mistakes her silence for acquiescence, and moves his pointer finger from Neil to Andrew.

“And he—and I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bring this up, I know it’s ugly—he was sexually assaulted as a kid.”

Neil feels his blood freeze.

He wasn’t expecting that.

“People who are sexually assaulted are more likely to assault others,” Patrick says. “Abuse victims are more likely to abuse others.”

Neil is going to kill him.

Neil takes a deep breath—

Paige punches Patrick in the face.

He stumbles—it looks like it was more from shock than anything, but still.

Paige shakes her hand out, and, belatedly, with a shouted curse, realizes that punching someone hurts.

Andrew holds a hand out, but Paige ignores it in favor of staring down Patrick. “Fuck you! Fuck you! _Fuck_! Go to hell and _die_ there! Fuck— _shit_! Fuck!”

“Paige,” Andrew says, and Paige goes to him, gives him her hand to examine. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes! What the fuck!”

Neil raises his eyebrows. Paige isn’t one for the f-word. Usually.

Andrew pokes at her knuckles.

“Hitting is wrong,” Patrick says, one hand on his cheek. It looks like the punch hurt Paige worse than it hurt Patrick; his skin is red, but it doesn’t look like she even popped any blood vessels. Neil will have to teach her how to throw a proper punch. “Did—did no one teach you that?”

“Shut up,” Paige snaps at him.

“Does this hurt?” Andrew asks, pressing her fingers back.

“No. Yes. No.”

“Do you want ice?”

“No, I want to punch him again!”

Natalie mimes wiping away tears. “My own sister. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Shut up!”

“Okay, but don’t you see how _wrong_ this is?” Patrick says, one hand held out to her. “You shouldn’t have to defend grown men.”

“Defend—” Paige chokes on air. “Defend _who_? De—” She flaps her hand. “If Andrew needed defending from _that_ , Neil would’ve killed you himself.”

“Then why—”

Paige lets out a wordless shriek, cutting Patrick off, but it seems to be all she can manage. She looks at Neil, face turning red, and points at Patrick.

“I think what Paige is trying to say,” Neil says, trying to figure out what she’s trying to say, “is that you don’t get to hand your children off to an unknown number of unknown adults for an indefinite period of time, and then march into the life they’ve pulled together and lecture them on danger and abuse.”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking right at the time,” Patrick says.

“And _what were you thinking_?” Paige manages through gritted teeth.

“I was grieving your mother,” he says, “and I wasn’t—I hadn’t been ready to lose her, and I was depressed, and I couldn’t—”

“You don’t get this one,” Natalie says, voice ragged. “We lost our mom. And then our dad _gave us away_ , and we lost _everything_. You don’t get to be so depressed you _abandon your kids_.”

“I know,” Patrick says, and he really is trying, Neil can see it, he’s trying to claw his way out of the hole he’s dug himself. “That’s why I’m here. Now. I’m trying to make it right. I just want the best for you. And—” He very determinedly doesn’t look at Neil or Andrew. Neil understands his initial terror, now, and the nerves; he thinks he’s being brave, walking into the lion’s den to try and save his children. “And it’s dangerous here. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Paige twists, finds herself face to face with Andrew, sizes him up, turns to Natalie, takes one glance at her face, and then turns to Neil, plants her face in his shoulder, and screams into his shirt.

Neil rubs her back. Strokes her hair. He’s not sure if it’s what she needs, but she doesn’t object.

She screams for a long time, and when she stops, he can feel her gasping for breath, trying desperately to fill empty lungs.

Neil looks at Patrick. “You don’t get to do this. Walk in and take them away. You don’t know them.”

“I’m their father.”

“Great. Thanks for them, then. You don’t know them. You haven’t done shit for them in eight years. What the fuck do you mean, you couldn’t find them? You knew exactly where you put them, you should’ve been able to find them just fine. If you’d put in any work at all, you could’ve become a fucking foster parent years ago, you could’ve made your house their home, you could’ve brought them back without them having to get on national television to get back on your radar. But you didn’t. You didn’t do shit. You went and had a couple more kids, instead. And then you flew across the country with no warning, what, so you could surprise the big, bad, dangerous gangster and his abusive husband? So we couldn’t take the kids away before you got here—couldn’t haul them out of your reach just when you’d been told to care about them again? And you thought you could just walk in and walk out, one kid in each hand? You don’t get to have them back. You don’t get to toss kids out when they’re too much to deal with, and bring them back in once you’re feeling a little better, eight years down the line, when they’ve figured out how to live without you. They’re good kids, and they managed that without you, without your help, and in spite of you. And they’re going to grow up into good adults, despite you. It sounds like you figured out eight years ago that you’re a useless joke of a parent. Time to remember that little lesson, and leave my kids alone.”

“And fuck you,” Natalie says, voice tearing at the seams.

“You haven’t even taught them not to hit,” Patrick says. He must be where Natalie gets her anger from, even if his isn’t so well developed; it’s starting to trickle into his voice. “You haven’t told them to watch their language. You haven’t taught them kindness, or—”

“I don’t think our parenting style is any of your business,” Andrew says.

“And _fuck you_ ,” Natalie says again, jabbing a finger at him. “You didn’t raise us long enough to teach us any of that! And it would’ve been useless if you had, because you sent us to houses where it didn’t mean anything. If you’d wanted to teach us something useful, you should’ve taught us how to be silent, how to starve, how to get hit, but the only thing you ever taught me was how to get left behind, you _useless joke of a parent_ —”

Neil stretches out an arm, and Natalie curls into it, shaking, furious, half of that anger the wild, self-hating confusion of an abandoned kid, and Neil looks at Andrew. Andrew understands this. He looks at Neil, and then he looks back at Patrick.

“I think we’ll need their grandma’s phone number,” he says.

Patrick blinks, half shakes his head, and frowns. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

“You’re terrible,” Andrew says, “and my kids don’t like you. But they might want to see their grandparents.”

“I don’t have their phone numbers,” Patrick says. “I have their email addresses.”

“You—don’t know their phone numbers?” Neil asks. This strikes him as being far-fetched.

“They hadn’t spoken to me in eight years. I don’t think they know my number, either.”

“Oh? And why is that?” Natalie asks. “Did they realize you were terrible?”

“I—wouldn’t tell them where you’d gone,” Patrick says, flushing, and it’s the truth.

Paige whirls. “I want their email.”

“You should say _please_ ,” Patrick says, and the whole kitchen freezes.

“Fuck you,” Neil says.

“Fuck you,” Paige adds. “Give me my grandparent’s email addresses _or Natalie will stab you._ ”

Natalie extends a hand, and Andrew puts a knife into it.

“Aim for the throat, right?” She asks, holding the knife loosely, eyes fixed on her target.

“Maybe you should give him a minute,” Neil suggests. “Also, maybe you shouldn’t aim to kill.”

“My aim’s not great, if I aim for the throat I’ll _probably_ hit him in the shoulder or something. That’s survivable.”

“Nat,” Neil says reprovingly.

“What?”

“ _Why do you have a knife_?” Patrick asks, voice rising a couple octaves.

Paige pulls out her phone, turns it on, opens her email app, and steps forward just enough to slide it across the table. “I want the email addresses.”

“You shouldn’t be allowed to play with knives,” Patrick says. “They’re dangerous. What the fuck is wrong with the two of you?” He asks, looking at Neil and Andrew.

Neil stares at him blankly.

“I mean, boredom, for one,” Andrew says. “This farce has been thoroughly played out, I think. You’ve put in a delightful effort, you’ve acted the part quite well, but we’ve gotten what we paid for, and it’s time for you to take your bows.”

“And you don’t get to talk about _dangerous_ ,” Paige spits. “Typy typy. Let’s go.”

“You must know that this isn’t normal,” Patrick says, pleading, hands outstretched. The phone dims. It’s going to shut off, soon, and that will be a mistake. “You deserve parents who won’t make you feel like you need to mess around with weapons.”

Neil goes from nothing to furious in half a second, but he’s still not as fast as Paige.

“ _Where were you_?” She screams at him. “Where were you all the times we got stuck with people who wouldn’t feed us enough? Where were you when we were getting hit for making too much noise? Where were you when Natalie was getting into fights at school, and took the fall for every single one? Where were you when we had to get pads from the school nurse because our foster mom wouldn’t give us enough? Where—where—”

Neil squeezes her shoulder. _Breathe. Breathe._

She hauls in a breath that sounds like it’s ripping her open. “Where were you when I was being raped? And when he tried to make Natalie watch? Where were you when Natalie stabbed him to make him stop? You don’t get—you don’t get to come _in_ here and—and just—you know _nothing_! You don’t get to walk in here and be angry at us for being safe!”

“At least we know where you were when I was ten and trying to find you,” Natalie says, every muscle tense with the effort required to avoid fidgeting with the knife. “You were meeting a very sweet lady and deciding that you should have more kids. It’s good to know what was going on in your life while I was 13 and sneaking a knife upstairs.”

“I didn’t know,” Patrick says quietly. “That’s—that’s horrible. _I didn’t know_.”

“I don’t care,” Paige says. “You were our dad, and you should have kept us. I guess I’m fucking glad you didn’t, though, you useless asshole. Turns out if you’d kept us we’d have learned to keep our mouths shut and would’ve grown up to be sweet little girls taking care of our sweet little baby siblings. Give me back my fucking phone.”

He holds it out to her, and she stares at him.

He slides it across the table.

She turns it back on and pushes it back. “Email addresses. Now.”

“And, Patrick?” Neil says, a smile cutting across his face. “You’ll type in the _correct_ email addresses.”

“Yeah, of course,” he says, paling when he looks at Neil, opening his own phone. He copies the email into Paige’s phone and slides it back across the table to her. She takes it, checks it, and steps backward until she’s standing next to Neil. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, and she grips his hand, like it’s all that’s holding her up.

“I think you’re done here,” Andrew says, “and it’s time for you to get out of my house.”

Patrick stares at him. “I just wanted to see my kids,” he says.

“You saw them,” Andrew says. “You saw them, you fucked them up, and now you can go back home.”

“I don’t want to leave like this,” Patrick says. “I don’t want—”

“You lost the right to want,” Neil says. “You left them once on your terms; now, you’ll leave on theirs. They don’t want you here. You’re going to get out, and we’re going to help them get past this. Goodbye.”

Patrick opens his mouth again, but Andrew steps forward. Patrick tries again—to apologize? To protest?—and Andrew points at the door.

Patrick goes.

Andrew follows him, and shuts, locks, and bolts the door behind him. He rejoins them in the kitchen.

“Can you be hugged yet?” Natalie asks.

Andrew holds out a hand. Natalie goes, but Andrew takes the knife from her, tucks it into his armband. And then he holds out both arms, and she hugs him.

Paige breathes. “I said it,” she says. “I said it.”

It takes Neil a second, but—“You did,” he says. “I’m proud.” She’d said it. She’d spoken about her rape. “Do you need anything?”

“Nutella. And help emailing my grandparents.”

“Are you sure you want to email them right now?”

“Yes,” Natalie says, pulling away from Andrew. “Mom’s parents.”

Andrew heads to the pantry and grabs the Nutella. Natalie grabs spoons. The four of them sit down at the table, pushing their dinner back in favor of Nutella.

“How do I start?” Paige asks, staring at her phone. Natalie crowds her, like there might be something on her phone other than a blank email.

“How about ‘hi’?” Neil suggests.

“What, just, ‘hi, long-lost granddaughters here’?”

“Sure,” Neil says.

Paige types.

Natalie mutters, and points, and Paige types. She hits backspace a lot. He watches her erase the whole message multiple times.

“Maybe you should give them your phone numbers, too,” Neil says.

Paige types.

Ten minutes later, she sits back. “ _Hi, we wanted to introduce ourselves. We’re Paige and Natalie Gray, soon to be Minyard-Josten. We’re your granddaughters, if this is the right email address, and we’re really excited to talk to you._ And then I put our phone numbers. How do I sign it? Should I say _love_? I don’t know them.”

Neil is reasonably certain he’s never written a letter in his life; certainly, he’s never reconnected with long-lost grandparents. “What if you just put your names? Just, a hyphen,” she types as he speaks, “and then your names.”

She stares at it.

Natalie stares at it.

Paige hits send.

“What if it wasn’t good enough?” Natalie says, fingers drumming on the table.

“I can’t look at it anymore,” Paige says. “Can we go watch TV?”

They carry their cold dinner into the living room; Paige and Natalie don’t seem to care, and Andrew and Neil definitely don’t. They all crush together on the couch, Andrew and Neil on the ends, Natalie and Paige between them, without discussion; it just seems like the thing to do.

Andrew turns on the TV. Neil barely sees it. Paige puts her head on his shoulder. Neil puts his head on her head.

He hopes that the rest of their lives won’t be like this. He doesn’t want to be scared of the doorbell.

The relief he feels at still having his kids is overwhelming.

Paige jumps, and they separate—her phone is vibrating. She pulls it out of her pocket, hands shaking, and it’s a request to Facetime from an unknown number.

“Arizona,” Neil says.

“How do you know?”

“Area code. I used to live there.”

Andrew mutes the TV.

“Are they _in_ Arizona?”

“Who knows?” Natalie says, reaching over and tapping _Accept_.

The phone beeps, and Neil gets a good look at two old people. A woman with Natalie’s mouth, Natalie’s nose; a man with Natalie’s eyes. 

“Hi,” Paige says, scooting the phone around to get both herself and Natalie in frame.

“Oh my god,” the woman says. “Oh my god, it’s _you_. It’s—” She covers her mouth and passes the phone off to her husband.

“Paige? Natalie?” He says, squinting at the camera. He adjusts his glasses. “It’s been so long—Natalie, you look so much like your mother—I’m sorry—” the phone tilts, points at a wall, and then the woman takes the phone again.

“I—we don’t know your names,” Natalie says.

“Of course, of course, you were so young—Angela and George. I don’t know if you’re comfortable calling us grandma and grandpa? We’d love that, though. How are you girls doing? We saw you on TV the other day, I recognized you immediately, even all grown up, I screamed, I thought I was going to have a heart attack—is your father there? I suppose he—visited?”

“He was here,” Paige says, “but he left. We don’t like him. Our dads are here, though. This is Neil.” She points the camera at Neil, and he waves. “And this is Andrew.” Andrew lifts two fingers.

“Hi! Oh, no, you didn’t like Patrick? What’d he do? Something awful, I’m sure,” Angela says, in a voice that suggests that she’d be more shocked if he’d done something nice.

“He was—he wanted to take us away. He said it was dangerous here, because Neil and Andrew weren’t raised in nice homes, and he yelled at us for cursing. So we made him give us your emails and then Andrew kicked him out.”

Neil notes the neat omission of the stabbing threats.

Angela shakes her head, but her eyes don’t move—she can’t seem to take her eyes off the screen. “We really thought he’d killed you. Our daughter died, and he didn’t do very well with it at all—of course he didn’t, she was better than he ever deserved—and he would barely let us see you, for two years, we’d try coming over on your birthday and whatnot but you’d always be out. He said we reminded him too much of her. We got a lawyer. We wanted to take you out of there—Natalie, you look just like her, if he didn’t want to see _us_ , what would he do with the two of _you_? We were looking into our options. And then you two were gone. We tried calling up one day, and he said not to bother, because you were gone, and weren’t coming back. We called the cops. We thought he’d killed you. We were waiting for your bodies to turn up. The cops said that you weren’t dead, but that they couldn’t say anything else on the matter, because you were underage and we weren’t your legal guardians, and—we thought you were dead. My girls.”

“We didn’t know,” Natalie says. “We didn’t know we had family who wanted us.”

“We didn’t know how to find you,” Angela says, and then she bursts into tears.

Within seconds, Paige and Natalie are both crying as well, and then George is crying, too.

Neil glances at Andrew. _Should we leave?_

Andrew’s head moves half a millimeter sideways— _no_.

“I’m so glad you watch sports shows,” Paige says, when she gets a breath.

“We’ve taken up exy in the past few years,” George says, sniffling, wiping his eyes with a tissue. “We’re trying to get into new things. It keeps us young.”

“I’m so glad you got adopted by famous people,” Angela says, voice thick. “We’d never have found you otherwise.”

Neil feels an odd sense of the universe as a machine—remembers seeing Natalie’s name on the list, remembers feeling it as a physical twist in his gut, Renee’s old name, his own old name. And if he hadn’t? If they’d picked someone else? If Natalie had behaved, had sat by helpless, hadn’t gotten herself labeled a trouble kid? But everything bad had happened, and had been terrible, and because of it Natalie and Paige are sitting here, talking to their grandparents. 

Andrew had asked Neil, once, if Neil believed in fate. The answer had been no at the time, and it’s still no—fate feels like a get-out-of-jail free card: _Riko was fated to break Kevin’s hand, it wasn’t really Riko’s fault, Riko’s choice._ This strikes Neil as being bullshit. There was no universal entity pushing Riko to violence; that was all Riko.

The idea of everything having a purpose, too, doesn’t feel right. What purpose did Mary’s death serve? Sure, it got Neil out on his own, it gave him the leeway necessary to join the Foxes—but that only makes sense if he’s the center of the world. What purpose did Mary’s death serve for _Mary_? None. Nothing. Senseless.

Luck? Bullshit. For obvious reasons. If luck was a thing, lotteries would be bankrupt.

But—a nudge. An opportunity. A chance, for those willing to take it. A letter, found in a house, telling Kevin who his dad was—a chance, when he found the bravery necessary to take it. A clear shot at the kitchen, and from there to a bedroom—Natalie’s chance to grab a knife and stow it away, and she’d been brave enough to take it. A chance to sign with a team and a teammate that would lead to his death—but Neil had been brave enough, or desperate enough, to take it, and now he reaches across the back of the couch, and Andrew reaches out without hesitation to take Neil’s hand. A chance there, too—a chance to reach out, to open up, a chance for Andrew to choose Neil, to choose this life over a safer one. And Andrew had been brave enough to take it. Maybe the universe just wanted to offer people the chance to be brave. 

“How are you doing in school? Do you have favorite subjects? Do you have a lot of friends?”

“We’re doing really well,” Paige says. “Our dads do our homework with us, they make sure we understand it all. And their friend is really good at history, and he helps us with that. And Andrew’s brother and sister-in-law are both doctors. They help us with bio, when they come over. Natalie’s going to join the running team next year. She and Neil go running almost every day, except last week and this week because of the exy Championships, but they run the whole neighborhood.”

“And people at school are pretty nice,” Natalie chips in. “We have friends. The not-nice people leave us alone.”

“That sounds pretty nice of them to me,” George says.

“It’s because Natalie punched one of them a few months ago,” Paige says proudly. “And then Andrew told the principal off. And then the boy dropped out and moved to Italy to live with his mom’s family.”

Angela’s eyebrows scoot upwards in a perfect match of Neil’s—Neil had expected little less than the idea of Paige cheerfully discussing the events surrounding Henry Warren’s death. “That’s quite the reaction.”

“Rich people,” Natalie says with a shrug. “Anyway, where do you live? Could we come visit? Could we go visit?” She asks, turning to Neil.

“Sure—as long as your grandparents are okay with it,” he says, directing her back to the phone.

“In Arizona—actually,” Angela says, grinning, “we’re in this little town Neil might know, called Millport.”

Neil feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest.

It looks like he’ll be going back there, after all.

“It’s why we got into exy in the first place,” George says. “Everyone here is obsessed with it—they like to take credit for Neil. So when are you going to come visit? You shouldn’t miss school—I don’t want to take up your Christmas break, though, if Neil and Andrew have family—but if you girls could fly here on your own we could pick you up?”

Paige and Natalie pick a parent to stare at.

“Your Thanksgiving break is short,” Andrew says, “But you’ve got two and a half weeks for Christmas. We have to spend the first week with Nicky, but we could go straight from there to Arizona?”

Neil gives him a grateful glance as the kids and grandparents celebrate. It’s probably not a good idea to rush them over as fast as possible for a two day visit—too much, too soon, and not enough time to actually get to know each other. And Neil isn’t prepared to go back to Millport yet “In the meantime,” he suggests, “maybe weekly FaceTime calls?”

This seems to be an absolutely thrilling suggestion, but Neil can’t bring himself to pay attention to the scheduling, the chatter, the way the girls are dodging questions about past families, previous homes. Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand.

Years ago, Neil had made the journey from a beach in California to Millport, Arizona. From his mother’s ashes to a tiny dying town full of dying people. He’d been reborn, there, as Neil Josten. He’d had no idea. It was just another name, another face, and he’d inhabited them the way he had inhabited every name and face before that: Fully, and with every expectation that the day would come when he’d destroy it absolutely, leaving no traces behind.

He supposes that all names are accidental—names aren’t inherent. There’s no reason to feel that _Neil Josten_ is less his name than _Nathaniel Wesninski_. Except that Neil had intended for it to be temporary.

How had _Neil Josten_ been the one to stick? Why is that the one on his jersey, the one on his driver’s license? When Andrew says it, does he know it was chosen at random—not Polish, but also not immediately understood as anything else, not anything where people would expect Neil to have a culture of his own, any kind of cultural background—nothing, no one, not worth any kind of attention. _Josten_ , a derivative of a name that’s originally Dutch, maybe German, but no one knows that. A name and a face intended to be overlooked so it could be discarded without a struggle. Neil Josten was never supposed to survive—someone else was supposed to take his place. What if he’d been dragged back into the world—reborn, running and in pain—earlier? He could’ve been Alex, Chris, Steven, Hollis, Michél, Rudolph—a list of names in varying languages stretches out behind him, and for all that they are _not_ him, neither is Neil, neither is what he has, _Josten_ isn’t the name of any parent or ancestor he’s ever had, and yet, now it’s his, and people call him by that name, act like it _means_ something, act like it’s a useful label under which all of him falls, ignoring the fact that the rest of him is equally a lie—

“I’m gonna get a head start cleaning the kitchen,” Neil says, quietly. The girls flash grins in his direction, too enamored with a story about the plants George is trying to grow in the backyard to pay much attention to him, which is fine. He feels—fragile. If they look at him, they might see through the cracks, might see that Neil Josten doesn’t exist—a mass hallucination, a collective self-deception—and that Nathaniel Wesninski has been too thoroughly absorbed into that lie-to-end-all-lies to provide any kind of core, any kind of reality to who Neil is. He’s struck by the terror that they’ll look at him and see a shell, empty, easily smashed into a thousand pieces. The biggest surprise would be that there would be nothing inside.

He flees into the kitchen, picks up a pot, tries to see it, feel it, real, the texture under his fingertips, the roughness of the back of the sponge against his hand—

What he feels, instead, is a hand on his arm, a warning. And then the rest of Andrew—Andrew’s chest pressed up against Neil’s back, his arms circling Neil. Andrew worms his hands under Neil’s shirt, and for a second, instead of being grounding, the feeling is sickening—if Andrew touches Neil he’ll know, he’ll know that Neil is an illusion, the pipe dream Neil always swore he wasn’t—and then Andrew digs his fingertips into Neil’s hip, and it’s _blunt_. There’s something under his skin. Bones, to be specific. A whole skeleton. He’s a whole person. Neil can feel Andrew’s chest rising and falling, can feel every exhale against the back of his neck, and tries to time his own breath to it, and finds that—he can’t. He’s breathing too fast, too hard, three seconds away from hyperventilating. He closes his eyes, taps his fingers frantically against the pot.

“Breathe, Neil,” Andrew whispers. “Hey. Hey. Neil.”

Neil shakes his head. “Not my name.” Even in his own head, though, it’s all he has—he can’t think of himself as Nathaniel, he’ll lose his mind completely. All he’s got is Neil, and it’s not him, it’s not his name, it’s nothing—

“Abram. Stop it.”

Abram catches himself. Forces out air. Pulls it back in, like it’s been months since he’d had so much as a breath, and forces it back out. All the way out. Until his stomach feels concave, until his lungs have vacuum sealed shut, until taking air in feels good again. He drops the sponge and takes Andrew’s hand instead. _That’s_ real, anyway. Sunrise, Abram, death—real. Neil—not included in that list.

Andrew’s free hand reaches forward, takes the pot from Abram’s hand and sets it back in the sink. Andrew turns Abram to face him.

Who is Neil, really? Not Neil, but Nathaniel. A rose by any other name is lying; it can’t be trusted to be anything but a rose.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking about, Abram,” Andrew says roughly, “but you can fucking stop it, right now. Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, with nothing else to do, nothing else to say, and Andrew pulls him down for a kiss, and Abram feels guilty. He pulls away. “I’m lying to you. I can’t.”

“What are you lying to me about?” Andrew asks.

“I’m not—I’m—I’m not Neil, that name meant nothing to anyone, it didn’t even mean anything to my mom, she didn’t even choose it, _I_ barely chose it, it didn’t mean anything to _me,_ there’s nothing—there’s nothing there, it’s just—”

“You insist you don’t love sweet things, but I’ve watched you eat an entire container of strawberries in one sitting. You eat your pancakes like peanut butter sandwiches. You like books, you’re trying your hand at painting. You take care of your friends, and _only_ your friends, but it’s also not hard to become your friend. You make shitty, shitty jokes, and I love them all. And your name means something to _me_ , anyway. _Also_ , you promised me fewer personality crises.”

“I never _promised_ ,” Abram mumbles, but that one hits him in his stomach. He _had_ said that. He’d said it, and that’s what this is—temporary. This is a temporary problem that he’s having. It won’t last forever. He can be Neil. He can be Neil again.

“You promised, Abram,” Andrew insists. It’s a stretch, but Abram looks at Andrew’s cool, guarded, uncompromising gaze, and almost believes him.

“Can I call in my explanation now?” Paige asks.

Abram looks up, and Andrew turns, and she and Natalie are standing in the doorway, looking reasonably pleased—shocking, given how utterly their dinner had been ruined.

“What explanation?” Abram asks.

“Abram.”

Abram thinks, for a moment, that she’s trying to get his attention—and then he remembers promising to explain the name. “It was my middle name when I was born,” he says. “When I played little league, I went by Abram—that way, I wouldn’t be connected to my dad. At least not easily. My dad never used it. It wasn’t an ego-stroke for him. So it was—unconnected with anything my dad did. With anything I was. I always associated it with the person I pretended to be while playing exy. So I kept it, when the FBI legally made me Neil Josten.”

“Cool. And Andrew uses it… why?”

Abram glances at Andrew, who shrugs his permission. He doesn’t mind Abram talking about this. “When Drake—happened,” Abram says, “It—Andrew was medicated. And the way the drugs worked, they reset him every few seconds—it took _so much_ to piss him off, and even then it was just a matter of waiting a couple minutes until he got bored, or until his meds made him happy again, or until he got distracted. And Bee thought—and I agreed—that the only way for Andrew to recover from Drake would be to get off his meds. He had to. But Riko was still around, and Kevin was—Andrew called him a _full time job_. He couldn’t be alone; the Ravens were never alone, and Kevin was raised like that, being alone was impossible for him. Not to mention, he was still terrified of Riko. And rightfully so, I mean, as it turned out, Riko was trying to get Kevin all alone. So Andrew was going to refuse to go to rehab.

“I told Andrew that I would watch Kevin. I—I asked him to trust me. Andrew pointed out that I was a liar. A liar who didn’t even have a name—he knew Neil was a fake name—and not someone worth trusting. I told him my middle name. Told him to trust Abram.”

“He told me that both he and Kevin would be there when I got back,” Andrew says. “And they were. Abram is—it means cut the bullshit. Trust. Stop hiding, and stand your goddamn ground, and be clear about where that ground _is_.”

“Oh,” Paige says, apparently satisfied with that explanation. “Is it true? That people who are abused, grow up to be abusers?”

The air is practically sucked out of the kitchen altogether. Isn’t that the biggest fear? The greatest terror? That Andrew will forget to ask for a yes and won’t stop to care, that Nathan will crawl out of Abram one day like a snake shedding its skin, that Jean will beat his children, that Kevin will get too drunk one day and John will pay the price. And Patrick had walked straight into their house, looked at two horribly abused children, and tossed them headfirst into that pit.

Neil takes a deep breath. Neil is their dad, not Abram. And he has to be their dad, now. “I can’t speak to the statistics,” he says slowly, “but people who were never abused a day in their life can grow up to be abusers, and people who were nothing but abused can grow up to be kind, wonderful people. Look at Renee. Look at Aaron. Fuck, look at Andrew. Kevin. You don’t know much about Jean, but I do, and he’s come a long, long way. It is—it is _very_ possible to grow up to not be the people who raised you.”

“And—when you look at the people who _do_ repeat the cycle—there’s a lot of factors, there,” Andrew says. “They don’t have any other frame of reference for how to raise kids, or how to handle a crying child, or how to react when a kid gets a bad grade. They don’t have any other frame of reference for how to act with a spouse. They don’t have the will to learn any other way, or to listen to the people they’re mistreating. Often, they don’t like to think that they’ve been mistreated, so they don’t think of it as mistreatment at all— _I got spanked as a child, and I grew up just fine, so I’ll spank my child, too_. They can’t bring themselves to think of their parents as anything less than perfect, and they can’t bear to consider the fact that they were beaten down. Breaking that cycle—it takes willingness to look at the way you were raised, and agree that it was bad, and that you were treated terribly. And you need to have the imagination required to think that there might be another way of treating people, another way of interacting with people, and then you need to practice that. And that comes easier to some than to others. But you two seem to be headed down that path already. I don’t think you have much to worry about.”

“Yeah, well, the first thing I did when he upset me was punch him,” Paige says, voice wavering.

“A 14-year-old girl punching an adult man, who isn’t even hurt enough to stop talking for 30 seconds, is not abuse,” Neil says. “Abuse isn’t just physical harm—it’s a pattern, it requires power dynamics. If you were his boss, that might flip the power dynamic, but as is—that wasn’t abuse.”

“Sure,” Paige says doggedly, “but I’ll grow up, and keep doing the same shit, and eventually I’ll do it to someone who _is_ under my power—”

“Why do you think you’ll keep doing this as you grow up?” Neil asks.

“What’s _stopping_ me?”

“You,” Andrew says simply. “You are stopping yourself. It takes work. It takes therapy, and practice, and patience from everyone else, but—you don’t have to be like the people who hurt you. You don’t have to let yourself be like them.”

“Pretty much all of us had to deal with this,” Neil says. “I was 18 before I ever felt guilt about anyone except my mom—I didn’t care who got beaten or killed, as long as I was alive. I had to learn how to care about other people’s lives. Renee, Allison, Dan, Nicky, Kevin, Aaron—all of them were raised shitty, all of them had to figure out a way to grow up differently, to treat people differently than they were treated. And if you’re worried about it—we know a therapist who’s pretty good at helping.”

“ _You_ did it without a therapist,” Paige says, sounding oddly accusatory.

Neil shrugs. “I do like to say that, don’t I. But, first off, I had a lot of friends who were as fucked up as I was, and they weren’t terrible people, and that makes a difference. I also had friends who were _not_ nearly as fucked up as I was, and who were able to model kindness for me, and that helps. And _also_ , I have a husband who has been in therapy for pretty much the whole time I’ve known him. And sometimes he repeats what he was told. And sometimes—with Andrew’s permission, obviously—Bee would talk to me about what Andrew was dealing with, what I could expect, some ways I might react to it. And when we started talking about fostering, Andrew talked to Bee about _that_ , and brought home her thoughts on raising kids. So no, I have never actually sat down in a room with Bee and pulled apart my own particular traumas and fears. But I have been therapized by proxy.”

“Is therapized a word?” Natalie asks.

“No,” Neil says.

“So—when were you done?” Paige asks.

“With what?” Neil asks.

“Working on not being like them?”

Neil and Andrew snort.

“I _still_ go to therapy,” Andrew points out.

“A couple weeks ago I ran to Kevin to have a mild breakdown,” Neil says. “We had a little heart-to-heart about being absolutely terrified of hurting our respective children. When Thea told him she was pregnant, he managed to be happy for two hours before he came _here_ and got so drunk that by the time the next morning came around he was _still_ drunk. For exactly this reason. He was terrified he’d hurt John, or Thea, or he’d cause Thea to miscarry, or—” Neil shrugs. “You name it.”

“Then—why—it’s just _forever_? You have to work on this _forever_?”

Neil and Andrew shrug.

“Worth it,” Neil says.

Andrew nods decisively. “I mean, not—Neil isn’t having daily breakdowns. Kevin is doing just fine. I go to therapy for many reasons, not just because I don’t want to be like the people who hurt me. But it’s like getting over an addiction. I think that’s what Kevin compares it to—like getting over alcoholism. Always there, a little bit. You know better than to look at it too hard, or to think about it too hard, and you know how to get your mind off it when it’s overwhelming—but it’s always there. A little bit. Just a little bit. Brains learn fast. They make patterns, pathways. If you were shown that it’s okay to take, and to take whatever you want—you learn that, and your brain makes a pattern out of that, and wants to fit into it. You have to—make new patterns. Make new pathways. React with compassion to your kid misbehaving, and every time after that, it’s a little easier. And it’s not fucking fair. You know that, and I know that. We’re not even the ones who did this shit in the first place—why should we have to do all the goddamn work? But you can give up on the grounds that it’s too hard, you can refuse on the grounds that it’s not fair, or you can suck it up and do what you have to do so that you can live with the love of your life and adopt a couple kids and make friends with people who actually like you and be happy.”

“I’m not _arguing_ ,” Paige snaps.

“I know. I’m sorry I turned that into a lecture.”

Paige is so shocked she takes a step back.

“All we’re saying,” Neil says, “is that it’s work, but it’s worth doing, and we’re happy to help you do it.”

Paige nods. She lifts her shoulder, rubs her cheek against it, a gesture Neil has never seen from her before.

Natalie looks nervous.

Neil catches her eye, but as soon as she does, she wipes her face blank. “Wanna go upstairs?” She asks Paige.

Paige nods, Natalie waves to Neil and Andrew, and, without waiting for them to wave back, turns and follows Paige up the stairs.

“So what do you think that was about?” Neil asks quietly.

“Which part? The part where Natalie looked terrified, or the part where Paige walked upstairs without saying a word?”

“Both.”

“No clue. When do you think we’ll find out?”

Neil hums thoughtfully. “I give it 24 hours.”

“That many? I vote 12.”

Neil holds his hand out and Andrew shakes it.

“And how about you?” Andrew asks.

“Me?”

“Are you still going by Abram?”

“No, I’m Neil again.”

“Going by Neil,” Andrew says.

“What?”

“Try saying _going by_ Neil instead of _being_ Neil. _I want to be Neil for as long as I can_ ,” Andrew quotes. “ _Can I really be Neil again_? You’re not _being_ a different person, you’re just going by a different name. You don’t have to assign separate personhood to every name you’ve ever used. You can just be _you_ , and you happen to have had many names and nicknames in the past.”

Neil mulls that over.

“And you said it yourself. _I am myself_. You’re the one who said that, when you were having your Nathaniel crisis. You’re not two separate people; you’re one person who has gone by many names.”

“That’s true,” Neil allows. He _had_ said that. _Going by Neil._ It feels better than _being_ Neil, anyway. Neil Josten. Quiet pushover. Silently accepting Kevin’s yelling, Seth’s insults, Andrew’s pushing. Neil Josten, he-who-terrifies-reporters. But none of that is quite true, quite real, whereas he himself is.

“If you have a jar full of cookies, and you change the label from _cookies_ to _cake_ , it’s still full of cookies.”

“Sure, but then it’s lying.”

Neil watches Andrew rush to fix that. “Is it? Words are fake. If you label some fries _chips_ you might just be British, not a liar.”

Neil sighs. “I should be grateful. I always thought I’d die a lie. The FBI let me be the person I wanted to be. A real boy.”

There’s silence for a second.

“Well, that’s a stack of bullshit,” Andrew says. “Is your brain smooth? _You_ aren’t a lie. You _exist_. Just because you weren’t telling people the name you were born with doesn’t make you _fake_.”

“You said—”

“I _know_ what I said,” Andrew snaps. “I was having the definition of a bad day, and I was taking it out on you, and I said some stupid shit. People go by names they weren’t given at birth all the time. Jean became Jean Knox, no one accused him of lying. Actors change their names all the time. Are you going to go insist on deadnaming Riley because that’s the name she was born with? What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Shut the fuck up. You’re not a goddamn pipe dream, you’re a person whose driver’s license happened to be fake. You’re not a liar, you were a survivalist, and now you get to be alive. You always _were_ real, people just have to acknowledge it now.”

Neil breathes. Maybe getting ranted at shouldn’t be comforting, but it’s Andrew. And if there’s anyone Neil can trust, it’s Andrew. “Okay. Okay. I’m better now.”

“Not lying to me?”

“No. Not lying to you.”

Andrew moves to stand in front of him. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, but still, Andrew goes slow, careful, gentle, threading his thumbs through Neil’s belt loops, pressing him against the counter. Neil wraps his arms loosely around Andrew’s shoulders. It’s—familiar. This is familiar. Whoever he is, whatever name he’s going by, this is his. Neil rests his forehead against Andrew’s. That’s all he wants.

“Whatever it is, we’ll handle it,” Andrew says quietly.

“Whatever what is?”

Andrew shrugs. “Your shit. Paige’s shit. Natalie’s shit. My shit.”

“Someone get the plunger.”

“Gross.”

“You’re the one who said _shit_ four times in a row.”

“What are you, the language police?”

“No, that’s you. I’m more like the language deputy.”

“Let me see your badge.”

“Don’t have it on me. Sent it out for cleaning.”

Andrew snorts. “Couldn’t just use windex and a paper towel?”

“Only the best for _my_ badge.”

“And what’s involved in this cleaning process?”

“Holy water.”

“Holy water?”

“The best I could come up with on short notice. Thank you for trusting me.”

Andrew hums. “You have earned it, repeatedly.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“We have to clean up the kitchen.”

“Yeah.”

They don’t move.

“Dance with me?” Neil asks.

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees, stepping backwards, tugging Neil out into the middle of the kitchen. They don’t bother rearranging their arms; Neil is comfortable as is, and it’s easy for Andrew to just—extend his fingers, and hold onto Neil’s hips. They sway in place, do some turning. It’s reminiscent of every movie Neil has ever seen in which high schoolers or middle schoolers dance, albeit with less music.

Eventually, they drift to a stop.

“I remember you,” Andrew whispers, and it’s somehow the strangest thing Neil has heard all day. “I remember you, from the day Kevin dragged me out to fucking Millport to right now, and right now, and right now. Even when you don’t know who you are, I do. I do it on purpose.”

Neil swallows. He bends to rest his forehead on Andrew’s shoulder, comforting and sturdy, unyielding. Isn’t that what he’d wanted? Proof of the truth of his existence?

The answer, Neil finds, is yes. It terrifies him, that someone has such a perfect, inarguable record of the past decade of his life. He should have spent it hidden, out of public view. He should have changed names, faces, personalities, until it would be nearly impossible to trace him from one end of the decade to the next unless he fucked up. But—

But when the person who has that record is Andrew, Neil finds that he can’t care. The knowledge feels like being held. The fact of his existence is in good hands. “Thank you,” he whispers.

A few minutes later—when his neck is starting to hurt, he’s getting old—he picks his head up and kisses Andrew on the cheek. “You’ve gotten really good at being comforting, these past two or three years.”

“Found someone worth comforting.”

“Oh? In the past two or three years? Who was it?”

Andrew pokes Neil in the ribs. “Oh, shut up. I had to look Bee in the eye and ask how to comfort other human beings. I once told her I wanted to blow you and it was less embarrassing. I couldn’t even bring myself to say _I want to be able to comfort my husband, like how other human beings treat each other?_ I had to say _I’ve noticed that other people sometimes provide each other with comfort, by using their words, and I don’t know how to do that_. We ended up spending a whole two sessions talking about passive aggressiveness and asking for help and allowing myself to be vulnerable before she ever got around to my original non-question.”

Neil laughs.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Andrew breathes, an unexpected amount of relief in his voice.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not used to you going so long without smiling anymore,” Andrew says. “When did that happen?”

“Remember when we got back from Baltimore? And you hadn’t spoken in hours? I was so distressed by that. You weren’t a talker, but you talked to _me_. Why weren’t you _talking_ to me? It was upsetting.”

“This is privilege, I think. The expectation that we will be treated as though we are special.”

“Well, _unlike_ regular privilege, I think I’m going to extend this one to you,” Neil says as he gets them swaying again. Not really dancing. Certainly not really waltzing. But moving. “You _are_ special.”

“Sap.”

“As Natalie said. We are two maple trees.”

“I can’t tell if she’s my daughter or yours,” Andrew muses. “She’s got your penchant for being fucking rude, but my way with words.”

“I would argue that I _also_ have a way with words. And also, that you are _also_ fucking rude.”

“Literally this morning you said _you’m love me_.”

“That’s _a_ way with words. I never said it was a _good_ way with words. I don’t think you can argue that I took the way less traveled, with those particular words. And I notice that you didn’t refute the accusation of rudeness.”

“You sound like a politician.”

“I’d be real bad at politics. I would be _so_ bad at politics.”

“On the contrary. I think you’d have some scandals, for sure, but at least they’d mostly be garden-variety _here’s Neil Josten insulting his colleagues for three hours straight_ kind of scandals. I think you’ve talked members of the mafia into doing what you want; you could probably get some politicians moving. Maybe that’s your post-exy career. Senator Neil Josten.”

Neil grimaces. “No thanks. D.C. Is too close to Baltimore for my liking, first of all. Second of all, I’d have to be nice most of the time, and that’s a lot more than I want. Although I _will_ say I wouldn’t have cheating scandals, dick pic scandals, domestic abuse scandals, rape scandals—”

“You’re already ahead of the curve, see?” Andrew says, humor softening his eyes.

Neil kisses his nose, his forehead, the corner of his eye. They are not yet undone. They aren’t finished. They haven’t been broken. They still have their kids. They still have each other. They may have some fun new problems, but they can handle those.

Starting with the kitchen.

“Time to clean?”

Andrew nods agreement.

So they do.

Neil gestures Andrew towards the living room, and then he heads upstairs. He knocks on the girls’ door. “We’re going to watch TV. Do you want to join us? You can decide what we watch,” he offers.

“No thank you,” Natalie calls.

“All right. Do you need to talk about anything?”

“No.” Natalie again. No Paige.

“Is Paige okay?”

“Yeah.”

Neil considers.

He won’t break down the door. He won’t pick the lock—they might have the deadbolt thrown, first of all, but second, he won’t do that. It’s a bad thing to do to them. He knows better than that.

He doesn’t know what else to do.

Something is wrong. Something is extremely, obviously wrong. He has only a vague idea of what it might be. The kids won’t talk to him, and they won’t talk to anyone else, and Neil isn’t a mindreader. He isn’t a miracle worker. He’s only so good with Andrew because he knows Andrew so well. He doesn’t know exactly what problems the girls have, or how they cope with them. What he _does_ know: They have never had control, or love, or privacy, or stability, or—or much of anything at all, really. And again, someone’s trying to take away everything they’ve built up.

Knocking down the door and demanding that they talk to him won’t help. “You know where to find us if you need us,” he says.

“Yep,” Natalie calls.

“We love you. Good night, if we don’t see you again today.”

“Good night,” Natalie says.

Neil heads back downstairs, stepping on the creaky stair. He shrugs at Andrew. Andrew shrugs back.

Neil situates himself on the couch; Andrew sticks his head in Neil’s lap. They turn on whatever’s on. Neil doesn’t care. He has Andrew’s head in his lap and his hand in Andrew’s hair. Every so often, Andrew’s phone buzzes—Renee, Maria, Kevin, the group chat titled Roland McDoland’s Hamburgler Friends. Neil glances down at the noise, the lighting-up of the screen, and then he puts his eyes back on the TV while Andrew answers. There’s a warm, fuzzy feeling in his stomach, one that says: _Andrew isn’t alone_.

It’s not a thought he entertains often, but Neil knows full well that if he were to die, it would destroy Andrew. Neil sees Andrew’s friends as something of an insurance policy: They will hold Andrew up. They will get him to a place where he can decide not to die.

Neil runs his fingers through Andrew’s hair. Andrew never stops him from doing this, and Neil luxuriates in it, and it’s much nicer to think about that than about the possibility of Neil’s own death.

Eventually, Andrew scoots onto his back so he can stare up at Neil.

Neil winks at him. “Getting my best angles.”

“How do _you_ know about angles?”

“Allison.”

“When she and Renee move down here, Al’s gonna get you into Instagram.”

“She can try.”

“You have not, in the past, been known to put up resistance.”

Neil waggles his head side to side. “Is this a concern you have, or do you have insider info?”

“Are you avoiding the problem of your refusal to put up more than a token resistance to people making you do shit you don’t like? The exception, of course, being me buying you clothes, which you did throw a fit about.”

“You can probably buy me clothes again,” Neil decides. “But I _do_ want veto power—”

“So _Maria_ can buy you clothes and _Allison_ can put you on Instagram but I can’t—”

“Now, I _know_ you haven’t forgotten the incident _preceding_ that decision—”

“Just buy you some—”

“Holes, you wanted to buy me _holes_ , which, what’s the point—”

“They were _tastefully ripped_ —”

“If I’m not going to Eden’s I don’t—”

“We can go to Eden’s—”

“That is _not_ the issue, and you know it—”

“A crop top or two—”

“The most _nonsensical_ clothing choice, what’s the weather like where you want your shoulders covered but not your _stomach_ —”

“It’s about _fashion_ , Neil, and also, about you being _really_ hot—”

“And at the _time_ I was not as _open_ about my scars—”

“For just around the house—”

“Which brings me back to the original issue _whichisthat_ you were not buying me those clothes for _Eden’s_ —”

“But—”

Neil puts his hand over Andrew’s mouth. Andrew’s eyes are so bright. “I am _not_ letting you replace all my perfectly good, weather-appropriate clothes with Eden’s rejects.”

Andrew lifts Neil’s hand off his mouth. “Just one crop top?”

“For _what purpose_?”

“For wearing with your new jeans? And makeup?”

Neil closes his eyes.

“You’re blushing,” Andrew says.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“No problem.”

“When the fuck did I start _blushing_?”

“January 1, your senior year of college, when I changed my mind about the pointlessness of a new year’s kiss.”

“Jesus.”

“Now, to be fair, you may have blushed _before_ then, that’s just the first time I saw you blush.”

“Great. Anyway, if _I_ get all dressed up, you have to too.”

Andrew looks taken aback. “What—is there something you want me to wear?”

Neil shrugs. “Maybe I’ll just make Maria take _you_ shopping.”

“What have I done, Neil? What have I done to you? Can I make it up to you in some way? What have I done to deserve this punishment—”

Neil laughs so hard he snorts. “It wasn’t that bad, she knew _exactly_ what she wanted. And she’s _your_ friend.”

“Oh. Also. She likes that band—Red December.”

“Who? Oh! From Skin Deep?”

“Yeah, she’s gonna try to talk Riley into making their concert a double date.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Neil watches Andrew. Watches the way the flickering light from the TV hits his face. He’s been doing this for years—ever since that day they sat on a bus and Neil watched the sunlight touch Andrew’s face and _felt_ something he didn’t understand. Love. Adoration. The desire for his fingers to be what touched Andrew’s face, instead of the sun. The desire to never look at anything else. The desire to crawl inside Andrew’s bones and make his home there.

“Staring,” Andrew whispers.

“You are, too.”

“Am I not allowed?”

“Am _I_ not allowed?”

Andrew reaches up, puts two fingers under Neil’s chin, and pushes his face up. “Put on Jeopardy.”

“You’re closer to the remote.”

“ _You’re_ closer to the remote.”

Neil sighs. “If I reach for the remote, I will suffocate you with my stomach.”

“There are worse ways to go,” Andrew says, but he grabs the remote and changes the channel.

They watch Jeopardy. They give up on waiting for the kids, lock up the house, and head upstairs to bed.

Neil can’t do anything for the kids, and worrying helps no one. He curls up with Andrew and closes his eyes, and as good as he’s always been at hiding, sleep still finds him.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the aftermath
> 
> tw trauma, discussions of rape and sex

They barely see the girls the next morning.

They barely see them, and Paige doesn’t say goodbye. Natalie grabs granola bars, and then they rush out the door, Natalie insisting that they’re running late.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew shrugs.

Neil shrugs back.

What are they going to do? Ground the girls until they talk? Stare them down? Sit in their room until they decide to chat? Anything Neil and Andrew try is guaranteed to backfire—invading Natalie and Paige’s space will make them feel like they have none, trying to force them to talk will make them lie, dragging them down for family meals and movie nights will make them feel like they have no control. The best way to get Natalie and Paige to open up is to let them feel like they have control over how and when they do that, and to make them feel safe enough to do so.

Neil knows this.

Neil wants to throttle someone.

Can’t the kids just tell Neil and Andrew what’s wrong? Neil can’t fix what’s broken unless he knows what’s wrong. He can’t do _anything_. He can’t help, they won’t let him be there for them, they won’t let him even get _close_.

“What?” Andrew asks as they get in the car.

“What, what?”

“I don’t know, but I asked first. Just—” Andrew waves a hand at Neil. “What?”

Neil waves a hand right back. “Who are they close to? Do you think I could manipulate Sandy into manipulating Nat and Gij into therapy?”

“ _What_?”

“It’s how I got you and Aaron into therapy, could I repeat it? I mean, I don’t even care if they talk to _me_ , I just want them to talk to _someone_ , they need it.”

“For someone who hates therapy, you really are right up there driving the therapy train.”

“Am I wrong?”

“No, not at all, but _you_ could probably use some therapy.”

“Sure, but I’m not going. Anyway, how are you holding up?”

“Changing the subject.”

“Maybe. How are you holding up?”

“Holding up what? Am I Atlas?”

“I’ll take some of that world off your shoulders,” Neil offers. “Between the two of us, it should be light enough to carry.”

Andrew glances at Neil and squeezes his hand. “You know, I used to be able to go on these nice, long, poetic rants, just, the most dramatic—”

“ _Is your spine the spine of the righteous_?”

“Yeah. And then these days, I’m ready to give a nice little speech about how few problems I have, and how maybe you should go to therapy like I do, and instead, you say the sweetest fucking shit, and I’m forced to shut up.”

“You can give your speech, I want to hear it.”

“No, it’s no fun now.”

“No, no, I can react to it. Am I supposed to glare? I can glare. I can glare _so_ well. I can give you a glare like you haven’t seen since before we started dating. I can give you a glare that would make Natalie shut herself in her room out of embarrassment.”

“You’re using up all the fun speech energy.”

“Sorry, sorry, hang on, let me charge up—” Neil takes a second, tries to recall the sheer annoyance he’d once felt when Andrew had opened his mouth, and turns it on Andrew.

“Oh, boy,” Andrew says. “Wow, that’s quite the glare—”

“I can’t keep it up for long, are you going to give your speech or no?”

“Nah, I forgot what I was going to say.”

Neil turns bodily in his seat to give Andrew a single raised eyebrow.

Andrew glances over. “Oh, _there_ ’s the glare. Anyway, am I Atlas? Do I hold the weight of the world on my shoulders, that you must take it from me? I wouldn’t advise it, given _you_ seem so unwilling to trust anyone to take the weight from _your_ shoulders—”

“Oh, that’s not true, I trust you—” Neil zips his lips when Andrew gives him a look.

“—anyway, whereas _I_ go to therapy weekly to help me take apart whatever’s weighing me down, you just kinda hang onto it. I really lost steam when you started being all loving and trusting.”

Neil snorts. “Sorry.”

“I guess that’s my burden to carry.”

“Well, I won’t take any of _me_ off your shoulders, but you _did_ have to deal with a lot yesterday and _then_ you had to comfort me and _then_ you had to comfort Paige, so how are you holding up?”

Andrew hums. And then he goes silent.

Neil settles back in his seat, rubs his thumb over the the joints of Andrew’s, and waits. Either Andrew will talk or he won’t.

“I resolved,” Andrew says slowly, “to remember that losing a person doesn’t make that relationship a mistake.”

“Oh?” Neil manages.

“That even if Paige and Natalie _did_ want to go live with their father, it wouldn’t have made fostering a mistake. Wouldn’t have made fostering _them_ a mistake. Getting used to them and enjoying their company and forming an emotional attachment to them was not a failure on my part. It would have been worth it. Even if, at the end, we didn’t have two daughters to show for our effort, the effort would have been worth it. Even if they would have been happier elsewhere, that wouldn’t have meant that—that we weren’t good enough. I was failing, fucking _miserably_ , but I was trying.”

“See, I—” Neil starts, stops, tries again. “I was sitting there, understanding _exactly_ how you’ve felt, in the past. I got it. I understood why you didn’t want to open up to people.”

“What, never been abandoned?” Andrew asks drily.

“No, actually,” Neil says, drawing a glance from Andrew. “I mean, I always did the vanishing. I never did any of the emotional connecting. The only person I ever lost was my mom, and that fucked me up plenty, but it’s not like she was—we weren’t _close_ , we were just— _physically_ close, and it’s not like she _left_. But—I get it, now, sort of. And now I’m talking about me instead of talking about you—”

“We can talk about you, I like talking about you.”

“Me too, but actually, we’re talking about you. So you were trying to be happy that it happened instead of sad that it’s over?”

“Fuck you, that’s exactly what Bee said.”

Neil laughs, stifles the urge to say _that’s why I don’t need therapy_ , and waits.

“Yes. I was. And it wasn’t going great. And I think we need to prepare to do some murder. Just in case.”

“In case they leave?”

“No, in case he comes _back_.”

“Ah.”

“Did you think I was suggesting we murder him if our kids liked him better?”

“That struck me as being unlike you, which is why I asked for clarification.”

“Ah.”

“So your mental state is _actively prepping for murder_?”

“More _passively_ , I’d say. As it turns out, having kids has only increased my protective instincts.”

“An unforeseen development.”

“Exactly. So anyway, I’m holding up just fine, but anyone who looks at them wrong for the next couple days might get knifed. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” Neil agrees. “Of course.”

Andrew kisses the back of Neil’s hand.

They do more blindfolded exy that day. They’re not very good at it. Neil has hope, though—Frank and Athena are rapidly learning to master the art of playing the way Denver had, so maybe they’ll be able to ditch the blindfolds tomorrow or Wednesday, and actually play the way they’ll have to play against Denver.

Andrew doesn’t kill himself to play better, which is a relief. He _does_ rebound the ball directly at everyone’s feet, which is unfortunate, all the way up until Riley looks at Neil, points at Andrew, and stomps her foot, a shockingly Maria move. Maria laughs at her.

Neil looks at Andrew. “Please?” He says in German.

He may be halfway across the court, but he would swear he could hear Andrew sigh.

Neil gets the team moving again, and Andrew doesn’t rebound it at their feet anymore.

They go home for dinner, and it’s bad.

Paige doesn’t come down.

“She’s napping,” Natalie explains. “Anyway, how was work?”

Neil can see it in her eyes, even as she says it—she had no idea that was going to come out of her mouth until she’d said it. She’s trying to change the subject, trying to take their attention off Paige.

Neil considers, for a moment, asking about Paige. He discards that idea immediately as a bad one, one that’ll make Natalie defensive, frantic to keep whatever secret they’re keeping. He considers working the conversation around to Paige, and discards that, too, because he doesn’t have that level of subtlety or that level of tact. He considers talking about exy, as Natalie has ostensibly asked, but—Andrew doesn’t want to talk about exy all dinner long, and Neil is fairly certain that Natalie doesn’t want to, either. “Andrew was aiming at our feet for a solid three hours,” he says instead. “And then Riley looked at me, pointed at him, and _stomped her foot at me_.”

Natalie smiles. It’s strained, but it’s a smile. “She didn’t strike me as the type to throw a tantrum.”

“No, but _Maria_ absolutely is, and I think it’s rubbing off on Riley. They decided to go out for dinner, today, so they actually got showered and dressed instead of just fake-showered and sweatpants. So Riley’s there in, you know, something nice, I guess. There was a suit jacket involved—”

“She was wearing a suit jacket,” Andrew says. “And tapered pants. Did you even look at her?”

“Yeah, but then Maria was right next to her in a black tutu, so I mean, I was distracted. I didn’t know tutus were goth?”

“They can be, if they’re black, and if you’re wearing fishnets, which Maria was. Anyway, that skirt is brand new, she was just texting me about it. And before you ask—no, they weren’t going anywhere nice, they were going to Applebee’s.”

Natalie grins, blinks, and then twitches a quarter turn to her left before she realizes that the reason why Paige isn’t picking up the conversation is because she isn’t there.

There’s a void there, and Natalie can’t fill it, and she looks flatly terrified, and Neil is filled with dread. “Is Paige all right?” He asks. He can’t help it. What if she’s sick? What if she’s _dead_? That’s ridiculous. She’s not dead. Of course she’s not.

“Yeah,” Natalie lies.

Neil sighs. “Natalie.”

“Yeah?”

“Look. You don’t have to—we won’t go up there if she doesn’t want us to, and we won’t make her come down here. But—is she sick? Is she—is she hurt?”

Natalie shoves a spoonful of rice into her mouth.

“We can wait until you’re done,” Andrew says.

She grimaces at him, swallows her food, and says—“No. She’s not, like, _dying_. But—just—look, she’s not okay, but just—don’t go up. She doesn’t want you there.”

“Natalie,” Neil says softly, because that last part was a lie. It was added in the moment. A burst of inspiration. The first part—that was true. The _she doesn’t want you there_? Neil doesn’t buy it. “Do you want to ask her, maybe, if we could help her?”

“She doesn’t want you there,” Natalie says, and now she’s irritated, irritated the way bad liars are when called out on their lies, so Neil backs off.

He babbles about whatever comes to mind—Kevin’s failed blindfolded throw, Riley aiming _perfectly_ at Clark’s head, Disney movies—and Natalie and Andrew help him out where they can. He’s not sure why any of them are bothering. Pretty clearly, all three of them want nothing more than for this to be over, but if he stops talking, they’re all going to be miserable.

So he digs deep, he channels Nicky and Allison and Katelyn and Matt, and he makes their time pass. And when he and Andrew get in the car, Andrew turns to Neil and takes Neil’s face in his hands. “You are a god,” he says. “An angel. I have no idea how the fuck you managed to talk for that long, but I’m going to get you a trophy for it.”

Neil grins. “I had good teachers.”

Andrew kisses Neil on the cheek, backs out of the driveway, and gets them on their way. “So are we going to talk about the fact that it really sounds like Paige is a rotting corpse?”

“She’s not, Natalie wasn’t lying about _that_ ,” Neil says. “But yes, that was also my worry.”

“I love being married to a human lie detector. What part _was_ she lying about?”

“That Paige doesn’t want us up there.”

The car slows. Andrew glances at Neil.

“I’m not saying that, necessarily, Paige was begging for Natalie to send us up there. I’m just saying that Natalie was lying. It’s possible that Natalie just hadn’t asked, or that Paige hadn’t said anything about it at all, or that she’d made some comment about how maybe it would be nice to see us and Natalie thought it would be a bad idea. I don’t think we should turn around and go barging in, though.”

The car speeds back up. “One of these days, we’re going to have to do something invasive for their safety,” Andrew says. He sounds absolutely miserable about it.

“Is it better to ignore that so we won’t do it unless absolutely necessary, or talk about it now so we won’t fuck it up?”

Andrew mulls it over for a moment, and then makes a noise that reminds neil of the beep a computer makes when it completes a task. “We already did it. When the Moriyamas were here, and he shot at us—I grabbed Natalie, picked her up and moved her without asking, you patted Paige down without asking. We already fucking did it.”

“Oh. Shit.”

They sit in silence for a minute, while Neil contemplates apologizing to the kids for that. “Okay. So. If their lives are in danger, we do what has to be done. If not, we give them their space.”

“Agreed,” Andrew says.

Neil squeezes his hand. “Hey, Drew?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They go back to work, and they work. Neil is blindfolded, and he takes shots at the goal, and when he takes his blindfold off, he finds that Andrew isn’t training with the others. He’s off on his own, doing familiar drills he’s never had to do—Raven drills. For strikers. Aiming for the same spot on the wall. Neil glances at Kevin, who shrugs—this wasn’t his idea.

Neil grabs cones and sets them out in a line.

Andrew turns and looks at the cones, and looks at Neil. “You play on instinct,” he says. “Come here.”

Neil goes to stand by him.

“Hit the cone with the ball, so that it rebounds back into your net.”

Neil considers asking, but Andrew’s secrets are his own. “Do I have to hit the cone? If the ball doesn’t rebound, I have to go get it.”

“No, you can try on the wall, but the base of the wall.”

It takes four or five tries, but eventually, he manages it, thoroughly aware of Andrew’s eyes on him the entire time. _I remember you_ , he’d said. _I remember you_. Neil hits the wall so hard it rebounds directly at his own head. Andrew grabs it out of the air, one-handed, saving Neil humiliation and further increasing the speed at which Neil’s heart is beating, and then Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil, which doesn’t help. Neil shrugs at him. “I love you a lot,” he says, by way of explanation.

“You were thinking about this while throwing a ball at a wall?”

“Yup,” Neil says cheerfully, taking the ball back. “So when am I going to need to do this?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a use for it,” Andrew says. “But it’s more for my own edification.”

“How does me doing this help you?”

“Can’t watch myself, unless I hurl a ball at a mirror, which I think we can all agree is a bad idea. You have a learning curve that is either a horizontal line or a vertical line, and you tend towards the latter when it comes to exy, so if I can make _you_ do it, then I can learn from you, probably with minimal time wasted.”

Neil grins at him. “Plus, you get to stare at me uninterrupted for several minutes.”

“Well, yeah. My turn. Go back to scrimmaging, or whatever the jocks are doing.”

Neil gives him the ball. “You are also a jock, you know.”

“No, I get paid to play a sport, that’s different.”

Neil opens his mouth to respond, and then remembers he’s getting paid to scrimmage or whatever the jocks are doing, and settles for brushing Andrew’s hand on the way past him.

And that’s what Andrew does for the rest of the night. When Kevin tries to drag him back into the group, Andrew flips him off. When Kevin turns to Neil for backup, Neil throws an arm around Kevin’s shoulders—a tough move, given their height difference—and turns him away. “Trust him,” Neil says, and it works. Kevin throws his hands in the air, grumbles a bunch, and leaves Andrew alone.

And then they head home.

It’s late. It’s 11 at night. They’ve been practicing all day.

Neil is torn. Leave the kids be, and wait until tomorrow to deal with whatever’s going on? Or just—handle it tonight? He wants, badly, to leave it until tomorrow, never mind that he’ll be more tired tomorrow than he is today, never mind that leaving it until tomorrow is born of a purely selfish impulse. He’s just—tired.

But the front door swings open before Neil and Andrew get there.

“Help her?” Natalie says.

Neil’s heart kicks into overdrive. “She’s upstairs?”

Natalie nods, and steps back to let them inside.

Neil and Andrew jog up the stairs, stepping on the creaky floorboard. Neil feels a little bad about leaving Natalie downstairs alone, but—he can only be in one place at a time.

The girls’ bedroom door is closed. Neil knocks.

Nothing.

He knocks again. “Paige?”

He hears a muffled “What?”

“Can Andrew and I come in?”

“Sure,” she says.

She doesn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about it. Andrew and Neil shrug at each other—there’s only so much they can do through a door. The doorknob is unlocked, and the door opens to reveal Paige—not dead, not sick. She’s sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, wrapped up in her comforter, to the point where she’s shaped like a cone. Neil can see the tip of her nose, poking out of the hole she’s left for her face.

He and Andrew move to stand in front of her, still a solid four feet away. “Can we sit?” Neil asks.

Paige nods.

Neil and Andrew sit. They exchange a glance. Paige looks like shit—what they can see of her, anyway. Absolutely miserable. Still not dead, though, which is better than expected.

“Paige—can you talk to us?” Neil asks. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

Paige’s jaw twitches.

Andrew and Neil wait.

“I just—I just—I keep thinking about—about what my dad said,” she says. “My father. Patrick. Him. I just—because, I mean, what else did _he_ change? What—what parts of me are—are who _I_ am, and what parts of me are what _he_ did when he raped me? Just—I don’t—I mean, some women have penises, and _that_ idea doesn’t bother me.”

Is that supposed to be a coherent line of thought?

“And?” Andrew prompts.

Paige’s blanket moves—she must have waived a hand. “I just—I think—I mean, I’ve thought for a few months that maybe I’m a lesbian, but _am_ I or is it just because he raped me?”

Neil can’t tell if this is what’s been bothering her this whole time, or if it’s just the actionable tip of the iceberg. Maybe just both.

“Now, I can’t speak to everyone’s experience,” Andrew says slowly, “but if that was a given, I’d be the straightest man alive. But—either way, I don’t think it matters much. You don’t have to pick a label right now. You don’t have to figure it all out. There are plenty of people who don’t figure it out until well into adulthood—”

“People keep saying that shit,” she says, and she’s trying to snap, but it just sounds like she’s breaking. “ _You’re too young for that. You don’t have to think about sex, or think about—_ whatever the fuck, but, I mean, I don’t have a _choice_ , he _took_ that from me—”

“Don’t go giving him more than he stole,” Andrew says, and his voice is so flat, so perfectly flat, and Neil watches Paige catch herself on it, find her footing on it, as Neil has done so often. There’s nothing there to stab yourself on. Not only is it not overstimulating, it’s practically understimulating—it calms. “He stole your sense of safety, your peace of mind, your sense of bodily autonomy, your sense of ownership of your own body. He hurt you, in every way it is conceivably possible to hurt another human being. He did not take the rest of your life. He did not take your right to take the rest of your life to decide if you want to be intimate with another human being, or who you want to be intimate with. Don’t give that to him.”

“But how can I when—I just—I think about it all the fucking time—what’s going to happen when I _do_ have sex? Because it’s not going to be good! It’s going to be shitty! I’m going to cry! How do I explain that, how—” her hand gestures get bigger, and then, horrifyingly, something bursts out of her chest with a _meow_ —King. It’s King. She’s got King in there with her, Neil realizes, taking a deep breath. Her hand waving had startled him. Paige manhandles King back inside the blankets, and he goes, with a meekness Neil has never seen from him. “I just—I need to resolve that _before_ it becomes an issue.”

Ah.

 _Fear_.

Neil understands fear. Paige is _scared_.

He remembers her sitting in the back of the car on the way home after Natalie had broken Justin’s nose— _how did you get past it? I’m trying to be normal about it, but sometimes people touch me and it’s too much._

Andrew had opened up slowly, so slowly. Had worked his way through hell. And when he’d come out the other side, he’d been touch-starved—desperate for Neil’s hands, Neil’s arms. They’d spent hours curled up on the couch—fuck, Andrew still sleeps on top of Neil, wrapped in his arms. But the touch-starvation hadn’t been a new development. It had been an issue years in the making, driven by the horror of being touched by other people, in any way at all.

“Why do you have to have sex?” Andrew asks.

Paige stares at him. Neil counts, and makes it to 16 before she answers: “That’s what people do? If I ever get into a relationship, that’s what she—or he—will want? And maybe _I_ want to! Maybe that’s something _I_ want! Am I not allowed to want that?”

“I’m trying to figure out if that’s the actual issue you’re having.”

The blanket moves as Paige waves a hand. She looks around, opens her mouth, closes it again. “I don’t know,” she says, finally. “I don’t—I mean, I’m _going_ to at some point, right? And, I mean, I can’t even—I mean, sometimes I can’t _hug_ people. Sometimes I can’t hug _Natalie_. And I’m just—I’m—I’m trying to, like, touch people, that sounds weird, I’m trying to get used to hugging people even when I don’t want to or—just—I’m trying to, like, increase my tolerance, because otherwise, I’m gonna get there, and I’m gonna be, like, the 40-year-old who’s never had sex that wasn’t rape, and it’s going to be _bad._ ”

Neil maintains control. He can stay blank. If Andrew can, certainly he can.

“First of all,” Andrew says, blank, apathetic, “don’t hug people if you don’t want to. Don’t touch people, at all, if you don’t want to. You can’t— _increase your tolerance_ like that. It’s not about having skin-to-skin contact at all times, it’s about trust—which you likely won’t get with someone you’re brushing past in the hallway at school—and—associating _being touched_ with _hating it_ isn’t going to solve this for you.

“Moving onto sex itself,” Andrew continues, “ _Do_ you want to have sex, or is it something you think you should do? Or—do you feel like, if you decide to have sex on your own terms, you can rewrite what was done to you?” She jerks like she was struck, but Andrew isn’t waiting for her. “You don’t have to answer that now. And your answer can change. You can decide, one day, that yes, you do want to have sex, and then on your wedding night decide that, actually, even if that’s a time when you are expected to, you don’t want to, but I wouldn’t particularly recommend trying to rewrite it. It makes you miserable, it gives you more trauma to work through, and it doesn’t work. You can’t un-rape yourself.”

“But, like, I don’t _want_ to always be the girl who was raped. Maybe one day I just want to be normal! I don’t want to have to—ask myself if thinking about touching someone is going to make me wanna puke or—or—”

“Paige,” Andrew says, and again, the flatness catches her, and she takes a deep breath. “Paige, you will never be that person.”

She freezes.

“You are your experiences. We all are. Unless you can go back in time and kill him before he can ever touch you, you will always be someone who was raped. That doesn’t mean you have to devote your whole life to it, but—”

“Then what’s the _point_!”

“The point of what?”

“Of—of trying! Of considering therapy! Of—of anything!”

“Well, first of all, because you don’t have to give Trent your every thought. Therapy can help you take yourself back, can help you figure out what’s yours, can help you figure out how to take back what he took. Second of all, the _point_ is that instead of killing myself when I was 7, or when I was 11, or when I was 14, or when I was 17, or when I was 19, I didn’t do that, and now, instead of being dead, I’m happy—”

“But what about—I mean—what about—partners! Getting married! I’m—I’m—fuck all that, whatever, fine, I won’t have sex until I get married after college like a good girl. But I’m going to have sex, and I want to know how to go all the way and make it _not terrible_. Like, like a normal human being.”

“Okay, then let’s talk about sex,” Andrew says.

“We’re never going to be able to look each other in the eye again,” Paige says, cringing.

“Parents are supposed to talk to their kids about this, I think,” Andrew says. “If it makes you feel better, I promise to give precisely this speech to Natalie at some point in the future. The point of sex is to—is for you and your partner, or partners, to feel good. That’s it. Within that, you might use sex to show dedication, or care, or love, or you might have sex because you’re bored, or because it’s cold, or because you want to get pregnant, _but_ it should feel good. And I’m not just saying that you should stop if it hurts—you should, obviously, but you can say _that’s boring, do something else_ , or _do this specifically_ , or _let’s try something else_ , or _I’m not in the mood anymore, let’s play Mario Kart._ And if you did something last week but don’t feel like doing it this week, you don’t have to. And you don’t have to explain why, either. It’s considerate to say _it’s not you, I just don’t feel like it_ —but you don’t have to do that, even. And this isn’t a privilege, it’s a right. It’s not something you get to do because you were raped, it’s something _everyone_ gets to do. It’s not something you only get to do once you’re married, or once you’ve been dating for a certain amount of time, or once your partner says you’ve repaid them for the drinks they bought you, it’s something you can do _whenever_. Bodily autonomy is the human right that says that your body is _yours_. This is why no one can force you to be an organ donor after you die; it’s why no one can insist that you donate blood, even if you’re perfectly healthy and capable of doing so. You have control over your body. You should be trying to make your partner feel good—that, remember, is what sex _is_ —but not at the expense of your own enjoyment. So if you and your partner are about to have sex, and you start crying, you can and should stop. If it’s shitty and makes you feel bad, you can and should stop. Even if your partner is having a great time—if you are _not_ , you should _stop_. And it’s _normal_ to do that. It’s _normal_ to decide that you’re not willing to do one sex act or another, and _normal_ to decide that you’re not ready.

“But not everyone will respect that. And it’s not on you to predict that the nice kid you went home with would decide they were above that, or to predict that your friend wasn’t raised right. And it’s not on you to say, _well, this is what’s expected of me, so I’m going to do it._ So, then, it is _also_ your right to say _okay, okay, yeah, hang on, let me just go to the bathroom_ , bring your phone in there, text us, and then pretend that you’ve got diarrhea for as long as it takes us to get there. It is _also_ your right to say _if you don’t respect my boundaries, I don’t want to hang out with you anymore,_ or _I know we were supposed to go to prom together tomorrow but now we’re not doing that._ It is also your right to talk about sex outside of sex, and say, _hey, listen, what are your thoughts on me saying no halfway through? What are your thoughts on me agreeing to something, and then changing my mind? If I agree to perform this particular sex act, I’m going to insist that you use a condom, or you let me take control, or—_ you can talk about that shit on the phone, if you need to make sure there’s some distance. You can do it in the living room while Neil and I are making dinner, if you need to make sure you’ve got backup.

“And along those same lines—you can call us. You can talk to us. You can ask us for help. There will be no yelling, and no lecturing, and no consequences. I don’t care if you’ve been doing fucking pinky slinkies—”

That gets a smile out of Paige, for which Neil is eternally grateful.

“—you can call us, and we will come pick you up, party drugs and all. We will buy you condoms, we will get you on birth control, we will get you Plan B. We will not buy you party drugs. We do sometimes draw lines. But—we won’t yell at you, either.”

“And, also,” Neil adds, “Waiting until marriage doesn’t make you _good_ , and having sex before marriage doesn’t make you _bad_ —”

“I know that,” she snaps.

Neil shrugs. “That’s good. Then I’ll move on. Sex isn’t—it’s not—it’s not a one-way street with a speed limit of one new sex act per month until you reach the castle at the end of the road of penis-in-vagina sex. There’s no such thing as _going all the way_. Penetrative sex is just—another option. And if it doesn’t feel good, or you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it. And if your partner is unwilling to make peace with that decision—maybe the two of you aren’t meant to be together. Or you need to come up with a different arrangement.”

“And that’s all _normal_ ,” Andrew says. “Different people like different things. Sex is between individuals, with their own preferences and problems and struggles and desires, and you can’t one-size-fits-all it. It’s like that for everyone, not just you, not just me. Everyone. You don’t have to be _scared_ of it, because if it’s not going well, you can _stop_.”

Paige takes a deep breath. Neil sees King’s ears as Paige lifts him to her chest. “I love this cat,” she mutters.

“He loves you,” Neil says. “He doesn’t let _anyone_ treat him like this.”

“Why don’t I get to have claws? Why can’t I bite anyone who tries to touch me?”

“You can,” Andrew says. “Not as easily, though.”

“So when you kept saying all that shit was normal, did you mean it? Or were you just trying to be nice?”

Andrew shrugs. “I don’t think normalcy is real.”

That gets half a laugh out of Paige, another minor miracle. “Great. So you were just trying to be nice.”

“No, I was telling you the truth. If it’s not normal—meaning that the majority of people don’t do this as a matter of course—it should be. Sex isn’t a contract. You don’t have to have all the answers just because you were raped. You don’t have to have any kind of sex with anyone at any time if you don’t want to. And—you’re not alone. You have Neil, and me, and we’re both terrifying adult men who can and will commit homicide to keep you safe—”

“You know, that’s not usually comforting.”

“Is it, this time?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll reiterate it. You don’t have to rush into anything you don’t want to do. You’re not an adult just because you were raped, you’re not bad just because you were raped. You don’t have to have sex, and you also don’t have to never have sex, and also, if anyone tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, you can call the two terrifying murderers who are probably sitting at home having anxiety attacks about you being out of the house, and we’ll come and get you.”

“Will you make an appointment with Bee for me?”

“Of course,” Andrew says, apparently unperturbed by the question or the change of subject. “What day do you want to go?”

“Whenever she’s got a free time slot, I guess,” Paige says with a shrug.

“Speaking of appointments,” Neil says, “you guys need to get a check-up soon. Thoughts on going to Aaron? Or would it make you more comfortable to have a doctor who’s a woman?”

She scrubs her cheek against her shoulder. “Uncle Aaron.”

“Aaron it is,” Neil agrees. “I’ll make an appointment with him.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you get through this?” Andrew asks.

Paige thinks for a minute, and then shakes her head.

“Do you want us to stay here with you?”

She shakes her head again.

“Let us know if you change your mind,” Andrew says gently.

They head out into the hallway, shutting the door behind them.

Neil holds a hand out towards Andrew’s face, stopping halfway, but Andrew reaches out, pulls Neil’s hand to his cheek. Neil sighs in relief—at least Andrew is still holding up. He rubs his thumb over Andrew’s cheekbone. “How are you doing?”

“All right. I’m holding up.”

“Will you come talk to Natalie with me?”

“You might have to do most of the talking.”

“I can do that,” Neil agrees, wrapping his hand around the back of Andrew’s neck, dipping to touch their foreheads together. “Thank you,” he breathes. “And I’m sorry you had to do that.”

Andrew doesn’t answer. He just stands there, breathing with Neil, while Neil does a slow count of 30, and then he follows Neil down the stairs and into the living room, where they find Natalie sitting on the couch.

“Your turn,” Neil says, falling down to sit next to her. Andrew takes the rocking chair. “What’s up?”

“What’s up with what?”

“Why do you get scared every time Paige gets emotional?”

Natalie looks, suddenly, guilty. “I’m sorry,” she says, nonsensically. “I _tried_ , I really did, I tried to make sure she was better before you had to deal with her, I tried to make sure she wouldn’t be—trouble—”

“That’s not what I asked,” Neil says gently. “And you don’t have to do that. She’s not trouble. We signed up for this. Please don’t hide her from us when she’s suffering. We won’t be angry about that.” Neil takes a leap of faith. “We won’t give her up. Or you. Neither of you will get in trouble, if and when one—or both—of you needs help.”

“But I—I try to be there for her, and I don’t want her to—I don’t want her to feel like she’s too much, for _me_ , and I don’t want her to feel like—to feel like she can’t be helped, or like—I just want her to know she doesn’t have to—hold it all in,” she manages.

“I agree,” Neil says. “But you don’t have to do that on your own. People often need more than one person to support them. It’s why we have communities. You’re a 14-year-old with trauma of your own to deal with, and you couldn’t have helped Paige anyway. Sometimes,” he says, letting Bee speak through him, “you’ll be what she needs, and if you can help at those times, that’s wonderful. But sometimes, she’ll need more than you can give, or she’ll have questions you can’t answer, or she’ll need something you don’t have in the first place, and that’s all right. And sometimes, maybe you’re just not in the right place yourself to help her, and that’s all right, too. She has us, now, and she’s going to start seeing Bee, and if Bee isn’t right for her needs, we’ll find someone else. And she’s got friends, too. You don’t have to be it.”

Natalie nods, but she’s not looking at him. Neil thinks, for a second, that she might be fighting off tears, but he doesn’t have time to ask her about it. “Sometimes, when she gets like this, she’s—scary. Once, she screamed so loud and so long that her foster parents caught me—they thought she was screaming because I was there, they didn’t know I’d been there for two weeks. But apparently she lost her voice for two days after that. And sometimes, she’d break things—not, like, because she was being bad, just because she was—lashing out. She just—didn’t have—any way to—I don’t know. And sometimes she’d scratch herself, like, so hard she’d bleed, and I didn’t know how to help, I couldn’t hold her down, and if I tried to touch her it would just make it worse, and I just—I—I’m not good enough to keep her calm. And I don’t want her to hurt herself, or to break something or to scream like that and make you angry, but I also don’t know what to _do_ —”

“Do you want a hug?” Neil asks as she stares up at the ceiling, jaw clenched, swallowing down tears in a manner that looks physically painful.

She nods, but makes no move to close the space between them—it looks like she can’t move, at all.

That’s fine. Neil can move himself. He scoots over and wraps his arms around her. He pulls her head to his shoulder. She’s stiff as a board. He releases her, but she doesn’t lift her head up. “Are you sure you want a hug?” He asks. “You can say no.”

“I do,” she says, so Neil wraps his arms back around her.

A couple minutes later, she breaks, crawling half into his lap, sobbing her heart out into his shirt, and Neil decides that that’s okay. He doesn’t know how to help, but Natalie doesn’t seem concerned about that.

Eventually, though, she sniffles to a stop. Andrew passes her a tissue, and she wipes her nose. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I just—I try really hard. I’m just not good enough.”

“You’re doing fine,” Neil says, rubbing her shoulders. “You’re plenty good enough. You don’t have to be everything she needs. You’re a person, too.”

“Mmhmm,” she says.

“Nat?”

“Mmhmm?”

“If you were running away to spend so much time with Paige—how did you not end up in juvie for skipping school?”

“I didn’t,” she mumbles. “I _went_ to school. Every day. I mean, for the most part, I was _in_ Denver, just—in a different part of the city. For a little while, they moved me out of the city, but even then. I mean, I’d take a bus, or I’d take a taxi if I was really far away, and every day I’d go to school. Might not do my homework, ‘cause I was busy traveling back to wherever Paige was, and sometimes that meant hitchhiking. But I went.”

“How—how did you pay for that?”

“Um,” she says uncomfortably, glancing up at him, “for a little while, Paige would steal money from her guardians. Or I’d steal money, when I got the chance. I didn’t want to pickpocket, ‘cause I didn’t exactly have any way to practice, but I got pretty good at taking from tip jars. But, I mean, we only had to do that for a month and a half, ish. A couple weeks in, I was in this corner store, and he caught me stealing a snickers bar, this dude, he called himself Uncle Rudy, and he asked me where I was going with it, and I said _out_ , and, um, he started giving me sandwiches. He said they were sandwiches people had ordered and never picked up, but when he realized I liked mozzarella, they all started having mozzarella in them? And then, after a couple weeks, he said if I was always coming in anyway, I may as well help out, so he’d have me spend an hour cleaning the back room or whatever and then he’d give me twenty bucks. I started trying to buy extra sandwiches, so Paige and I could each have one instead of having a half, and then _more_ customers started leaving behind sandwiches, and, anyway, I went every school day, so I had money to get around, and we’d have sandwiches. He was nice. I hope he saw the interview. I didn’t get a chance to tell him I was leaving.”

“If we go visit, do you want to see if he’s still there?” Neil asks, thanking Uncle Rudy with all his heart and soul. Logically, Neil knows that Natalie’s situation wasn’t Neil’s fault. He knows he didn’t know she existed. He knows he had nothing to do with it. He’ll also never stop thinking about Paige, at home, trying her best to be never-raped and failing at it, while a 13-year-old Natalie stole whatever wasn’t tied down so she could pay her way across the city twice daily and still maybe eat a snickers bar. The idea of Natalie mopping a break room so she didn’t have to steal isn’t much better, but it’s something, and Neil will never not be grateful for that.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe this time I’ll be able to steal a snickers bar off him.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, but at least once a month I tried to, anyway, just to see if I’d manage it. He always caught me.”

“Hey. When Paige said, yesterday, that _Colorado sounded nice_. I mean, you _lived_ there for 14 years, right?”

“Yeah, I think she just didn’t want to be mean. She tries really hard to be nice. It would be awkward to be like, _yeah, we know what it’s like, we lived there_ , and I was too busy being pissed about other stuff to bother making a big deal out of it. Or maybe she was talking about Patrick’s house, in general, like, visiting _him_ sounded nice. I don’t know, actually. I didn’t ask.”

“Would you—would you _want_ to go back to Denver?”

“I mean, we can’t, Ichirou said we can’t.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take prolonged vacations there.”

“Oh. Well, no, I don’t want to. I don’t mind _being_ there for a couple days, and, like, I wanna say thanks to Uncle Rudy, but—I mean, I didn’t really have many friends, or anything, and I kind of only know the city in terms of where the unguarded tip jars are and where to pick up the bus that would take me close to Paige’s house. I don’t really care about the rest.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees. He pats her for another couple minutes. “Also, I have two questions for you. One: You need a checkup soon. Thoughts on going to Aaron, or would you rather have a different doctor?”

“Aaron,” she says immediately. “He’s cool. Wait. What did Paige pick?”

“She wants to see Aaron, too, but you don’t have to choose what she does. Second question: Do you want to go see Bee? She can help you figure out how to deal with this, and figure out how to move forward.”

“You know, for someone who is so anti-therapy, you’re extremely pro-therapy.”

“Well, I think it would be helpful to you,” Neil says lightly.

“What’s Paige doing?”

“Do you need to know that in order to make your decision?”

“Do you not want to tell me?”

“I don’t mind telling you, but I also don’t want you to insist on doing something you don’t want to do just because Paige is doing it. Do _you_ want to go? We can also find you a different therapist.”

Natalie thinks about it for a minute, and then she shrugs. “If I hate it, can I stop going? Or is this the kind of thing where, like, I’ve made a commitment, and you’re gonna make me keep it?”

“You can stop going whenever you want,” Neil promises. “And if you decide you want to try again with a different therapist, we can do that, too.”

“Then I guess I want to go,” she decides.

“Okay. We’ll make appointments tomorrow,” Neil says. “C—” He shuts his mouth. He doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t need to ask.

But Natalie sits up. “What?”

Neil shakes his head. “I’m not asking.”

“Asking what?”

“If I tell you, that’s asking.”

“Well, ask.”

“I don’t—I don’t need to know.”

“Then I won’t answer, but, like, you have to ask, now.”

“Can I—why does Paige do—this thing?” Neil asks, mimicking Paige’s new tic of rubbing her cheek against her shoulder.

“Oh,” Natalie says, curling back up against Neil. “ _He_ used to—he used to kiss her on the cheek. I don’t know why that’s what stuck.”

“We can’t pick what sticks,” Neil murmurs. He can’t hear himself over the roaring in his ears, but if he speaks any louder, puts any more effort into it, he’s going to vomit.

If the girls can live with it, so can he. He chokes it down. “Are you ready to go to bed? Is there anything we can do to help you calm down?”

She shakes her head. She looks exhausted. That’s good, hopefully. Maybe she’ll sleep well tonight. “But I—I don’t know if—I don’t know.”

Neil blinks at her, and then prods his brain into moving. “Do you _want_ to share a room with Paige?”

She shrugs. “If she needs me—”

“Not what I asked,” Neil repeats. He keeps his voice calm. Gentle. He’s spent time with Andrew; he can control his voice. “Do _you_ want to? If Paige needs someone in there with her, one of us might work, or we can figure something out.”

She shrugs again. “May as well ask.”

Well, they don’t know what Paige wants yet. No sense fighting about it. Neil stands, hauls Andrew and Natalie to their feet, and Natalie looks at Andrew.

Andrew holds his arms out to her, and she jumps to hug him. Neil keeps an eye out, but Andrew doesn’t look uncomfortable, or unhappy, or stressed—just tired. Just tired.

Natalie lets go first, and she leads the way upstairs. Neil watches her feet—instinctively, on the creaky stair, she slides her foot toes-first forward along the wall, preventing the creak. Exhausted she may be, but—still silent.

She knocks on the bedroom door.

“Mm?” Paige says.

“’S me. Do you want—do you want me in the room tonight?”

The door opens, revealing Paige, still holding King, still enveloped in her comforter. She looks guilty.

“Natalie can probably take the homework room,” Neil suggests. If it comes from him, neither of the girls have to feel guilty for wanting just that.

“No, I will,” Paige says quickly. “I will.”

“Sure, let me just—let me fold the bed out,” Neil agrees. He’s not arguing. It’s late. Everyone’s exhausted.

Paige trails him into the laundry room. He watches her out of the corner of his eye as he pulls out a spare set of sheets for the pull-out couch.

She looks sick.

“Do you want to just sleep on the couch?” He asks.

She nods, looking flatly relieved. “It’s late,” she says. “Don’t want—don’t want to be a bother.”

Neil nods, stuffing the sheets back into the closet and closing the door. She can have this fiction. Neil’s spent too many years with Andrew to be shocked when someone doesn’t want to sleep in a bed. “Do you need anything, then? Do you want your pillow?”

She shakes her head.

Neil strangles the urge to ask if she’s sure. He’s not going to make her defend herself. Not tonight. “You should brush your teeth, if you can.”

“Dental care in a zombie apocalypse,” she says, and smiles.

Neil smiles back. He’s not sure what the joke is. He’s not arguing. He doesn’t argue when she skips over the bathroom in favor of going straight into the homework room, either, and tries not to be too concerned when he hears her turn the lock and throw the bolt.

“Do you want us to stay with you?” He asks Natalie.

She shakes her head.

“All right. Do you need anything?”

She shakes her head again. “Good night,” she says, heading into the bathroom.

“Good night,” Neil says. He and Andrew head into their own bathroom. They get ready for bed in silence. They get in bed. Andrew holds his arms out. Neil slides his armbands off, sets them to the side, and takes Andrew’s hands. “And how are you?”

“Starting a sentence with _and_ after ten minutes of silence is an odd grammar decision.”

At least he’s talking. “That’s not what I asked.”

“I am so angry right now, that if I didn’t think it would scare the kids, I’d break every window in this house,” Andrew says, perfectly controlled, perfectly calm. “I am going to go to Colorado to desecrate that piece of shit’s grave. When I die, I’m going to go to hell and torture him.”

Neil wraps a hand around the back of Andrew’s neck. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“I keep trying to think about other things, and managing it, and then going, _why do I feel sick to my stomach_? And then remembering again. And I don’t know what to do about it. Bee would tell me I have to face it head-on, grieve and make space for it, but I think if I do that, I’m going to split in half, and usually she’d say that maybe I need to take a minute to calm down, but I _can’t_ , because I can’t stop thinking about it. And I—I don’t—I need—”

“How about the punching bag?” Neil suggests.

Andrew’s eyes snap up to him. “Yeah. Come with me?”

Neil stands and follows Andrew down to the basement. He sits and watches while Andrew does his level best to punch the bag to shreds. Twenty minutes later, Andrew lands one hit that sends the punching bag flying up until it touches the ceiling. When it swings back down, he lets it slam into his forearms, held in front of his face, and then he turns to Neil, looking precisely as exhausted as Neil feels.

“Ready to sleep?” Neil asks.

Andrew nods and trails Neil up the stairs and into bed. Neil puts himself on his side of the bed, but Andrew reaches out, and with a sense of relief, Neil lets Andrew wrap an arm around his waist and pull him close.

And then the door opens, and Neil wakes up.

Natalie’s standing in the doorway, just a shadow, barely a silhouette.

Neil pushes up onto one elbow and feels Andrew wake up—Andrew grabs at Neil’s shirt, holding on to him for a second before Andrew understands what’s happening.

“I know I said I wanted to sleep in my room,” Natalie whispers, “but can I sleep in here instead?”

“‘Course,” Neil says, swallowing a yawn.

“Thanks,” she says, closing the door behind her. There’s a weird dragging sound—and then she climbs into bed, and Neil realizes she’s dragging her blanket behind her, her doll in the crook of her elbow. She situates herself horizontally at the foot of the bed. “Can I borrow a pillow?”

“You could—you could come up here,” Neil suggests. “You don’t have to sleep at the foot of the bed like a dog.”

“Feels weird to sleep like that. And anyway, you’re both so short, what are you gonna do, kick me?”

Neil almost lets that pass, but—but she’s trying to make a joke, trying to lighten the mood, so he snorts. “Thanks, kiddo. Do you want us to sleep in your room? Not in Paige’s bed,” he says, because of course Natalie wouldn’t say yes to that. “Just on the floor. We can get comfy there.”

“No, this is fine, thank you.”

Neil isn’t used to this polite teenager. He lets it pass, though, because this seems like something he _should_ let pass. “No problem, Nat. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He and Andrew lie back down, Neil a little more conscious of where his feet are. Is Andrew equally conscious? Or is he too short to worry?

Neil closes his eyes, determined not to worry too hard.

“It’s just, why did he have to come back?” Natalie says, sitting up.

Oy.

Well. Neil sits up, and Andrew finds his way to a seated position too.

“I mean, we were having a good day. It was nice. Paige was happy. I was happy. You were both happy. We were having a nice Sunday. Why’d he have to come back? I mean, sure, he saw the interview, but I think we made it pretty clear we were happy and safe here. He didn’t need to worry. He could’ve just—I don’t know. I mean, it’s _nice_ that we know our grandparents, and that’s all cool, but we were doing just fine without them, too, they could’ve just—minded their own business. They could’ve never told him. He never had to come here. They could’ve all just fucking accepted that maybe we’re doing okay without them. So like, why the fuck did he have to come here? Also, why is your address so publicly available?”

“I mean, it’s not hard to find pretty much anyone,” Neil says. “There’s websites where you can pay to find people’s addresses, I can’t imagine it was hard to figure out where we live. But—about your grandparents. It sounds like they were—it sounds like they’re excited to have their grandkids back. It doesn’t seem like they’re trying to take you away; they just want to know you’re alive and well. As to Patrick—he didn’t have to answer your grandparents’ email, he didn’t have to do much of anything at all. It seems like he was legitimately worried about you—”

“You don’t have to _defend_ him,” Natalie snaps.

“I’m not. I just think that that’s why he came here. But you don’t have to visit him, or talk to him, or acknowledge him—”

“I _hate_ him. I don’t—I don’t even want—do I have to call him _my father_? I mean, that’s bullshit, he had nothing to fucking do with it. An accident. _He_ was the accident.”

“You could just call him Patrick,” Andrew suggests. “And if you’re talking to someone who doesn’t already know who he is, you could explain that he was just—the sperm donor.”

“Sperm donor. Okay, that’s good. I’ll just call him sperm donor. But—I mean, he’s not, though. Can—can he _take_ us?”

“He left you in the system too long,” Andrew says. “He doesn’t have any legal claim on you, at all. He can’t take you.”

“What if he becomes a foster parent? What if he asks for us?”

“You’re not available for fostering, first of all—”

“That didn’t stop you guys from taking Paige out of the house she’d been in for a full year.”

“Well, we had the power of the yakuza on our side. And Harmony _did_ have to ask the family, it sounded like, and if anyone asks _us_ , we’ll just say no,” Neil says. “And anyway, if he does manage to take you—we’ll adopt you. It’ll presumably take a couple months, but we’ll adopt you. And I don’t think he can take you out of this house. I honestly don’t, Natalie, that’s not just me being reassuring. He has no legal claim, biological father or not; he has no power; and we’ve already started the adoption process. And you’re 14. You’re old enough to make decisions. And if he tries, we’ll tie him up in legal shit so bad he won’t be able to move until we’ve already adopted you. Unless you decide otherwise, we’re adopting you in February, and he can’t stop that. You’re _here_. You’re with us. You’re not going anywhere.”

She nods. Sniffles.

“Now. About your grandparents. Do you not want to go visit them?” Neil asks. “You don’t have to.”

“They probably want me to visit, though,” Natalie says. “They don’t know me.”

Neil takes a deep breath. “If they _did_ know you, they’d probably want you to visit even more than they already do. You are _worth knowing_ , Nat. Loving you is easy, and I’m sure they’d love you too. And I’m sure they want you to visit, and they’d be disappointed if you didn’t want to. But. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. You _do not have to_. Understand?”

She sighs, a long, drawn-out sigh that sounds like her whole soul is leaving her body. “But what if I get there and they _hate_ me? Or what if I get there and _I_ hate _them_?”

Neil shrugs. “Then we’ll take you somewhere else. You’ve got two parents, we can split up.”

“But what if you want to hang out with them?”

“You think we’re going to choose two random people we’ve never met before over our daughter?” Neil asks, laughing a little.

“I mean, maybe. I mean, I can take care of myself and shit, I don’t need—”

“I know,” Neil says. “But no—”

“I know it’s not a very mature way of handling things, you don’t have to cut the fun short just because I’m making a fucking fuss—”

“I’m sure, but—”

“I’m just saying—”

“ _Natalie_ ,” Neil says, putting a hand on the blanket in front of her. “Hey. Nat. You don’t have to do this. Angela and George might turn out to be the coolest people on this planet. They still don’t get priority over you. You’re our daughter. We love you, and we’re keeping you, and that holds even though you’re a teenager instead of an adult. You _don’t have_ to be mature all the time, you’re not an adult. You don’t have to talk to people you don’t want to talk to. You don’t. And your grandparents are not an exception. Yes? _Breathe_ , Natalie. You can breathe. You don’t _have_ to be perfect. We’ll be overjoyed just to have you as our daughter.”

Natalie takes a deep breath, and then another. “It’s cool that I get to be someone’s daughter,” she says in a small voice. “I’m glad I get to be yours.”

“Choosing you was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made,” Neil says.

She straightens her doll’s dress.

“Thoughts on—wolf pack?” Neil asks. “Really quietly, though, so we don’t disturb Paige.”

Natalie hugs her doll. “Yeah. Yeah. Three, two, one—”

They all perform the quietest howl the world has ever heard, and then Natalie dives on Andrew and Neil.

A couple minutes later, she backs off. “Okay,” she says. “Good night. For real this time.”

“Good night,” Neil says, lying back down. Andrew scoops Neil close. Neil pulls his feet up so he won’t kick Natalie. And then sleep hits him like a truck, and nothing else matters anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is up so late, i've been fucked up busy this week and just finished it approximately 5 minutes ago, so if you see any typos, lmk 
> 
> along those same lines: october 12-18 is gonna be equally busy for me, so I think instead of posting a real chapter, i'll post a flashback filler chapter that i can just kinda write when i don't feel like working for the next few weeks. i was thinking I'd write about when neil and andrew moved in together, but if anyone has an event from their past you want to hear about, lmk and I'll consider it! i might just end up doing their move-in day anyway but. shrug emoji and whatnot. anyway i love you all


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the final few days before the championship gameeeeeeee

Natalie vanishes the next morning without a word, heading into her room with the same embarrassed set to her shoulders she’d had last time she’d slept in their room.

Neil and Andrew don’t mention it. That’s not their job.

They _do_ , though, take note when the girls come downstairs in their uniforms, carrying their bags.

“Hey, Paige?”

“Hmm?”

“You don’t have to go to school today,” Neil says. “Actually, I might insist that you stay home.”

“Why?” She asks, drawing herself up to her full height. She _is_ taller than Neil is. Unfortunately, Neil’s spent years holding up under Kevin’s glare, so a 14-year-old isn’t particularly intimidating. “I can handle it.”

“Yes, but you _don’t have to_. You can just—stay home. You can come to work with us, if you want. Or stay home. But you don’t have to go to school today.”

“I went yesterday, and that was way worse.”

“And we’re sorry we didn’t stop you,” Andrew chips in. “But it was a mistake we won’t make today.”

“I can’t stay home forever,” Paige says, shrinking back down.

Neil shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you won’t have to. If school is bad, tell us, because maybe we can help you—maybe we can homeschool you or something, or pull you for a semester. Maybe, though, if you let yourself take a day, tomorrow won’t be so bad.”

“I’ve had perfect attendance for three years,” Paige says.

“I’m sorry about that, but you don’t have to do that anymore.”

That derails her and Natalie both.

“What does _that_ mean?” Natalie asks defensively. “We were good! Mostly! We did what we were supposed to do!”

“You must’ve been sick during that time, yes?” Neil asks. “Or had a bad day? Adults get PTO, why don’t kids? You can take time off to take care of yourself—”

“Hey, yeah, that’s true,” Natalie says indignantly.

“Natalie, that goes for you too,” Neil says. “If you need to take the day off, you can, even if it’s just because you were up late and want to sleep in.”

“Can’t do that _all_ the time, though,” Natalie scoffs.

“No, you can’t. So police yourselves, or let us know that you need help so we can figure something out. But you _can_ take time off.”

Natalie looks at Paige. “You take today, maybe I take tomorrow? That way we still get the notes.”

Neil keeps his mouth shut. If it works for them, it’ll work for him.

Paige nods.

They eat breakfast in silence—Paige doesn’t eat much at all.

Thank god she’s staying home.

And then they go to work, and Natalie goes to school, and Paige is home alone.

Neil regrets this almost instantly.

He keeps it to himself, though. Andrew will turn the car around. And Paige doesn’t need that. She doesn’t need to be offered peace and a day off, only to have that taken away from her because her parents worry all day long. Instead of worrying, Neil calls Aaron’s office and sets up an appointment for Natalie and Paige for next week.

Andrew pulls into the parking lot. “She locked the doors,” he says, like he’s picking up a conversation he and Neil were having. It doesn’t matter that he’s not. Neil understands what he’s talking about. “She knows not to answer if someone knocks. She has a cell phone and can call the police. Can call us.”

“She knows not to use the oven, and not to use the stove. We never taught them the heimlich, though.”

“We didn’t. It wouldn’t matter if we had. We probably wouldn’t have thought to teach them the _self_ heimlich.”

“Why is it that I’m anxious when they’re _out_ of the house, and also anxious when they’re _in_ the house?”

“You’re anxious when they’re out of your sight.”

“Well, sure, but you don’t have to say it straight out like that.”

Andrew looks at Neil. “We did this to ourselves.”

“We really decided we needed to be _more_ anxious than we already are.”

Andrew sighs. “I miss being bored.”

“I can tell the kids to be boring.”

“Well, sure, but will _you_ be boring?”

“I’ve been told I’m _very_ boring.”

“Eh, not for several years, though. As it turns out, I am _endlessly_ fascinated and entertained by you.”

“Well, that’s good, since I don’t intend to leave you alone ever. Ready to go work?”

Andrew leans in, and Neil leans in, and Neil throws his heart and soul into it, and when he pulls back, Andrew follows. Just for half an inch. Neil grins at Andrew, and Andrew rolls his eyes. “Don’t take that personally,” he warns.

“Oh, okay, I’ll just assume _anyone_ can do that to you.”

“No one does anything to me.”

“Say that in a really deep voice, and then say _I am the Batman_.”

“Why not _I am the night_? Seems more appropriate.”

“You should be Batman for halloween.”

“Only if you’re Catgirl.”

“I’ll wear some cat ears if you’ll put on a cape.”

“That makes you a cat and me a vampire. Just, generic versions of the brand-name.”

“Oh. Like a role reversal?”

“What?”

“Well, _you_ always sleep on _me_ , like a cat, and I always bite _your_ neck, like a vampire—”

Andrew rolls his eyes so hard it must hurt, and Neil dips in to kiss his neck, and Andrew _jumps_. “Hey,” Andrew says, voice unexpectedly deep, “are we gonna go play sports or not? Because I’ll absolutely suck your dick right here, right now, if you want.”

Neil kisses his cheek. “No, you can do that later. Let’s go play sports. Why did you say _play sports_?”

Andrew gets out of the car, apparently done messing around—which, Neil decides, is fair—and, when Neil catches up with him, says, “sometimes I just think it’s weird, that we call this _training_ or _work_ when a lot of people would just call this _playing_.”

“That’s what makes it the best job in the world,” Neil says.

“God, you sound like a capitalist.”

“Are you ready to go put in a good day of hard work for the boss? Ready to go do our best to create profit for one man?”

“Ever think about how weird it is that people are called lazy for getting money they didn’t work for on unemployment but Jeff Bezos is never called lazy for taking all the money his employees make?”

“Well, now I’m depressed,” Neil says. “Is this punishment for making you horny right before we spend an entire day of our life playing exy?”

“It can be.”

And then they’re inside, and required to shut up.

Clark gathers them—not for a pep talk, which Neil would understand, but to warn them all that on Thursday a local news station is going to come to do a bit on them. And then—

Back on the court.

Three days left.

The strikers tentatively ditch the blindfold; the backliners are nearly there, with regards to blocking the goal, and it’s smarter to practice together. And Charlie suffers by himself all morning; Andrew is practicing rebounding the ball. He’s getting better at it. He’s not there, but he’s getting better.

Andrew goes to therapy, and then comes back in time to pick Neil up and bring him home for dinner.

“It’s really quiet here,” Paige says when they get home.

“You’ve been living here for a month,” Neil says.

“Yeah, but never _alone_. It’s, like, _quiet_.”

“That’s why we moved here,” Neil says, grinning. “I got out of the car and it was _silent_.”

“ _That’s_ why?” Natalie asks.

“Yeah. I called Andrew before I was even inside the house to tell him we were moving in.”

“I barely stopped short of offering double the asking price to make sure we got the house,” Andrew says.

“Called him?” Paige asks. “Dad, were you not here?”

“I was still in Oregon. We were almost at the end of the season.”

“He made me go house hunting without him,” Neil says. “It was the _worst_.”

“Why’d you care so much if you got the house, then?” Natalie asks Andrew. “You hadn’t even seen it.”

Andrew pauses mid-stir. “Neil wanted it.”

“Yeah, but it’s not, like, _this is what he wants for dinner_ or something, it’s a _house_ ,” Natalie says. “Sometimes you don’t get what you want.”

“No. Neil _wanted_ it. He sounded like—like—he was in love. He wanted that quiet. He told me it turned off the part of his brain that always had to be awake and noticing things. There was no one around, so he could relax. You don’t know. The two of you—you don’t get it. This isn’t what Neil was always like. You ever see him anxious?”

“Literally every day,” Natalie says, pointing out the obvious.

“And the only reason you notice is because, sometimes, he’s _not_ anxious. You think his paranoia is bad now? It used to be nonstop. He doesn’t jump at the sound of a car anymore. He isn’t—twitchy. He worries about you. And then he watches TV or whatever. Goes to bed. He _sleeps_. Used to be bad at that. We both were. The nightmares aren’t so bad anymore—they used to be triggered by the neighbors vacuuming, or dropping a plate, or by someone knocking on a door down the hall, or—Neil called me, and he wanted this house, and paying $30,000 above asking price was cheap, for that. And I’m glad I did it,” he says, talking over Neil. “Not just for you, so don’t drag that bullshit out. I sleep better here, too. It’s ours. I like that. And I’m glad you wanted it. _Room to grow_. Well, we grew. And you were absolutely right. This was the best place for us to do that.”

“And you just—kept it as is?” Paige asks, looking around, blatantly ignoring Neil kissing Andrew on the cheek, apparently unaware that Neil is stopping just short of turning off the burner and kissing Andrew until they die of old age.

“We painted,” Neil says, affronted. “And pulled up the carpeting. And redid the cabinets.”

“They were hideous,” Andrew says.

“ _You_ chose these colors?”

“We split the responsibility,” Neil says. “He’d call me and say _I think green for the living room. What color will the two extra rooms be?_ And I’d think about it for five minutes and settle on _blue_. We went darker upstairs, because, you know, sleep, and lighter downstairs, because other people would see that.” Red for the kitchen—a bright red; Andrew had seen it in a magazine. And it looked nice. They had put down tarps, put tape over the windowsill, run the paint rollers through the paint, and it had dripped onto the tarp, almost immediately. For a split second, Neil had been in another room covered in tarps, rivulets of red running over the floor—

And then Andrew had been there. Tilting Neil’s chin up. _We could do orange instead, if you’d like._

The red had never turned brown, the way blood did; had rolled onto the wall so clean, no clumps, no clots. Neil had painted over that memory.

He likes their kitchen. “Do you not like the colors?” He asks Natalie.

“No, I mean, I _like_ them, I just—you’ve only been here a few years, I figured they must’ve been like that when you moved in.”

“No, they were all beige and white.”

“See, you struck me as beige-and-white kinda guys,” Paige says.

Andrew turns around altogether. “I struck you as _what_?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear clothes that aren’t black,” Natalie says.

“Black looks _good_.”

“Yeah, so why didn’t you go for black?”

“Now, that _would_ have solved the problem,” Andrew says, looking at Neil. “We could repaint.”

“What problem?” Paige asks.

“I hate beige and white,” Neil says. “It’s—hotel room. Shitty apartment. My life was lived in beige and white rooms. I finally had a place I could _paint_ , I wasn’t going to sit around in _beige and white_. Fuck that. Black _would_ have solved that problem, for sure, but probably would’ve given me _new_ problems.”

“Extreme depression,” Paige says.

“Speaking of depressing,” Natalie says, apparently bored of paint-talk, “Arnie thinks _why did the chicken cross the road_ is a good riddle, so I might have to punch him, just wanted to warn you ahead of time.”

“It’s like having a little brother,” Paige says. “He really has, like, no idea about anything. I don't think he's lived in this world ever.”

“Why is it a _bad_ riddle?” Neil asks, not to be derailed.

Natalie gives him a look like he should know better. “It has a fucking _variety_ of answers. A good riddle has one, maybe two, max. But like, maybe there was food on the other side of the road. Maybe there was water. Did anyone ever think of _that_? Maybe, like, the chicken’s kids are on the other side of the road.”

“Doesn’t _to get to the other side_ encompass all of that?”

“No, I’m on her side,” Andrew says. “Maybe he didn’t _want_ to get to the other side. Maybe he was just trying to join in the flow of traffic. I mean, sure, it’s a pun about death, but it doesn’t really _work_ , because if he dies he won’t make it to the other side, which I guess is supposed to be ironic but really it just means that there’s inherently two answers to this riddle _already_ , and in order to _get_ the irony you really have to assume that there was no other reason for the chicken to cross the road. If he was looking to get food, then _the other side_ , meaning _death_ , was actually the _opposite_ of his end goal, and it becomes a really shitty riddle.”

“I think the point is that it works whether the chicken dies in traffic or not,” Neil points out, but it’s a losing battle. This is a family argument session, now.

“ _Is_ that the point? I thought the point was the shitty pun,” Andrew argues. “And anyway, how do we know if there’s _traffic_? The riddle doesn’t specify if it’s a one-way road in the backwoods at midnight in winter or if it’s a six-lane highway during rush hour. There might not be traffic at _all_.”

“In which case, he’d make it to the other side of the road.”

“Okay, but I feel like this is, like, super reductive,” Natalie says. “I mean, if someone asks why we popped onto the highway, it’s not like the answer is _to get to the end of the highway_ , the answer is _that’s the fastest way to the mall_. So is the chicken’s _purpose_ to get to the other side of the road? Or is crossing the road just the fastest way to get to his girlfriend, or whatever?”

“This is a very heteronormative chicken,” Paige says.

“No, they’re bisexual,” Natalie says, clearly offended by the idea that she might imagine a straight chicken.

“Okay, fine. So then the answer to the question _why did the chicken cross the road_ is _to see his girlfriend_ —”

“No way of knowing that context, though,” Neil argues, “and no way of knowing if that’s right, or anything at all—and I think the highway comparison works, because if I’m on the highway and I pass someone and I wonder what they’re doing, the answer _is_ to get to someplace else off the highway—”

“Hey, you know what I just realized?” Natalie asks.

“What?”

“None of this matters.”

Paige chokes on her water. Neil chokes on air.

“Really, guys! None of it matters! We’re free!”

“You started this conversation!” Paige says.

“No! I didn’t! I said it was a shitty riddle, and then pops was like _hmm do tell_ and then dad was like _no wait it is bad_ and—”

“You did contribute, in between those two particular statements,” Andrew says. “I do remember you contributing.”

“Yeah, I did. I, too, was once sucked into the vortex of stupid arguments, but then I remembered—we don’t have to have them!”

“God, but if you’re not arguing about stupid shit, what is there to talk about?” Neil asks. “That’s rhetorical, don’t answer that. Don’t,” he says, putting a finger in Andrew’s face.

“I didn’t say anything,” Andrew says.

“You were thinking it.”

“I was thinking nothing.”

“That’s _my_ job, you’re _supposed_ to think things.”

“Your _job_? Do you get _paid_ to not think? I just tried it for three seconds and received no money.”

“Mostly, I think I got paid in the form of the universe just bringing this super smart, funny, caring, passionate, romantic, hot guy into my life—

“We’re _right here,_ ” Natalie says loudly.

“No, no, wait,” Andrew says, “I wanna see where he’s going with this.” He turns back to Neil. “Who the fuck are you talking about, and when do I get to meet this guy?”

Neil blinks at him. “Matt.”

“Oh, cool, I already know him—see, this is where experience comes into play, because I would _never_ think of him as any of those things, but you never _knew_ him when he was a wimpy miserable little wreck—but I guess he _has_ grown into a super smart, funny, caring, passionate, romantic, hot guy, hasn’t he. I’m honestly proud—and I think I have the right to be proud, I like to think that my severe approach to addiction recovery really played a part in the end product.”

“You drugged him,” Paige points out.

“That’s what I just said. Anyway, the only good riddle is _what’s weightless, visible to the naked eye, and when you put it in a barrel it will make the barrel lighter._ ”

“Firefly,” Paige says.

“Not weightless,” Natalie retorts.

“You ever hold one? Weightless.”

“Empirically incorrect,” Andrew says.

“Sunlight,” Neil suggests.

“Can’t put it in the barrel,” Natalie says.

“Can’t you?”

“If you close the barrel it is no longer in the barrel.”

“Flashlight,” Paige says. “And before you say it—you don’t have to wait for it, therefore it is wait-less.”

“I hate you all so much,” Natalie says.

“Anyway, it’s not really weight- _less_ ,” Neil says. “Technically, since putting a hole in a barrel requires you to remove part of the barrel, it’s weight- _negative_.”

“Do _you_ even know what you just said?” Paige asks.

“I think so.”

“Can we come to work with you for the evening?” Natalie asks.

“Are you just trying to change the subject?” Neil asks.

“Very much.”

“By _we_ , do you mean that you and Paige have already discussed this?”

“No, I mean I want to go to work with you for the evening.”

“I am also willing to go,” Paige agrees.

“And it doesn’t matter if we’re out late, because I don’t have to go to school tomorrow,” Natalie says, giving Paige an angelic grin.

“Fucking _rude_. What if _I_ skip tomorrow too?”

“Not fair, you need to get me notes!”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll be too tired. Right, pops? You said if I was too tired?”

Neil glances at Andrew, but no backup there.

Well, what does he care? Missing some school never hurt him. “Sure.”

She looks like he’s just asked her to hack off her own arm. “You—you’re supposed to say no.”

Neil shrugs. “I said you could stay home if you’re overtired. For sure, if there’s an obvious reason—like staying out late hanging out at an exy stadium—we should address that, but I did say that, so, sure, I’ll stick to it.”

“I—I have to go to school, pops, like, that’s important.”

“Then go to school.” He finishes his plate in uninterrupted silence, and looks up to find Paige in the middle of a personal crisis. “Look. You seem to get that school is important. And we’re not going to—buy your way back in, if you fail. If you want to switch schools, or take some time off, or—you let me know. And if you’re having trouble doing things like regulating your sleep schedule, or your mental health, or whatever, let us know and we’ll help you figure it out. But I’m not going to sit here and force you to work like this family will starve if you don’t. Schools in this country are already set up for you to fail, I’m not going to make it worse. Are we headed out, or?”

“I mean—it’s just—” Paige heaves a sigh. Natalie sighs back at her. They help clean up. They grab their homework. The four of them get into the car.

“Unless you two have a problem with it,” Andrew says, “on Tuesdays, you can catch the bus from school that goes to the neighborhood across the street from Bee’s office. I’m moving my slot up, so I’ll be finishing up when you get in, and then you two can take turns, and I’ll drive you home when you’re done.”

“Yeah, that works,” Natalie agrees.

“Paige?”

“Yeah. Like, what if she thinks I’m a bad person, though.”

“Gigi, she won’t.”

“Promise?”

Andrew meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. “I promise.”

Paige leans her head against the window.

“Thursday, we’re gonna go to Sandy’s after school,” Natalie says. “I told her you won’t be around to pick us up, so Sandra’s just going to drop us off at home whenever.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees. “Will you be home for dinner?”

“No, we probably won’t be back until, like, eight or nine.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees. He glances at Andrew, who looks away from the road long enough to communicate that yeah, maybe they’ll just go out to eat that day.

And then they go back to work.

Around 9, Frank drops his head back and lets out a groan that stops practice in its tracks—not that it was going anywhere; Kevin and Neil were arguing the usefulness of sliding along the floor like sliding into home base. Kevin’s argument: it’s dangerous and probably won’t work. Neil’s argument: but _maybe_ it would.

“Hey, you know what might help?” Frank suggests. “Watching old games. We’ve got some.”

“We don’t have _any_ videos of the way Denver played last time—except, I mean, of that time,” Kevin says, trying his level best to snap. “And we’ve watched it a hundred times.”

“Sure, but there are other players on the team,” Frank says. “And it might give us a sense of their weaknesses. I’m not talking _old_ games, I’m talking this year.”

“What haven’t we seen before that’s worth watching again?” Kevin asks.

“Well, if I knew, we wouldn’t have to watch again, would we,” Frank says.

“It’ll be a waste of time,” Kevin grumbles, but the tide has turned against him.

“We need a break,” Maria says. “Can’t be go-go-go all the goddamn time, we’ll die.”

“Usually, it makes us stronger,” Kevin says, but he’s already heading in.

In a burst of genius, Neil looks up at the stands, waves his arms, waits until Natalie and Paige wave back. “We’re gonna watch exy matches!” He yells. “Wanna come?”

Sure enough, Paige perks up. The two of them jog down the stairs and out of sight.

“We get spectators even inside?” Clark asks.

Neil shrugs. “I can kick them out if you want.”

“Nah, let ‘em. I’m getting used to having them there.”

“They’ve only been here maybe three times.”

“That’s a bunch.”

“Well, the season’s almost over. Usually they’re in school, anyway.”

“Kevin,” Clark calls.

“What?”

“You should start bringing John to work. Leave him in the stands.”

“I don’t have to, I have parents and in-laws.”

“ _Harsh_ , Kev, harsh,” Clark says, flicking a look at Neil. Neil's more shocked by the idea that he might be offended than he is by Kevin's joke.

“Neither one of them care,” Kevin says, waving a hand at Andrew and Neil. “I’ve never heard either of them crying about being orphaned.”

“This is true,” Andrew says. “In fact, you could argue we were both _relieved_ to be orphaned.”

“Being an orphan is great,” Neil agrees. “ _Plus_ , no grandparents, no aunts or uncles—well, a couple uncles, but we don’t talk to them.”

“You have uncles?” Paige asks, slipping in in time to hear that.

“We can talk about it on the way home,” Neil decides.

“What, your uncles are that bad?” Maria asks with a snort.

“Well, _my_ uncle is homophobic and pro-conversion therapy and down with rape,” Andrew says drily. “Don’t know that that warrants a drive-home conversation, but I will say that Nicky moved to Germany to get away from him, so.”

“That’s only one uncle,” Natalie says.

Well, fuck it, who cares? “And _my_ uncle runs a gang in Britain, so I don’t bother with him much.”

“Uncle on which side?” Maria asks shrewdly.

“Mom’s.”

“Fuck, you really got it on both sides, huh.”

“Yeah, it’s not great. Anyway, _love_ never talking to extended family members. And _love_ being an orphan, can’t recommend it enough.”

“Agreed,” Natalie says spiritedly.

“Is that a threat?” Andrew asks.

“I mean, maybe, but not to _you_.”

“To who?” Maria asks, waving a hand at Kevin to preemptively shut him up before he can complain that they're wasting time.

“Our _birth dad_ ,” Paige says, miming spitting over her shoulder. “He wants us to _fleEeEeEe_ ,” she says, making it into a whine. “Do we _know_ who we live with? Do we _know_ kindness or empathy? We should go live with _himMmMmMm_ so he can teach us _nNnNnice_ things like _abandonment_ and _being a little shithead_.”

Maria cackles. “You’re fucking _great_. Hey, look, if you ever need to learn unkindness and cruelty, you let me know and I’ll help you out.”

“If you need help with, like, kindness, though,” Riley says “I mean, I’m here. Just saying.”

“I think we’re probably good on both fronts,” Paige says seriously. “But thanks.”

“Cool. Are we gonna—do this, or just hang out chatting?” Kevin asks.

“We can do this,” Neil agrees.

There follows a 10 minute argument about which game to watch, until they settle on Denver’s last game of the season, pre-finals. They’d been up against Idaho’s team. It wouldn’t show them at their best, but it _would_ show them at their most confident, and Neil has no doubt that that’s what they’ll be, on Saturday.

His stomach flips a couple times. Three more days of training, and then Denver is flying out to South Carolina, and then it’s over. Done.

He puts his eyes on the TV screen and leaves them there, until—

“Wait,” Neil says, waving a hand at Clark, “go back. Go back—”

Clark just passes Neil the remote.

“Oh, did you see—”

“Yeah,” Neil says, grinning at Kevin.

“See what? Something useful?” Athena asks.

“I’m rolling my eyes at you,” Andrew tells Neil's back. “It’s only _nominally_ worth rewinding for.”

Neil hits play and points at the top right corner of the screen. “Idaho’s 13,” he says. “Watch. Wait for it—wait for it…AND—”

He and Kevin laugh as they watch the player go down. “What was _that_!”

“His feet? I think it was his feet,” Kevin suggests. “Man’s got a seven-figure salary to _not_ trip over his feet and yet! And yet.”

“Why don’t you guys just fucking _commentate_?” Natalie asks.

Neil shrugs. “Not a bad idea. Okay, now Ibrahim has the ball—he won’t be able to pass it fast enough, it was a bad idea to kick it to him—and now Denver’s got it—Hillyard—she’s—well, honestly, she’s not _that_ fast, but look, she probably tried backliner at some point, she can push—”

“Sure, but she’s jumpy,” Kevin says, “look—Redding just got within two feet of her and she passed the ball, probably why she didn’t stick with backliner—”

“Anyway, that’s—he’s going for the full ten steps, it looks like, shouldn’t hold onto it that long if you can help it, but Hillyard’s tied up, see—”

A couple minutes later, Neil realizes that Clark is taking notes.

“No, no,” Clark says, “I’m just writing down your shit, it’s useful, keep going.”

The team nods. Andrew doesn’t—but he looks smug as he settles back into his chair. So Neil shrugs at Kevin, and they keep going, and Paige listens, and Neil watches her relax, slowly but surely.

When the game ends, the kids don’t bother going back into the stands. They sit in the inner ring. Paige watches. And she watches Andrew.

Andrew buckles down with a level of care Neil has never seen from him before.

Neil loves them both. He loves Andrew, and Paige, and Natalie. He loves his family, and his job, and his life, and he would kill to keep it all safe, to keep everyone in this building safe.

They train. Neil and Kevin and Andrew get inventive. They work, and they make it work, and Natalie disappears from the window and doesn’t return, and Paige watches. When they’re done, they find Natalie sprawled out on one of the benches, asleep. Asleep, alone in an unlocked and unfamiliar room, and that’s some kind of progress. She startles when the team wanders in, but, without discussing it, they all ignore it. They ignore her altogether until she’s back with Paige. No one saw anything, no one thought anything—and Neil loves them all for it.

And then they go home.

Paige leads the way up the stairs and then stands in the hallway, eyes narrowed as she thinks.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Neil reminds her.

“I’m trying to decide what I want.”

“Let me rephrase: You don’t have to do something just because you think you’re supposed to, or because eventually you’re going to do it anyway. And if you _do_ choose the homework room—we can fold out the bed, if you're ready for that. You can take baby steps.”

“I think I’m gonna brush my teeth.”

“Okay.”

Ten minutes later, she interrupts Neil as he scoops the litter. “I’m gonna sleep in the bedroom tonight.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees. “If you change your mind—and want help dealing with the couch—you can wake us up.”

“Okay,” she agrees. “Also—” She turns halfway to include Andrew—“I just wanted to say—I’m really glad you’re our dads.”

“I’m glad you’re our daughter,” Neil says softly.

“We love you,” Andrew says. “Both of you.”

She grins and bounces out of the room. The hallway light flicks off.

Neil and Andrew get ready for bed.

Three days left. Three days left, and then one game.

Neil crawls into bed, and Andrew puts two fingers under Neil’s chin, the barest hint of pressure enough for him to tug Neil in for a kiss.

“So about that blowjob,” Andrew murmurs. “Yes or no?”

Neil hums, but he’s got nothing. “Not tonight,” he whispers.

“Okay,” Andrew agrees. He pushes Neil down onto the mattress, kisses Neil’s forehead, folds his arms across Neil’s chest and rests his chin on them. “Talk to me.”

“About anything in particular?” Neil asks, running a hand through Andrew’s hair. There is safety here. No one can hurt him, not here, not with Andrew lying on top of Neil, muscles slack. Not with their door closed. It _is_ quiet—Paige hadn’t been wrong about that. Peaceful.

“If you were a chicken, why would you cross the road?”

“Because I’m a dinosaur and have something to prove.”

“Doesn’t sound very chicken-ish to me.”

“Have you ever _met_ a chicken?”

“No, have you?”

“Of course.”

Andrew snorts. “ _Of course_ , you say, like _everyone’s_ met a chicken.”

“ _Met_ a chicken. They’re not people, you can’t meet them. But, I mean, farms are more—in Europe, you’re never far from one. And mom and I spent time out west—in the States—and chickens are—I don’t know. If you work on a farm you’re going to hang out with them.”

“And you did a lot of farm work?”

“Not a _lot_ , but it was—people out there don't expect much. They'll talk, if they get the chance, but if you don't—they respect that. We found a farmer who didn’t ask many questions, about Jenny Tanner and her son Chris, and who was willing to give mom a job and let me stick around, too, as long as I’d help out a bit and didn’t make trouble. Chickens were easy, for a 12-year-old. Feed them. Corral them when necessary. And those fuckers would fight at a moment’s notice, I have no idea why cowards are called chickens, they do _not_ care if their opponent is a grown human being. Chickens are dinosaurs and they never bothered evolving out of that.”

“Maybe _we_ should get chickens.”

“Nope. Feed them? And deal with them? Uh-uh.”

“If you want, we could probably buy a farm.”

“Sure, sure, as long as we’re not living on it or working it. Unless—unless you _want_ a farm?”

“Neil, I’m trying to cause you panic.”

“Well, I’m feeling panic. _Do_ you want to be a farmer? I hear working with the dirt can be really peaceful. Is _that_ what the cactus was about?”

“Why does there need to be a bigger reason for me to want a cactus? I went to Lowe’s and they had cacti and I got one.”

“I don’t know, why do you want a farm?”

“I _don’t_.”

“Drew, you can’t keep doing this to me.”

“Making fun of you?”

“Yes!”

Andrew rests his forehead on his hands for a second, laughing at Neil, and then props his chin up again. “I intend to make fun of you for several more years.”

“How many is _several_?”

“At _least_ five.”

“I intend to live a _lot_ longer than that. Better make it more.”

“Ten?”

“That only gets me to 39. Are you going to _stop_ making fun of me? Before I’m even really middle-aged? You’re gonna miss out on so much! What about when I start complaining about my joints? What about when I get my first grey hair? Are you going to tell me that when I start saying _back in MY day_ you’re not gonna make fun of me? What’s even the point?”

“What are you going to even _back in my day_ about? _Back in MY day when you were on the run you worked at a chicken farm_.”

“And performed labor! You had to _work_ for your anonymity! Oh—oh, wait. Back in _my_ day, you didn’t _have_ to apply for college, you just had to be good at what you did and make the coach take pity on you, and college would apply to _you_.”

“Back in _my_ day, we didn’t _have_ meet-cutes. You whacked the love of your life in the ribs with an exy racquet and hoped that your kids wouldn’t read too much into it, in the future.”

“Back in _my_ day, you didn’t _date_ , you just waited until the angsty troubled guy in your sports program opened up to you and revealed his softer side and then asked to suck your dick. What do you mean, you’re _going to the movies_? How does _that_ help you get close to a person? How are you supposed to figure out whether or not you’re soulmates in a _movie theater_?”

Andrew puts his forehead down. His version of hysterical laughter.

“Do you need me to come manufacture a life-or-death situation for you? I could kidnap you outside the theater. What do you mean, you’re gonna go to lunch? Oh—do you want it to be a poisoning situation? Look, I don’t mind that you’re dating, and I’ve got nothing against this kid, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t bother getting invested until you’ve found out whether or not they’d try to knife an FBI agent for you.”

Andrew releases one of his hands from under his chin and reaches out to cup Neil’s cheek. “We’re gonna be crotchety old grandparents.”

“Did you just use the word _crotchety_?”

“Yes, because it’s a word, and I have full command of the English language.”

“Ooh, look at you, so smart.”

“Smart enough to know you’re avoiding the concept of _being grandparents_.”

“Yes, yes I am, because that’s absolutely crazy, it’s not going to happen. Possibly our kids will have kids, and that’ll be nice, but we’re not going to be _grandparents_. I think that would make me _grandpops_ and that is—actually, kind of adorable, I’ll have to get some cable-knit sweaters—some cardigans—some— _slacks_?”

“I’m sorry, _slacks_?”

“Slacks. Yeah. Catch me wearing—okay, hold on, does _grandpops_ summon up the concept of therapeutic insoles or of crocs?”

Andrew gasps, and Neil’s heard Andrew fake it often enough that he can tell that this one is real. “You can _never_ wear crocs. I won’t be seen in public with you. Get that fucking smug-ass smirk off your face, I’m not compromising on this—fucking _crocs_ , I’m really gonna—unless we are _in a river_ , crocs are illegal.”

“Anyway, once we take down the Moriyamas, we’re going to move to a river—”

“That is _cheating_.”

“No one ever said I’d play fair. In fact, I’m known for being un-sportsmanlike.”

“I blame that on the fact that you were raised on exy. Exy doesn’t _have_ sportsmanship, except in the form of Jeremy Knox. Exy has buckets of sweet, sweet, violence—”

“And we know I love it—”

“And it’s _most_ of what’s wrong with your personality.”

“What’s wrong with my personality?”

“Absolutely _no_ concept of the value of peace.”

“And what _is_ the value of peace, Andrew Minyard?”

“Ease with which it is possible to find time to sit up late chatting.”

“You know what, I agree with that. I can get behind that. Drew, how are you?”

“How am I?”

“It’s been a hard couple days for you. How are you?”

“You sound like an interviewer. _You’ve had a tough couple games. How’s that affecting you_?”

“I can pose the question in exy terms, if you’d like.”

“I would not like. But I’m—I almost just said I’m fine.”

Neil snorts. "Oh, how the tables have turned."

“I’m all right. Really, love, I am. I am not so easily damaged. Not anymore, anyway. I am learning to constructively channel my struggles into taking care of the kids.”

“Bee speak.”

Andrew shrugs. “If it works, it works.”

Neil looks at him—his silhouette in the dark endlessly familiar—and loves him.

“What?”

“I love you. And I love that I _get_ to love you. And I love that you know that I love you, and I love that I get to spend the rest of my life loving you, and—aren’t you going to interrupt me?”

“And why would I do that?”

“You usually do, when I start going on like this.”

“I’m trying to get better about that.”

“Oh, good, then we can practice. I love you, and your sense of humor, and your knives, and how much you enjoy baking, and how much you care about the kids, and how much you care about Andrunior, and I love that you’re still alive, and I love that you brush your teeth with the same amount of seriousness with which you do your taxes, and I love how fucking much you know about cars, and I love that you flatly refuse to admit you know things about cars unless met with someone who knows just as much. And I love how much you care about the way you speak, and how dramatic you are, and—”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says. Andrew scoops his hands under Neil’s shoulders, pulling Neil’s face close enough to Andrew that Andrew can reach him.

A couple minutes later, Neil grins. “You interrupted me.”

“You were being stupid.”

“Usually am,” Neil agrees, and pulls Andrew back in.

A few minutes later, Andrew kisses Neil on the cheek and scoots back down to put his head on Neil’s chest. “I love you.”

Neil brushes his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “I love you, too. Good night.”

“Good night.”

The next day, Natalie stays home.

Neil is less anxious about it than he had been about Paige staying home. Nothing had happened to Paige, first of all; second of all, Natalie has a knife, and is at least passably capable of using it.

They train, and they go home for dinner, and they bring the girls back to work with them, and Paige watches. And Andrew works. And Neil runs. Kevin barks instructions; Maria mocks him; Riley laughs. Clark reminds Kevin that he is neither captain nor coach. Kevin makes a face that makes Athena laugh so hard she drops her racquet.

And then they go home, and go to bed, and there’s two days left.

Thursday morning, Neil walks into work determined to make the best of it.

An hour in, after spending five full minutes trying and failing to get around Frank, he sees his chance—Frank, stance wide, leaning forward, ready to jump on Neil if the ball comes within a country mile of him, and Kevin, no clear shot on Neil, no clear shot on the goal, no clear shot on anything at all, except maybe the ground behind Frank—“ _Kevin_!” Neil yells, attention-grabbing, and then he flicks his wrist to bring his racquet horizontal and drops to the ground, and Frank is pushing against nothing. Neil is small; Frank is big. Frank stumbles forward, catching himself with the butt of his racquet two inches away from Neil’s leg. Neil slides between his feet, lifts his racquet in time to catch the pass from Kevin, swivels to his feet and launches the ball at Andrew, who—

Doesn’t move. Andrew doesn’t even move. The ball flies past him, and then he moves, but not for the ball, for Neil.

“What the _fuck_!” Maria is yelling, thrilled. “Holy _shit,_ Neil!”

“Holy _shit_ ,” Frank agrees. “Hey, fuck, they’ve got Flannery—you could probably fit under his legs standing _up_ —and if he went down, it would take him out of the game—”

“And that’s not illegal,” Riley says, grinning. “It’s not illegal, if he gets hurt like that it’s not technically anyone’s fault—Neil, you’re the only jackass tiny enough to pull that off—Andrew?”

Andrew grabs Neil’s wrist and starts hauling him away.

“Andrew?” Clark asks carefully.

Neil waves them off, pulling off his helmet so he can give them a reassuring grin. “We’ll be back in a second. Or a minute. Make it a good, solid, long minute.”

“Chew him out, Andrew,” Kevin calls. “That was fucking _stupid_ and _dangerous_ —”

And then he’s cut off by the door slamming behind Neil as Andrew hauls him through the outer ring and into the changing room, Andrew hauling off his helmet as he goes. Neil is barely through the door when Andrew whirls on him.

“That was fucking stupid, and dangerous, and _absolutely_ unnecessary,” he snarls. “You are an _idiot_ and if Frank had stepped on your head you’d have fucking deserved it—”

“Oh, you love me,” Neil says, grinning, adrenaline racing, knowing full well that Andrew is only angry because he loves Neil so, so much. “Ooooh, you love me so much.”

“I—you endangered yourself _two days_ before the _championship match_ to prove a point to fucking _Kevin_ , of all people, _Kevin_ , and endangered Frank, too, you fucking _imbecile_ —”

“Oh my _god_ you love me so much—”

“I swear to fucking _god_ if you pull that shit again I will _walk out on you_ , I will walk out on you _and_ the team _and_ exy, I will move to fucking Idaho and you will _never_ see me again—”

“It _would_ work against Flannery, though,” Neil says, but his high is fading. He’d scared Andrew.

“And if _Flannery_ steps on your head, he will _crush_ your skull—or, fuck, if he uses his racquet to steady himself and _that_ lands on your head—there won’t even be any brains on the court, because you _have none_ , and that’s _assuming_ he lands on your head—how would you like a shattered femur? Because that’s coming your fucking way, Neil Josten, it is coming your way at top speed. A shattered thigh? _Extremely_ painful, and no coming back from that, you’ll never fucking play exy again, dumbass, I hate you so fucking much—”

“I’m sorry, Andrew—”

“I don’t fucking _care_ , you don’t get to be _sorry_ if you’re _dead_ because you decided to pull that shit for a goddamn _sport_ —”

“But I’m not dead, I’m fine, so I’m going to be sorry and you have to deal with it, Drew, I won’t do it again, I—who the fuck are you?”

Andrew whips around, just as surprised as Neil is to see the local news crew on the other side of the changing room, all of whom look as unhappy to be there as Neil and Andrew are to have them there.

They stand there, every one of them looking like a deer in headlights, including Neil and Andrew.

“We’re, uh, from Channel 7,” a member of the crew says tentatively. He looks like he’ll be the one in front of the camera—he’s dressed for it.

“Right,” Neil says slowly. “Well, anyway, we were just on our way—outside, to—because.”

“Yeah,” Channel 7 agrees, and Neil and Andrew head for the door at a speed that could best be described as _trying to run in a nightmare._

The door closes behind them, and they stand there, looking out over the parking lot, over the Channel 7 news van, and Neil sighs.

“We could just run away,” Andrew suggests.

“Take the cash. Grab the girls. Find a farm in Montana where no one will ask questions.”

Something nudges Neil’s hand, and Neil glances down to see Andrew’s pinky. It’s tough—they’re wearing gloves—but they link pinkies.

“I _am_ sorry,” Neil says quietly. “I won’t do it again.”

“I’d rather lose the game,” Andrew says. “I’d rather lose the game than lose you. I’d rather you miss a shot than lose the ability to play. Don’t fucking kill yourself, Neil, not for exy. Not for this.”

“I won’t.”

“If you do, I’ll kill you.”

“I know.”

“You’ll deserve it. I won’t even be depressed about it.”

“I know.”

“If Clark doesn’t chew you out for this, I’m going to murder him in his sleep.”

“No need, Kevin’ll get the job done just fine.”

“Good. Not that you’ve ever listened to him.”

“I promise to listen to him, this time.”

“I hate you.”

“ _Oooooh you love me so much—”_

“The _worst_ —”

“You love me _so much_ —you can’t even _watch_ me do something dangerous—”

“No, I can’t, and I fucking hate you for making me watch it.”

“Ready to go back in?”

“I want to beat someone up about this.”

Neil lifts an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“Can I be pissed at Frank for this? What about Kevin? Anyone? Anyone at all?”

“Nope, just me. Spar with me when we get home.”

“You don’t spar.”

“Nope. No, I don’t. If you, like, super want to beat someone up, though, you won’t be able to _touch_ me. That might piss you off more, though.”

“You think you’re so fast, don’t you. Think you’re invincible.”

“I _know_ I’m fast.”

“That’s not sparring, it’s me punching the air.”

“I can spar, I’ve fought before.”

“You probably fight dirty.”

“Like the inside of a vacuum bag.”

Andrew closes his eyes. “Okay. Okay, let’s go. Let’s go.”

“Okay, cabbage.”

“Bok choy.”

Neil follows him back inside, noting the absence of the news crew, and back onto the court, where Kevin is smiling for a camera.

“Get in the goal,” Neil murmurs. “I’ll keep ‘em off you.”

“The backliner you always wanted to be.”

“Yup.”

Clark raises his eyebrows at Neil, who shrugs. Two seconds later, Riley lands on Neil.

“So? We gonna perfect that move?”

“If I do it again, I have been threatened with divorce, abandonment, and death, so no.”

“ _Neil_!” Kevin barks.

Neil cringes as Kevin heads his way. “I’m not gonna do it again, I won’t, I have already promised.”

“Good,” Kevin snaps, jabbing his racquet in Neil’s direction. “That was stupid, and dangerous, and irresponsible—”

“ _And a little bit cool_ ,” Riley whispers loudly.

Neil would swear Kevin’s eyes turn red. “He could have been _wrecked_ —the championship game is in _two days_ —”

And then Clark sends Neil over for his interview, and Neil escapes.

“How do you think you’ll fare against Denver? You’ve lost to them twice this year,” the interviewer says, smiling like he hadn’t just watched Andrew ream Neil out.

“I think we’ll do fine. We know all of _their_ tricks, but they don’t know all of ours,” Neil says confidently. “We’ve been working on some new stuff, and we’re ready to debut it.”

“Will you bring that _new stuff_ to Court with you?”

“Of course. It’s always tough—Kevin, Andrew, and I don’t want to give our competitors an inside look at Jaguar moves, but we’re excited to bring them to an international stage, we want U.S. Exy to be a force to be reckoned with. And if we give our competitors some tricks—we’ll just come up with new ones, post-Olympics.”

“How are the Jaguars doing, these days? Facing down a third game against a team that consistently beats you—tensions must be running high?”

Neil smiles and tells the truth. “Nah. We’re having a good time, honestly. This is what we all love to do, and this is the time we’ve set aside—no other commitments, no nothing, just this sport that we’ve devoted years to.”

“Great, thank you so much for your time! Would Andrew Minyard be willing to chat?”

“Nope,” Neil says, still smiling.

“Mm. Well—”

“Have you spoken to Riley yet?” Neil asks. “I’ll grab her for you— _Ri!”_

Riley comes jogging over. “My turn?”

“Yup!” Neil turns to the interviewer. “Thank you for your time!”

It doesn’t end there, though.

Because Riley comes up to Neil after her interview to tell him the interviewer was angling for an Andrew interview, and so does Maria, and so does Clark. And when everyone else has been interviewed, the interviewer marches in Andrew’s direction, apparently looking to be the recipient of the beating Andrew was so desperate to give someone.

Neil steps in his path and smiles at him, just this side of polite. “I believe the door is in the other direction.”

“Allow me to show you,” Frank says, putting a hand on the interviewer’s back and turning him away from Andrew.

“Do you really want to leave out an entire teammate?” The interviewer asks, trying to duck around Frank.

Frank’s whole job is preventing people from ducking around him. He looks flatly affronted by the attempt. “Yes, I think we do,” Frank says.

“I think he might have something of value to say.”

“He doesn’t,” Maria says cheerfully. “Not to you. Let’s go, let’s go, before we call the cops on you for trespassing. This way, please.”

Half the team swarms the newscasters, moving them gently out the door.

And then it’s back in for training.

And then it’s out for dinner, and Thai food, and they sit on opposite sides of the table so Neil can kick Andrew’s feet and then whisk his legs out of reach. “Shortie.”

“Fucker.”

“Yes, I _do_ fuck, how did you know?”

“Because you fuck _me_.”

“I don’t have a particularly funny response to that.”

“You could put your legs out so I can reach them.”

“No, wouldn’t want you to get dirt on my jeans.”

“Oh, but _my_ jeans can be dirtied?”

“Yours are _black_. No one can tell.”

“I can tell.”

“Ooh, good eyes. Hey, what are you going to do when you need reading glasses? I’m thinking I’ll put them on a chain around my neck, just to get into the grandpops persona.”

“I’m intending to forget where I put them. I’ll have several pairs, and I won’t know where any of them are, at any point in time.”

“Are you going to wear two on your head at the same time?”

“I think I’m going to wear as many as I can fit. And then when someone says _why do you have so many pairs of glasses on your head_ I’ll grab one and say _oh, found it!_ And if they say _there’s five more pairs up there_ I’ll just get a good depressed look on my face and say _that’s not a funny joke, I lost five pairs a month ago and I’m grieving them still._ See how many people I can make question their existence.”

“Are you going to gaslight our children?”

“And grandchildren.”

“You are _really_ looking forward to having grandkids.”

“I think it would be really cute, you holding a baby. Remember when you held John? You looked like you were holding a bomb.”

Neil shudders. “He was _tiny_. And _breakable_. And breaking things is what I _do_ , I don’t understand why Kevin handed him over.”

“Needed a nap.”

“He _did_ pass out with Thea within two minutes. And you were _no_ help.”

“I was plenty of help! I told you that you looked absolutely terrified.”

“That wasn’t help!”

“Well, you wouldn’t turn to look in the mirror—”

“I’d probably have flung John directly into it, that’s when I would’ve found out that I had that weird syndrome where one arm acts independently of the other—”

“Only happens with certain brain conditions or surgery—”

“Like the brain condition of stupidity—”

“No arguing with that—”

“And I’m not. All I’m saying is I couldn’t move, and you wouldn’t take the baby from me.”

“I did! I took John!”

“After I’d been holding him for _half an hour_ you took him for _twenty seconds_ and just in time for Thea to wake up, you son of a dick.”

“That’s _extremely_ insulting to my father.”

“Why your father? Your mom could be the dick.”

“No, my mom’s just dead. Dad might be a dick, though.”

“Then it might just be _accurate_.”

“Sure, but all I know about the man is that he had low enough standards that he was willing to sleep with my mother and that his last name was Minyard,” Andrew says reasonably. “She might never have told him she was pregnant. Maybe he was a good dude.”

“Want to try and find him?”

Andrew gives Neil a scorching glance. “Absolutely _not_. What the fuck would I do with him? Hold his hand on his death bed?”

“Why is he dying?”

“We’re all dying, and he’ll die at some point, and I would _not_ keep in touch. No. Don’t you go looking, Neil Josten, I’ll destroy you. This isn’t some cute, coy, _I don’t wanna_ that really means _maybe I wanna_. This isn’t some _I need nothing and want nothing_. I do _not_ want that man in my life, neither does Aaron, don’t even.”

Neil shrugs. “All right. If you were a chicken, why would you cross the road?”

“Probably, because you’re doing something stupid on the other side and I need to save your goddamn life.”

“What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and _were_ a chicken?”

“Peck you until you woke the fuck up.”

“Well, now I know what’s going on if I ever wake up to a chicken pecking me.”

“I can see how that would otherwise be a confusing situation.”

“Want dessert?”

“Who do you think I am?”

They get dessert. They go back to work. They go home, and find the kids already in bed.

Friday passes at top speed.

They watch the Channel 7 segment at dinner. Andrew isn’t in it, and Neil breathes a sigh of relief, and then they go back to work.

They barely work.

The game is tomorrow. A few more hours won’t make much difference.

They watch another one of Denver’s games.

And then they go home.

The kids stay in their room. Neil almost wants to go tell them they don’t have to—they’re allowed to be in the house’s public spaces, they don’t have to be scared, Neil and Andrew won’t take their nerves out on the kids.

But he doesn’t.

And eventually, after flipping through TV channels for five minutes straight, Andrew and Neil give up and go upstairs. They take turns throwing knives at the dartboard, until Neil feels centered, grounded enough to fall asleep.

There’s also what he knows he has to do on Sunday—it’ll be October 20, is that cutting it close? Maybe not. Maybe! Neil has no idea—

He takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, and then releases it all. He kisses Andrew. And then he closes his eyes, wills his brain into silence, and goes to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i spent more time this week writing the filler chapter for the 18th than i did writing this chapter. i have no self-control


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some good good sports anime shit! 
> 
> also there's porn at the end

Neil wakes up nervous, for a variety of reasons.

It’s Saturday. It’s the last game of the season. It’s championships. And tomorrow is Sunday, and two weeks before Andrew’s birthday. In five days they have their next visit from Grant, too, and that’s also nerve-wracking.

Neil glances at the clock—they still have half an hour before they even have to think about getting up.

He could go back to sleep.

But Andrew, on top of Neil, is waking up—a sharp breath in, a slow breath out, hands uncurling and curling back in, clutching at Neil’s shirt.

“Morning,” Neil murmurs.

“Morning, love.”

Neil’s stomach does a little flip. Just a little one. He runs a hand through Andrew’s hair, takes Andrew’s free hand. “I love you.”

“Odd, how much I like waking up these days,” Andrew muses. “Can’t _imagine_ why that is.”

Neil grins, stretches out his fingers, stretches out Andrew’s fingers and matches their hands together. “Big hands.”

“What?”

“Big hands,” Neil repeats.

“Me or you?”

“You.”

“Literally not, though, actually.”

“You’re shorter than I am, you should have smaller hands.”

“My fingers _are_ shorter than yours.”

“By, like, half a millimeter, though, and they’re thicker—”

“ _Are_ they?”

“Yeah—look.” Neil shimmies Andrew’s ring off his finger, shimmies his own ring off his finger, matches them up. “Your ring is bigger than mine.”

“Is—your ring is a size 8, I’m a size 9, it’s a difference of _.7 millimeters_ , that’s not—what size are my hands _supposed_ to be?”

“This size,” Neil agrees, sliding the ring back on Andrew’s finger, happier about it than he ought to be, given they’ve been married seven years.

“Are you—are you grinning about _putting my wedding ring back on_? It’s not like we got remarried.”

Neil shrugs. “Makes me happy. Wanna put mine back on?”

Neil watches Andrew argue with himself—stick to his convictions and say no? Or say yes?

Andrew loses his own battle, snatches the ring from Neil, and then, with a gentleness at odds with his facial expression, slides it onto Neil’s finger.

Neil kisses the top of Andrew’s head. “Thank you, my love.”

“ _Big hands_.”

“Do you want to have _small_ hands?”

“I’ve never thought about the size of my hands before, at all.”

“I like your hands.”

Andrew gives Neil a _look_.

“Yes?”

“You’re such an asshole.”

Neil snickers. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, I can’t be _that_ bad.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re still lying on top of me.”

Andrew gives Neil a long, accusatory look, but Neil just grins at him. “One of these days, I’m going to find a better mattress than you,” Andrew says, “and _then_ where will you be?”

“I’ll buy a weighted blanket.”

Andrew looks thrown. “Hey, Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did we _bother_ buying bedding?”

“Because I need a mattress and you need a blanket.”

Andrew nods a little in agreement. “I can’t believe you’d replace me with a weighted blanket.”

“I can’t believe you’d replace _me_ with a mattress. No, you know what, I can, one of these days I’m gonna get old and bony, and what are you gonna do then?”

Andrew shrugs. “Like sleeping on a mattress with broken springs. Plenty of people do it. And probably I won’t end up bony, I’ll end up fat, so I should have plenty of padding.”

“Gonna be soft and squishy.”

“I prefer _padded_.”

“Gonna call you Paddington Bear.”

“I hate you so much,” Andrew says, but he’s still holding Neil’s hand, showing no apparent desire to move. “Am I a _teddy bear_?”

“As Paige said—squishy, huggable, lovable.”

“Did she say that? I don’t recall.”

Neil kisses the top of Andrew’s head again. It’s nice, that he gets to do this. Gets to lie here, holding Andrew’s hand, kissing wherever he can reach. Babbling about teddy bears. “This is what you get for complaining that I only talk about exy.”

“Now you just talk nonsense. A nonsense machine.”

“What’re you gonna do if I break?”

“Fix you.”

“Fix me so that I keep talking nonsense? Or fix me so that I talk sense?”

“If you talked sense, you wouldn’t be fixed, would you,” Andrew says, twisting and moving so his face is much closer to Neil’s. “I like your nonsense, Neil, don’t ever let me tell you I don’t.” He leans in for a kiss.

Neil blocks him. “Mints.”

“What, too wimpy to kiss me if I’ve got morning breath?”

“What? No, I’m used to _you_ tasting kinda weird, I don’t want you to kiss _me_ with—”

“ _Sorry_?”

“I mean—I mean, look, I kiss you after you blow me, it’s not like it’s my favorite taste in the world. It’s fine, though, I love you, I don’t care, but _I_ don’t want to taste gross.”

“What, you think I’m too wimpy to kiss you with morning breath?”

“I mean, I guess not,” Neil agrees, and Andrew pulls Neil in for a kiss.

After a moment, they break apart.

“Just get the goddamn—”

“I’ll just get the goddamn—yeah.”

“We may as well get up, if you’re moving,” Neil says.

Andrew doesn’t sigh, but it looks like a close thing.

They get up.

They get moving.

Neil hates moving.

At least tomorrow, they won’t have to. Well—

Well, Neil will have to.

He doesn’t like the thought of leaving Andrew behind, but it has to be done.

But for now, they brush their teeth. They get ready for the day. Neil feels vaguely sick. It feels like he should feel more urgency than this. He glances around the bathroom before he leaves. Makeup? No makeup. Anything else he needs from the bathroom? No. He does the same before he leaves the bedroom. Andrew stands in the hall, waits, while Neil takes a look around. It’s not like he needs special clothes for the championship game—his uniform is already at the stadium—there’s a moment wherein he’s standing in front of a blood-drenched locker looking at his ruined uniform—and then he closes the door, looks at Andrew, and takes a deep breath.

“Good?”

“Good. You?”

“Good.”

“Good.” Neil follows him down the stairs. Into the kitchen. Pulls out the cat food bowls, summoning Sir and King from thin air, and holds them up for Andrew to pour cat food into. King yowls, Sir mews, Neil tries ineffectively to shush them, and then they get their mouths on food, and they go quiet.

Them handled, Neil turns back to Andrew.

“We could have cereal,” Andrew suggests.

“We could,” Neil agrees.

Andrew goes for the eggs. Neil goes for the mushrooms—still good, but at the end of their lifespan. They’ll have to go shopping tomorrow. Maybe Monday. But for now, they’ve got mushrooms, and a mushroom-and-spinach omelette sounds like a good start to their championships day. And toast. And jelly. And orange juice. Carbs. Protein. Neil knows how to eat for a game. They can eat waffles tomorrow.

Andrew makes the biggest omelette imaginable. It has to feed four people, after all.

The other two people come shambling down the stairs a few minutes later, Natalie carrying her doll. Why? Paige had seemed much more interested in the dolls than Natalie had, but _she_ doesn’t carry hers around.

And then Paige scoops King up as he turns away from his bowl, and after a second, King settles in. Begins purring. Paige yawns and hugs him, and he doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and Neil understands. Paige doesn’t need a doll, as long as she can rely on King.

Is Natalie jealous of that? She doesn’t seem to care, but Neil can’t tell. “How are my favorite daughters this morning?” Neil asks.

That gets little grins out of both of them.

“Tired,” Natalie says.

“Stayed up late?”

“No, just—tired.”

“Okay. You two coming to the game tonight?”

“‘Course,” Paige says.

“Nat?”

“Yup,” Natalie agrees. “‘Course.”

“Cool,” Neil says inadequately. But what else is he going to say? _Good_? That implies that there was a bad response. _Wonderful_? Same issue. _We’re happy to have you?_ Sounds weirdly like he and Andrew own the stadium.

Neil is overthinking this.

This is the problem, he decides, with spending years being paranoid and on the run. Overthinking stops being a problem, and starts being all that keeps him alive—and now, when he’s not on the run from anything, doesn’t need to be paranoid, doesn’t need to identify every face around him and every conceivable threat—or, at least, isn’t surrounded by unfamiliar faces and potential threats—he’s turned all that wasted brainpower on thinking about whether or not his use of the word _cool_ was justified.

“ _Cool_?” Andrew mutters as Neil passes him plates.

“Fuck you, I tried my best.”

Andrew looks torn between amusement and condescension. He settles for kissing Neil on the cheek, which Neil considers an appropriate compromise.

Neil slides the first two plates across the table to Natalie and Paige, and passes them forks a minute later. Should he and Andrew require the kids to get up and get their own utensils? Their own plates? Make their own breakfasts? At least say _thank you_? Maybe. Probably that’s a conversation they should have in the future. Right now, he doesn’t care. He’s got his family, and he’s stressed, and whether or not his kids are appropriately helpful and polite isn’t top on his list of priorities.

Andrew hands Neil a plate, picks up his own, and they join the kids for breakfast.

It’s a nerve-racking breakfast. They have one game left, and Neil wants to win it—wants, so badly, to _win_. To prove that all their work up to this point hasn’t been for nothing. To make sure he’s still got it. It would be so stupid to risk his whole life for a game, only to lose just because the other team is mean.

The kids wander upstairs after breakfast. Neil plays with the cats. He has nothing else to do, nothing that feels worthwhile. Andrew reads. At one point, Neil looks up to find Andrew’s eyes closed—meditating.

They make time pass until lunch. Potatoes, chicken, veggies, apples—game day food. Neil watches the clock tick. He hates the _waiting_. Hates that there’s nothing else he can do to prepare. What is he gonna do, go for a run and risk tiring himself out before the final game of the season?

Natalie and Paige disappear back upstairs after helping to clean up, which solves the issue of Neil having to talk to them about _that_. He almost wishes they hadn’t. It would give him something else to think about.

He should distract himself. Should find something to do. But he can’t bring himself to read, or to hunt down the painting supplies that have probably spent the summer melting, or to—to do _anything_. Fighting the punching bag and running would wear him out.

“I’m gonna borrow a couple of your knives,” Neil tells Andrew.

“Okay.”

Neil goes upstairs and throws knives for half an hour.

It occurs to him that he’s risking burning out his shoulders, and he puts away the knives and lies face-down on the bed. He’s not good at waiting. When he was a teenager, he didn’t have to deal with this. Either no one had caught up to them, or someone _had_ caught up to them. Either way, he was on the lookout all the time. Slept with a gun under his pillow and his mom at his back. He’s used to inescapable stress, not deadlines.

The door opens. No knock—must be Andrew.

Andrew doesn’t say anything, just lies down perpendicular to Neil and puts his head at the bottom of Neil’s spine.

Maybe Neil should take up meditation.

Eventually, though, Andrew sits up. Pokes Neil’s arm. “It’s time.”

They collect the kids, pile into the car, and head to the stadium.

Kids go to the security guards, to be deposited in the friends-and-family box. Neil and Andrew meet the rest of the Jaguars in the changing room. Neil’s uniform isn’t covered in blood; isn’t covered in anything, at all. It’s spotless.

Neil feels better, once he’s dressed. Once he’s ready. It feels like he’s doing something.

“Look,” Clark says, “we can probably do this.”

“We’ve got some sports anime shit on our side,” Athena agrees.

“I’ve never watches a sports anime, but sure—”

“Have you watched _non-_ sports anime?” Riley asks.

“No—actually, does Sailor Moon count? We’re getting off topic. Look, we’ve trained. Everyone good on their Japanese?”

Nods all around.

“Strikers, ready to do some blind throwing?”

Nods.

“Backliners, ready to deal with some aggressive assholes?”

Nods.

“Goalies, ready to deal with the same aggressive assholes?”

Nods.

“Alfie—we’re good.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s not much else to say. Give it everything you’ve got—no need to keep anything in reserve for next week. No need to keep tricks up your sleeve. Talk to each other. Go all out. Ready?”

“Ready!” the Jaguars shout.

“Warm ups. Let’s go.”

They warm up. Neil watches Denver, when he can—he’s hoping that someone will be sporting a limp, someone will be wearing a cast, maybe the whole team will have a light cold—but there’s nothing wrong with any of them, as far as he can tell. Disappointing.

They head off-court. Denver wins first serve. They line up.

Neil takes a deep breath, and follows Maria out onto the court.

Without the barrier of the wall between him and the crowd, the noise is deafening.

Last game. It’s the last game. There’ll be another season, if Neil is lucky—but for now, this is it. Neil’s heart is beating so hard he almost can’t breathe. This is _it_. If they can’t pull this off—

He takes his place on the court. He faces his backliner. It’s not Flannery—not yet—but Neil can't imagine any other backliner will be much nicer. 

He calms down.

It’s exy. He can do exy. He can play this game. He studies the goal. This is his court, his home, they can’t hide his own goal from him. He knows where the sensor is, knows where the edge of the sensor is, knows where the ball needs to go. Does it matter if he can actively _see_ it? Neil glances at Maria. Maria nods at him. They’ve prepared for this. They’ve prepped. They know the Japanese they need; they know the moves the need to know. They’ve done everything they could do to prepare; now they just have to do what they came to do.

Win.

Denver serves, and Neil ignores his backliner. The ball is nowhere near him; the backliner is meaningless, right now. He and Maria watch as the ball travels. Down the court, towards Charlie in the goal, and they wait for an opportunity. Neil watches the ball leave the racquet—

Charlie smacks it away, Alfie scoops it up, Maria lifts her racquet and Alfie sends it her way.

Neil kicks into high gear. This is the test.

He shoves against his backliner, darting sideways, around, both eyes on Maria as she whirls and sends it his way—he catches it—lifts his racquet—his backliner darts after him, shoving a hand out, too slow to bodily block Neil but not too slow to block his line of sight. And closer than Frank ever got. More aggressive. If Neil does what he’s been doing, he’ll slam the racquet into this man’s arm and break it.

Neil flings the ball in the appropriate direction, pulling his swing back at the last minute, and knows it wasn’t enough.

There’s a murmur from the crowd, swelling to something like laughter, and no buzzer. A blind shot, and probably nowhere near the goal—

Neil grits his teeth. Doesn’t matter. He just has to try again.

“Keep it together!” Maria yells.

He holds a hand out in acknowledgment, and they wait.

He just has to try again. Just has to get it done. Just has to do what he did while practicing. Just has to find a way to do that _without_ breaking someone’s arm.

Charlie smacks the edge of his racquet into the ball, and it spins straight at Maria. She passes it to Neil, almost immediately; her backliner slams into her a second later. Neil doesn’t stop moving, dodging to one side, spinning, employing every trick he’s got to get a clear shot, counting steps, too close to the wall, too close to his mark, too far from the goal—and when he hits nine, he looks at Maria, sees her on her feet and ready.

“ _Maria_!”

She glances at him. Catches the ball reflexively, when he passes it to her. Says something Neil doesn’t catch. Skips backward, away from her backliner, giving herself more room, and hurls the ball right over the backliner’s shoulder.

The buzzer goes off.

Maria screams. Neil throws his hands in the air. The Jaguars are pounding on the window. The crowd is shrieking.

It can be done.

Neil grins.

It can be done. 

The ball heads back in the Jaguars’ direction. Frank’s mark makes a break, and it’s too close—Charlie misses.

He slams his racquet into the ground and yells something at Frank, who yells right back. Neil can’t make out the words, and can’t tell if they’re angry or if they’re just trying to be heard over the crowd. Regardless, Frank gets low, looks ready to push straight through his mark, and Charlie perches in the center of the goal, waiting. Ready.

Neil gets the ball. Passes it to Maria, who bounces it off the wall and then throws it back to Neil.

“Do it!” She yells.

He flings himself backwards, mentally adjusting for the additional distance, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to see the goal. He doesn’t need to see anything. He knows where he is. He knows where the goal is. He’s always been more of an instinctual player, anyway.

He throws the ball, and doesn’t bother pulling his swing.

The buzzer goes off, and it rings in his ears, louder than the crowd, louder than his blood, a drug Neil is thoroughly addicted to.

He opens his eyes to find his backliner half a foot to his right, arm pulled in. Neil refrains from grinning at him. Refrains from saying anything, at all. If he says anything, it’ll be a threat, and he doesn’t have time for that.

After that, his backliner isn’t so eager to get in his face anymore. Neil’s honestly not sure if the man’s newfound fear is due to Neil’s unheard of silence, or if it’s because he really thinks Neil will break his arm, but—well, actually, Neil _might_ break his arm. Probably, he shouldn’t throw with his eyes closed. For all he knows, the backliner might jump in front of the racquet—and while this guy doesn’t seem too eager to die for a win, Flannery is batshit insane.

Charlie blocks another attempt, and another, and lets in one. They’re slamming him—they can get goals off Andrew, but not as many as they can get off Charlie, so the bigger the point gap Denver gets now, the better. Frank and Athena are working, talking, talking to Charlie, but the strikers look like they’ve got some new footwork of their own. Neil will have to study it, later, but right now—right now he just watches, frustrated, as a striker breaks away from Athena and slams the ball into the goal.

It’s not like Neil and Maria aren’t getting goals of their own—they’re just not getting as _many_. Maria takes another two shots, and scores one; her backliner seems to be picking up on her _move backward_ technique, and he’s trying to stay too close for her to maneuver the racquet at all. She’s getting frustrated, but she’s getting creative—making it work for her. She passes the ball to Neil. Neil takes a shot on goal and misses. They’re falling behind—losing, 5-3.

“Maria!” He calls.

“Not yet!”

He passes the ball to himself, employs some fancy footwork. “Maria!”

“Not _yet_!”

Bounces the ball off the wall. Flees his backliner. He could’ve taken a shot by now, but every time he turns around, he’s trapped by something—the wall, their dealer standing in the way of the goal, _something_. “ _Maria_!”

“Short!”

He flings it at a point a few feet short of her, and she dives on it. Rolls, holding it close to her stomach, firmly evading her backliner in time to shove herself to her feet and score.

“Genius!” Neil yells at her.

She gives him a thumbs up, even as she runs forward, closing in on the goal. She won’t be able to stay there, but the closer she is the next time she gets the ball, the better. Sure enough, her backliner catches up to her quick—but she’s closer than before, and that’s what matters.

The timer runs down on the quarter. Neil scores again. He gets the ball to Maria, and she scores two more times, and Charlie blocks shot after shot, and it’s not enough, they’re losing 9-7, and that’s not a _big_ point gap, but it’s—far from ideal.

Neil clacks racquets with Kevin as they pass each other, exchanging grim looks. Riley bends to touch her helmet to Maria’s. Neil makes it into the locker room and Andrew is there, and Neil brushes his hand against Andrew’s. Andrew lets their pinkies hook together for a minute.

Neil starts pacing.

Riley is the same size as her mark. She doesn’t seem to give a shit about whether or not her hand is blocking her—she just pops onto her tiptoes.

Neil has never been so jealous in his life.

Kevin is—

Kevin is being Kevin.

And right now, that means being the best.

Taking shots with the single-minded focus he’s been able to summon for years. Again, and again, and again. Neil can’t see his face, but he can practically picture the furious set to his jaw every time he misses—should’ve been better, should’ve been faster, should’ve been able to aim blind. But Kevin didn’t get to where he is by giving up, and whenever he has a chance, he takes it.

He and Riley add another 9 points to their score. Denver scores another 11. Every time they get the ball they’re taking a shot—Charlie’s blocked 24, but they’re still losing, 20-16.

Neil looks at Andrew as the first half ends.

Andrew looks calm. The eye of the storm.

Kevin walks through the door and goes straight to Andrew, grabbing his sleeve. “Can you hold it?”

Andrew brushes his hand off.

“Andrew, can you? Neil, ask him.”

Neil shakes his head. He won’t ask Andrew for a promise he might not be able to keep.

“What? You won’t ask me?” Andrew asks in Russian.

Well, that indicates a certain confidence. Neil can play along. “What do you want from me? You’ve already got everything.”

“Do I have to decide now?”

“Of course not.”

“Then ask.”

“Can you hold it?”

“Of course,” Andrew says in English.

Kevin stops his eye roll halfway through.

“You guys done?” Clark asks.

“Yeah,” Neil agrees.

“Lovely. Hey, we’re not losing by _much_.”

“Don’t have to lose by _much_ to still _lose_ ,” Kevin says.

“We don’t have to win by much, either. We only need to get five goals more than they do—”

“This is already a shit-fuckingly high score, and it’s only been half a game,” Frank says.

“Then we can get another five goals.”

“Andrew, they’re doing some crazy bullshit,” Charlie says. “They figured out how to throw curveballs with a racquet.”

“And we’re gonna figure _that_ out, next year,” Kevin says.

“But we haven’t figured it out _this_ year. They kept some shit up their sleeves, for this game, Andrew, it’s bad.”

“And you showed me how to block it,” Andrew says. “Thank you.”

That silences everyone for a minute, and then Clark starts talking strategy.

And then halftime is over.

Maria punches Riley’s arm, Riley throws an arm around her shoulders, and they line up and head out. Andrew follows up behind.

Neil paces.

Paces, and watches, and waits.

The Jaguars get the first serve, and the ball travels. Riley’s against Flannery—Neil keeps an entire eye on her, watching how she deals with him. It’s not particularly useful; Riley has the size Neil doesn’t. Still, watching Riley play is a good reminder—this is _fun_. Or it’s supposed to be, anyway.

Maria scores, and then the ball is moving again, the Jaguars holding it back, but Denver is—aggressive. More so than they were with Charlie. Trying to prove that Andrew is only human—that he, too, can miss. And he looks nervous, now. Andrew looks _nervous_.

Neil stops pacing. Settles for jittering in place.

“Stop it,” Kevin snaps.

Neil takes no offense. Kevin wouldn’t say it if he weren’t nervous, too.

Being able to _hold it_ doesn’t necessarily mean that Andrew can’t miss once or twice. Or three times. Or 20. The thought of Andrew missing 20 shots in one half of a game makes Neil want to vomit. This isn’t just any goalie—it’s _Andrew_. It’s 150 shots, 13 goals Andrew. 20 goals in one half? Neil would carry him bodily to the hospital. Fuck their fun little fiction that Neil can’t carry Andrew—maybe not cradled in his arms, but Neil can toss Andrew over his shoulder just fine.

He’s getting ahead of himself. Denver hasn’t even taken a shot yet.

And then they do.

Close to Andrew, jumping forward, swinging right at him—

Andrew gives them the ball.

No—

And then Neil understands, and it’s a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. Andrew threw it at their feet—made them jump back—at an angle that made the ball rebound straight back into his net, so he could heave it in Riley’s direction. “Oh my _god_!” He yells, and he’s not the only one—Kevin is losing his mind, Athena’s hands are in the air. Neil pounds on the wall in support.

And Andrew looks _good_ , now. Confident. Not pressed. Not stressed. Neil can see him talking to their backliners, can see them tilting their heads to hear him—Neil can’t tell if Andrew’s yelling at them, or if he’s just talking to them. 

“He didn’t teach me that!” Charlie yells. “Bastard didn’t show me _that_ one!”

“He didn’t think it would _work_ ,” Neil says, excited, thrilled. “You saw him—he was _nervous_ , he was worried it wouldn’t work and he’d just _give them the ball_. And he only _had_ the idea a couple days ago, you saw him drilling—he didn’t want to risk it. Or, anyway, he thought it was his risk to take. If it wasn’t going to work, he didn’t want you to take the heat for trying it in the first half, before he could try it.”

“He should’ve _practiced_ with us,” Kevin says, but he doesn’t sound particularly angry about it. “It might _not_ have worked. Rebounding the wall from a standing position with no pressure isn’t the same as—as whatever the fuck he’s doing.”

“Should’ve,” Neil agrees, grinning. “You can yell at him for that when we get back on court.”

“I fucking will, Neil, don’t test me.”

Riley lands a goal; Denver tries, fails, and the second the ball hits Andrew’s net he rebounds it right over the striker’s head, forcing the striker to duck right before Maria grabs it, jumps backwards and aims blind. Denver’s goalie can’t see Maria, can’t tell where she is, doesn’t see where the ball is going until it’s too late, and the buzzer rings. 

Neil knows, now, watching the way the backliners have adjusted their strategy, what Andrew had told them: If they lose their marks, they should stay back a step. Andrew doesn't want Denver's strikers to jump backwards into the backliners.

By the time Neil steps back on the court, his ears are ringing. He’s grinning, half-feral, because Denver _flinched_.

And it only continues.

Denver’s strikers are nervous about getting too close to Andrew—his aim is good, but what if it’s off, what if he actually _does_ hit them instead of the floor? What if they don’t jump fast enough? It would get Denver a penalty—but are they going to sacrifice themselves for a penalty? When Denver’s backliners try to block the Jaguars’ view, it backfires—Neil and Kevin don’t need to see the goal to aim for it, and it makes their goalie’s job harder. Flannery is trying—but he can’t be everywhere at once. Neil is nervous that he _won’t_ flinch, actually, and he doesn’t feel like stopping the game to deal with a broken arm, so he ends up passing to Kevin most of the time, but—Flannery’s just _huge_ , and Neil could _so easily_ just go _under_ —

He glances at Andrew and reins in the urge. He made a promise. He won’t break it.

“Don’t do it!” Kevin yells in Japanese. “Just pass it!”

The fact that cursing is much harder in Japanese than in English or French is, Neil is certain, destroying Kevin from the inside out. “I know,” he calls back. “I know.” He passes it. “Maybe I’ll do a Maria.”

“Short?”

Neil glances at Kevin, struggling and getting nowhere. “Short!”

Kevin gains two inches of space and heaves the ball at Neil. Neil dives for it, not bothering to try to stay standing—he’ll just grab it and roll.

Flannery is right behind him.

Neil scoops the ball to his chest with his racquet and does a front roll, letting the racquet swing to his side—he hears a noise, but meets no resistance—Flannery, stepping back, and Neil’s barely standing before he’s running, he can’t possibly have much time, and Flannery won’t be nice about it, 4, 5, 6 steps—

“Behind you!” Clark calls.

Out of time.

Neil throws the ball, right before Flannery tackles him. Neil knows how to take a fall, though, and he’s expecting this, ready for it, and he remembers being a kid.

Gary had learned something like martial arts—he’d been nearly 11 years old, and his mom had stopped leaving him behind when she went out to find the people looking for them. They were on the run, yes, but the strategy wasn’t yet just to run—Gary’s mom had hoped someone important would come after them, someone whose death would make a difference. Had let herself and Gary act as bait, hoping to draw out faces Gary knew, names that invoked terror—Lola, Romero, Jackson. Nathan. And then his mom would go find them, would come back covered in blood—but after an incident that was miserable for both of them, his mom decided Gary should come along. She didn’t want him defenseless, though. She wouldn’t give him knives—they weren’t for him, although he complained that he knew how to use them already. He learned to shoot her gun. And he learned martial arts. Nothing concrete—he wasn’t a beginner in karate, or Muay Thai, or anything, really. He knew how to kick without injuring himself. Knew how to fight dirty. He was a kid, and small for his age anyway, and maybe he hadn’t been able to hide a hungry-hunted look that told his instructor that he’d probably keep being small. So he learned how to duck, how to flee, how to kick upwards like he was aiming for the intestines instead of just the groin, and how to get someone off of him if he was trapped.

And then Flannery is off of Neil, groaning on the floor, and Neil puts the ball in the goal. The buzzer goes off. Flannery holds up a hand, and gameplay pauses.

Neil blinks at him as he limps off the court, half-carried.

There’s a quick consultation—no one knows what Neil had done, least of all Neil, and whether or not it was a red card offense.

Andrew tilts his head. Neil shrugs.

Neil gets carded, but not taken off—they can’t figure out what he did, but the refs can agree it was probably something.

Denver takes a penalty shot.

Andrew blocks it.

They’re winning, 26-20, with five minutes to go, and Neil isn’t against Flannery anymore.

He looks at Kevin and grins. Kevin looks like he’s won. He’s got the whole world—the game, the team, the goalie, his family in the crowd. Denver gets a goal on Andrew, and it doesn’t even matter—Neil almost doesn’t care—he's got the whole world, too.

Almost.

Because Andrew _does_ care. He looks furious about it—Neil can read it in the set of his shoulders, in the change in his stance. He’d promised to hold their goal. How many goals will it take for that promise to be broken? Andrew isn’t going to find out.

Neil’s new mark doesn’t want to find out what Neil did to Flannery—he’s sticking to normal exy tactics, and that’s fine by Neil. Denver’s strikers are staying back—they don’t want to get hit, don’t want to risk it. Neil pushes harder. Gets another goal. Watches Andrew, when he has the chance—watches him be _good_ at this. At what he does.

And when the ball makes it to Andrew, Neil turns and shoves past his mark. Ducks under his arm as Neil hears the _thump_ that indicates Andrew has slapped the ball away from the goal, nearly trips on his mark’s foot, and hauls ass down the court.

Neil glances backwards, just for a split second. His mark, right on his tail—and the ball—Neil lifts his racquet, snatches the ball, and heaves it at the goal from five feet away. The buzzer goes off. The goal lights up red. Neil slams shoulder-first into the wall, another buzzer indicates the end of the game, and Neil shoves himself out of the way as his mark slams right into where he’d been.

The Jaguars _won_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” his mark groans, pressing off the wall. “Too _old_ for this—”

 _They won_.

Neil grins at him, but doesn’t bother responding. He has more important things to do. Things like dragging Andrew off the court and kissing him brainless. He pulls off his helmet, heads for his team.

They won. They beat Denver. They _won_. The rest of the Jaguars are pouring onto the court; the crowd is screaming; Neil can practically see the trophy, and it’s not even on the court yet. They won, they won, they _won_.

Kevin makes it to Andrew first, grabbing his racquet, saying something Neil can’t hear. Maria throws an arm around Andrew’s shoulders for half a second, says something to him, and then Riley dives on Maria, grabs Kevin with a spare arm, Athena is jumping up and down with a level of energy Neil can only attribute to adrenaline, Andrew’s helmet comes off and Neil can see Andrew’s face and he’s _shining_ , in an entire half of the championship game against one of the best teams exy has ever seen he only let in two goals—Neil flicks a look at the board and finds that Denver had attempted 33, 33 shots and only two of them made it in—it speaks to the quality of their backliners that Denver was only able to attempt 33, but—but—Andrew.

Neil makes it to his team and is absorbed into the celebration, hands grabbing him and pulling him in, and Neil reaches for Andrew, finds his hand, lets Andrew tug him in.

“Yes or no?” Andrew whispers.

“Yes,” Neil says, meeting Andrew’s lips, happy, so happy—

“We gotta line up,” Riley says, grabbing Neil’s shoulder. “Hold off for, like, two minutes.”

Neil and Andrew break away. Join the lineup. Shake hands with Denver, who looks disappointed—Neil would feel bad, but, well, he doesn’t.

The Jaguars gather together to receive their trophy. They hold it together, professional and adult, for long enough for the ceremony to end, and then Maria jumps on Riley, Athena and Alfie do a two-person kick line, and Neil links his pinky with Andrew’s.

There are reporters—Clark speaks for the team, Maria shouting embellishments when it feels appropriate, the crowd finally beginning to disperse. Neil glances at the family-and-friends box and sees it empty—Natalie and Paige will be waiting for them at the changing room door, then, and that’s good, that’s _good_ , he glances at Andrew, and Andrew looks calm, looks _happy_ , and Neil would accept immortality right now if it meant this, forever, forever, forever.

And then they’re allowed to leave the court, to shower and change. Clark is grinning.

“Good first season, Coach,” Athena says, and he grins wider.

“Don’t think this counts, technically—”

“Bullshit,” Riley calls.

“—but thank you. I won’t hold you fucks here, you all know you did a good job—we have a whole trophy to prove it—”

“That we _doooooo_ ,” Maria crows.

“—and you can come look at it whenever you feel down. Kevin, Neil, Andrew—if you come practice over the winter, clean up after yourselves. Same goes for everyone else. I’ll see you all in March. Go home.”

They split up, head out the door. Thea lifts Kevin up, and then Natalie and Paige are there, Paige already narrating her thoughts on and reactions to the game like Neil and Andrew had been standing there for ten minutes, and Neil tosses an arm around Natalie and walks them to the car.

“—so do we get to take pictures with the trophy?” Paige asks. “Like, we get that, right? As the unofficial sort of team kids?”

“Team kids?”

“Yeah, like, mascots, but instead of mascots, we’re kids?”

“Teens,” Natalie says. “Team teens.”

“Ooooh, that’s better—are you gonna _prevent_ the team teens from having a photo shoot with the trophy?”

“I mean, probably today, yeah, I think they fucking deep clean the stadium at the end of the year,” Neil says as Andrew pulls out of the parking lot. “But later, we can go. We usually practice a bit during the winter, you can come with us.”

“Will you teach me? I don’t wanna go join some exy club with, like, no experience at all,” Paige asks.

“Of course,” Andrew says.

Paige grins, bouncing in her seat.

“Wanna eat out?” Neil asks.

Andrew joins in the chorus of agreement from the backseat, and skips their exit. Columbia on a Saturday night isn’t the easiest place in the world to grab a table without a reservation, but it’s not the end of the world, either.

They skip the chain restaurants, skip the big restaurants, skip Riley’s favorite restaurant—she and Maria might be there celebrating, and without discussion Andrew and Neil decide they’re unwilling to either interrupt or be interrupted. They head instead for a little Thai place, find a 20 minute wait, and stand outside until their turn comes.

“So we’re reading _Waiting for Godot_ in English class and I’m losing my mind—”

Neil grins as Natalie rants about that, her and Paige taking turns talking at and over each other, loud and apparently unconcerned about that, for the whole 20 minutes, no input necessary, somehow naturally coming to the conclusion that _Frankenstein_ is about bad parenting. Neil isn’t sure when they switched books, or why that seems to end the discussion, but it does, and two minutes later they get a table.

They eat in silence—Neil and Andrew are starving, and the kids aren’t going to pass up an opportunity to eat whatever’s in front of them.

“Dessert?” Paige asks.

“We could make sundaes later,” Andrew suggests.

“This is acceptable,” Natalie agrees.

Andrew looks at Paige, who nods.

Andrew pays, and they head home.

Neil checks the rearview mirror when, five minutes into the drive, neither kid has said anything, and finds them both asleep.

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand. Nods his chin in the direction of the rearview mirror.

Andrew checks the mirror and melts.

Neil grins. He likes that, these days, the people Andrew adopts are happy to be adopted by him. That the people he adopts feel safe around him. That Andrew gets to be happy about that. That the people he adopts _love_ him. That Andrew gets to love them back.

Neil considers falling asleep, too—if he’s not careful, exhaustion is going to eat him alive by 9:00—but Andrew can’t sleep yet, so Neil will stay awake, too. He watches the road.

“Do we wake them up?” Neil asks when they pull into the driveway.

Andrew shuts the car off.

The kids don’t wake up.

“I don’t know,” Andrew whispers. “We can’t just _leave_ them in here.”

They sit, quietly, for three minutes.

There’s no movement in the backseat.

“We can’t _carry_ them in,” Neil says.

Andrew nods. The kids aren’t infants. Neil and Andrew aren’t going to pick them up without consent. That would wake them up, anyway, and then they may as well just wake them up now.

Another three minutes tick past.

“Maybe we google it,” Neil says softly. “ _How to wake sleeping children nicely._ ”

“ _Without embarrassing them_ ,” Andrew adds.

“ _And without startling them_.”

Down the street, a car screeches, and the girls startle awake.

“Perfect timing,” Neil says cheerfully, unbuckling his seatbelt.

“When did we get home?” Paige asks.

“Three seconds ago,” Neil lies. Andrew doesn’t contradict him.

“Oh. Okay.”

“Wanna do anything?” Neil asks. He’s hoping against hope that the answer is _eat ice cream and go straight to bed_. He wants to kiss Andrew.

“We have homework,” Paige says listlessly.

“We can do that tomorrow,” Andrew says.

“Oh, cool. I don’t feel like watching anything.”

“Game?” Natalie suggests.

“Monopoly?” Paige suggests.

“Monopoly works,” Natalie agrees.

They look expectantly at Neil and Andrew.

Neil can kiss Andrew later. “Sounds good to me?”

“Yup,” Andrew agrees.

They pull out monopoly.

It’s a far different experience than when they’d last played, and Neil commits to insisting they play a monthly game just to see how the girls are doing. Natalie tries to steal Park Place directly from the stack of unpurchased properties; when Neil grabs her wrist, gives her a raised eyebrow, she just huffs and rolls the dice. Paige’s strategy is this: buy everything she lands on, and whenever anyone lands on a property and tries to buy it, she loudly tries to outbid them.

“That’s not how this works,” Neil says, the third time she tries this.

“It’s capitalism, isn’t it?” Paige says indignantly. “Money talks! I have money! I’ll pay more for that! You don’t have a _contract_ with Andrew agreeing to sell him Virginia Avenue!”

“You have $400 total,” Andrew observes. “You’re running low on cash. I could outbid you, anyway.”

“I don’t have a contract saying that I’ll sell to the highest bidder, either,” Neil objects. “It’s first-come, first-serve. Anyway, I’m not _really_ the bank, I’m just—just—the bank’s human avatar.”

“You’re _not a bank_?” Paige shrieks.

“All right. I’m not bargaining—”

Natalie slides $600 across the board. “I’d like to place a bid for Virginia,” she says.

“You—you don’t even have any from that set!” Paige protests.

“And you have St. Charles,” Natalie says.

“Yes! I do!”

“So I am _invested_ in not letting you get a monopoly. I will pay extra now to prevent that, instead of paying a billion dollars every time I land on anything pink because you’ve placed three hotels and a house—”

“What’s even the _point_ of this game if I can’t get a monopoly—”

“Suffering,” Natalie says. “The point is to _suffer_ —”

Neil slides the card over to Andrew, who passes the requisite cash behind his back so Neil can take it stealthily.

“No, it’s to make _other people_ suffer—”

“Yeah, but I’m _other people_ to you—”

“No, you’re my sister, you can have a friends and family discount—”

“Of what, half? Am I gonna get half price?”

“No, I was thinking 2%—”

“That’s _it_?”

“Look, it doesn’t _sound_ like a lot, but do you know how much money I get if you land on Virginia when I have three hotels on—hey, where’d the card go?”

“I have it,” Andrew says while Neil rolls the dice and moves the car three spaces. Chance.

“When did you get it!”

“Five minutes ago or so.”

Neil has won second prize in a beauty contest. He gets $20. Cool. “Natalie, it’s your turn. Also, is that $600 for me, or?”

“ _No,_ it’s not for you, because you’re a _bad banker_.”

“I’m not a banker. Roll.”

“Why are _you_ the car when you know nothing about cars and Andrew likes cars?” Paige asks.

“What does that matter?”

Natalie moves five spaces. Pays Paige $12. Makes a face at her.

Paige smiles angelically as she sorts her money. “Because I’m just saying, I think Andrew should be the car.”

“I’m the top hat,” Andrew says.

“Yeah, I can see that, but like, why?”

“Why are you the wheelbarrow?”

“Because I—wait for it— _carry a lot of baggage_. Eh? Eh? None of you have any sense of humor.”

“Andrew’s the top hat because he likes clothes. I’m the car as a power move. Wheelbarrows don't usually carry baggage. Paige, go.”

Paige grumbles, lands on luxury tax, shells out the money, and sticks her tongue out at Natalie when Natalie gives her an angelic smile fit to rival Paige’s.

Two rounds later, when Natalie lands on Free Parking, she grabs the stack of money and uses it to fan Paige. “ _Thank_ you for your taxes,” she crows.

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Paige says. “Happy to contribute. Roll again, you rolled doubles—oh, did you just land on Madison? Oh, no, looks like you owe me _monnneyyyyyy_ —”

“Oh, _fuck_ —”

Three minutes later, once Natalie has sorted through her Free Parking money and paid Paige what she’s owed, Paige lands on North Carolina, and passes the money right back.

They play until Natalie announces a desire for ice cream.

“Andrew and Natalie go make sundaes, Paige and I will clean?” Neil suggests.

“Why do I have to clean?” Paige objects.

“I’m also cleaning,” Neil says.

“Uh-uh, that’s not fair.”

“Natalie and Andrew can clean up after the sundaes.”

Andrew gives Neil a look of absolute betrayal, but Paige is already shaking her head.

“Not good enough. Natalie still gets to _make_ sundaes.”

“Okay, you and Natalie can clean up while Andrew and I make sundaes _and_ clean them up.”

Natalie gives Paige some laser eyes. Paige is impervious. “Okay,” she agrees.

Well, Neil isn’t going to argue. He and Andrew stand.

“Wait, why am _I_ being punished because _Paige_ argued about fairness?”

Hmm.

Neil can see how that might be a problem. He glances at Andrew, who shrugs.

“We can all clean up," Andrew says, "and then all make sundaes.”

That works. Neil looks at Natalie. “Fair?”

“I guess.”

Good enough. Neil and Andrew sit back down. Clean up. And then they adjourn to the kitchen to make sundaes.

There’s poptarts involved—toasted, not boiled. Chocolate syrup. Whipped cream. Sprinkles. Oreos. Caramel syrup. Andrew hasn’t had time to make brownies, but that doesn’t stop him from hauling out two-bite brownies and microwaving them. He chops up one of his peanut butter cups.

“Why have you never made us sundaes before!” Paige asks, watching Andrew construct them.

“You want me to make you sundaes when I can’t eat them myself? _That’s_ unfair.”

“Why can’t you eat them?” Natalie asks.

“Usually, I have to get up and play sports the next day. Can’t eat _this_ and then dive for a ball, I won’t get up.”

“ _I_ can,” Paige says.

“Cool,” Andrew says, “but I’m not a teenager anymore.”

“Old,” Natalie accuses.

“I just made you a sundae,” Andrew objects.

“Irrelevant. Your oldness is a fact,” Natalie says, before stirring up her sundae.

Andrew watches her do it, absolutely expressionless, spoon frozen halfway to his mouth. “Next time, I’ll just stick it in a blender,” he says, nearly bored.

“Oh, good idea,” Natalie agrees. “Like a—not a smoothie. A shake. A blizzard.”

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil raises an eyebrow. _I’m not going to say anything. Will you?_

Andrew silently eats his sundae.

After that, they _do_ watch TV—one, singular episode of Mythbusters, by the end of which Neil’s head is in Andrew’s lap and he’s fighting sleep.

“We’re going to bed,” Andrew announces, poking Neil until he gets up.

“It’s, like, 9:00,” Paige says.

“You got a nap,” Neil says. “I didn’t.”

“And we’re old,” Andrew adds. “And we just played a _lot_ of sports.”

“Why do you keep saying _play sports_?” Natalie asks.

“Bringing it back down to its level.”

Natalie stares at him for a minute, and then she and Paige trade a look that says _not tonight._

“Good night,” Paige says.

“Good night,” Neil and Andrew say.

“Night,” Natalie adds.

“Don’t forget to lock up and turn off the lights,” Neil says.

“You worry too much, old man,” Natalie says.

“It’s kept me alive,” Neil says right back.

“Not all coping tactics are useful outside of context,” Andrew murmurs.

“When have we left _context_?” Neil asks indignantly, climbing the stairs. “I killed a guy in our front hallway a month ago. Ichirou visited maybe two weeks ago.”

Andrew’s silent for a few seconds. “Can’t argue with that,” he agrees eventually, closing their bedroom door behind them.

“Hey,” Neil says, threading his fingers through Andrew’s. “You were really fucking cool, earlier. Hey, Drew? You were incredible.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Drew, _yeah_. We were back there for the third quarter screaming and jumping around—it was _awesome_. It was _extremely_ cool. _Very_ impressive.”

“This is just you trying to make me feel better about thinking Charlie was cool.”

“I mean, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not _true_.”

Andrew wraps one hand around the back of Neil’s neck. “Doesn’t it?”

“Drew, it really was incredible. It was—it was genius, and executed perfectly—I think Kevin plans to yell at you for not talking it through with us first, but even _he_ was so goddamn impressed—”

“Yeah, he told me.”

“And Kevin’s not a liar.”

“Not to me, he’s not. But, to be fair, these days, neither are you.”

“Thanks. But that’s not the point. The _point_ is—Drew, it was _fucking cool_.”

“You’re my husband, you’re supposed to think I’m cool.”

“False, usually I think you’re a goddamn nerd.”

“You think _I’m_ a nerd? _You’re_ the math freak.”

“You have Shakespeare _memorized_.”

Andrew pokes Neil in the stomach. “Say something else, that’s not a good argument.”

“You have Shakespeare memorized—and keep reading it.”

“I’ll let that one pass,” Andrew agrees. “You wrote the Pythagorean Theorem on my back the other day.”

“Oh, shit, you could tell? I tried to make it not obvious.”

There’s a too-long pause before Andrew says “Yes, I figured it out.”

Neil pauses.

 _Figured it out_ implies that Andrew had to think about it.

“Have you been thinking about it?”

“Am I not allowed to _think_ about things?”

“No, you are,” Neil agrees, pressing his forehead to Andrew’s. “You definitely are. Would you like another back massage?”

Andrew hums. “Not right now.”

“Okay.”

“I could definitely blow you right now, though.”

“I would be happy to jerk you off.”

“Sounds like a plan. Would you like to go first?”

“No, I think I’d like to jerk you off first, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

“This is an extremely mature conversation,” Neil observes as he pulls his shirt off.

“Why are _you_ taking your shirt off?”

“Usually, everything ends up on my shirt. I’d like to prevent that.”

“We could grab a towel?” Andrew suggests.

“Great idea.”

“Why are we talking like this?”

“Like I said, mature conversation.”

“ _Are_ we old?”

“Oh, most definitely.”

“That sentence should’ve had a _dude_ at the end of it.”

“Oh, _most_ definitely, my dude—”

“I want to go home.”

Neil grabs a towel, grinning. “Do you _not_ want to do this?”

Andrew examines Neil. “Now, that’s not what I said,” he says, pulling off his own shirt. “You should really learn to listen.”

“Mm. I need things spelled out for me, remember?” Neil asks, reaching out, slow and careful, telegraphing his touch eight years in advance.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand and puts it on his chest. “I. A. M—”

“Like the cat food?”

Andrew closes his eyes. “I’m about to let you give me a hand job after making a cat food joke.”

Neil leans down and licks a line up Andrew’s throat. “Are you, now,” he whispers into Andrew’s ear.

“Yes,” Andrew says, failing miserably at keeping his voice flat, hand on Neil’s neck.

“We should probably get to the bed, then,” Neil suggests, tracing the band of Andrew’s pants.

Andrew shakes his head. “If we lie down we’re not getting back up.”

“Well, that’s not sexy.”

“Oh well,” Andrew says, pulling the bathroom door shut so he can lean against it.

Neil shrugs—that’s fair enough. He unzips Andrew’s pants, undoes the button, kisses Andrew’s jawline, listens to the sound of his breath, taps his fingers against the bulge in Andrew’s underwear. Smiles when Andrew shudders. “How are you feeling?” He whispers in Andrew’s ear.

“In general?” Andrew asks, voice strained. “Or right now?”

“Whatever works for you,” Neil decides, running his fingers up, down. Still not skin against skin. How far gone can he make Andrew go?

“Fuck, Neil—always gotta be a goddamn quiz show with you—”

“Well, there’s no right or wrong answer, so I don’t think it counts—”

“Just—fucking—hey, the faster you get me to—” Andrew cuts out with a hiss as Neil nips at his pulse point.

“What were you saying?”

“Torture is _not_ a prerequisite—”

“I can _stop_ ,” Neil says, taking his hand away.

Andrew grabs Neil’s face and pulls him in for a kiss, pressing down against Neil’s thigh.

Eventually, they break apart. “Oh yeah,” Neil says breathlessly. “ _That_ was what I wanted to do. Kiss you senseless.”

“You’re fucking welcome to it, as long as you put your hand on my dick, jackass.”

“I can accept that,” Neil agrees, pulling Andrew’s dick out of his underwear. Not the least because he’s fairly certain that what Andrew was saying earlier was _the faster you get me to come the faster we can go to bed_. Neil wants to make Andrew gasp his name, pop some ibuprofen, and knock out.

So he gets to work, working Andrew over, putting his free hand to good use touching all the places that make Andrew twitch—tracing a line up the inside of his arm, running his hand over Andrew’s chest, flattening his hand against Andrew’s stomach, kissing Andrew brainless, doing his level best not to lose himself to it, too—but when he pulls back, Andrew follows, lips red and parted, and Neil almost loses his mind. Puts his mouth on Andrew’s pulse, feeling it flutter against his lips, rubs his thumb over the tip of Andrew’s dick, careful not to let his other hand prevent Andrew from moving—careful not to make Andrew feel trapped—and he likes this, he decides, likes Andrew bucking his hips into Neil’s hand. Likes the breathless, boneless way Andrew says his name, says his name, again and again and again—Neil threads his hand into Andrew’s hair, kisses him, so that when Andrew comes, tipping his head back, it’s Neil’s hand that hits the door, not Andrew’s head.

Neil feels Andrew twitch. Watches him swallow. Watches him roll his head to the side, getting his breath back, not pulling away from Neil, not taking his right hand off Neil’s neck, his left out of Neil’s hair. Holding on.

Neil tucks him back into his pants. Considers wiping his hand on the towel, but, well, the sink is right there, so—

Andrew lets go of him.

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek and washes his own hands. Soaks the towel, squeezes it out, and turns to Andrew.

“I can wash my own stomach,” Andrew says.

“Would you let me?” Neil asks. “You don’t have to say yes, but I’d like to.”

“No one has ever, in all of time, _wanted_ to wipe the semen off someone else’s stomach.”

Neil shrugs. “I’ve always been a little weird.”

Andrew shrugs. “Sure.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s nose, his cheek, wipes his stomach off. “How are you, though?”

“I’m okay, love,” Andrew says. “Am I clean? Because I think it’s time for us to switch places.”

“What’s the rush?” Neil asks as Andrew turns them around, putting Neil’s back against the door.

“Wanna blow you before you fall asleep.”

Neil snorts. “Fair enough—”

Andrew pulls him in for a kiss. “You talk too much,” he grumbles when he pulls away, sticking his hand down Neil’s pants.

Neil sighs as he feels Andrew’s hand. “Your fault, it’s your fault—”

Andrew kisses him again. And then he drops to his knees, trailing his hands down Neil’s sides, undoes Neil’s jeans, licks up the side of Neil’s cock, and swallows him whole.

Neil tries to pay better attention, this time, tries to pay attention to exactly what Andrew is doing with his tongue, does his best—wants to do this for Andrew, wants—tangles his fingers in Andrew’s hair, catches himself focusing on not pulling or pushing on Andrew, and a couple minutes later loses himself altogether.

Andrew doesn’t let Neil fall—won’t let Neil join him on the floor, just rests his head on Neil’s hip while Neil tries to regain his legs.

“Okay, I’m good, I’m good,” Neil manages a few seconds later. “I’m good.”

Andrew stands and leans against Neil, tugging him down for a kiss.

“One day,” Andrew says, “I’m gonna get up and my knees are gonna _hurt_. And then you’ll have to remove a couple ribs so you can suck _yourself_ off.”

Neil grimaces. “Could just buy a fleshlight.”

“It is _very_ weird to me that you know what that is.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know, feels like you shouldn’t.”

“I did, like, _go_ to high school. Just because I never knew what anyone was talking about when they were talking about, fucking, whatever was on TV at the time doesn’t mean I couldn’t figure out what a fleshlight was.”

“Gonna replace me with a fleshlight.”

“You seem to think I’m going to replace you with a _lot_ of things. A weighted blanket. A fleshlight. I don’t think I’d be willing to replace you even with an exact copy of yourself.”

“What, not gonna marry Aaron if I die?”

“No? Do—do you _want_ me to? Because I’m not going to.”

“Well, sure, he’s married—”

Neil pokes Andrew in the ribs. “And, importantly, _not you_.”

Andrew kisses Neil’s shoulder. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They get ready for bed, and then they get in bed, and Neil kisses Andrew until he’s too tired to keep going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys my writing app autocorrected "fleshlight" to "flashlight" without me noticing, inadvertently making that the funniest fucking conversation imaginable. anyway this is why editing is important


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil runs an errand!
> 
> tw mental health talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok look neil's errand? plays out with Extreme unrealism. this is your warning to suspend your sense of disbelief 
> 
> ALSO next week will be the filler chapter, i didn't even bother framing it as a flashback, so full warning next week will be taking place like four or five years before the rest of this fic

It’s Sunday morning, and Neil has an errand to run.

He knows this.

Maybe he should’ve gotten started on it sooner—maybe it’ll take two minutes. He has no idea if—

And then Andrew is waking up, and Neil can’t think about it anymore. Andrew can’t know about this. And he’ll see it, he’ll see it on Neil’s face, Neil is horrifically bad at keeping secrets from him.

Andrew stretches, cat-like, pats Sir where he’s lying in a patch of sunlight, straightens out, and sticks his face in Neil’s neck.

“Found a difference between you and a weighted blanket,” Neil says. “Weighted blankets don’t have a neck fetish.”

Andrew grumbles. If there were words in that, they’re lost to Neil’s jugular. Neil pats Andrew’s head.

There’s no hurry. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go.

Well, that’s not true on _Neil’s_ end, but—

But after the past few weeks, it feels like heaven nonetheless. They can play with the cats—the kids have been playing with them, so at least they’re not amped up, but Neil realizes he misses playing with them. He and Andrew can go _do_ things. _See_ people. Antagonize the group chat.

But not yet. They can just—lie here. Go back to sleep. Andrew’s breath is slowing back down; he, clearly, sees no need to get up.

Neil could just _sleep_. Or, hell, just lie here, awake but comfortable, listening to Andrew and the cats breathe, petting Andrew’s hair, watching the sun trace a path across the opposite wall.

But—

Andrew picks his face up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Andrew puts two fingers to Neil’s pulse point. “Just sped up.”

Neil closes his eyes. He’s so bad at keeping secrets from Andrew. “I have an errand to run.”

“When?”

“Now,” Neil says.

“Where are we going?”

“Just me.”

Andrew waits.

“It’s—I can’t tell you. It’s nothing for you to worry about, though, I promise.”

“And it can’t wait?”

“Maybe, maybe not, I really don’t know, but the sooner I get it done, the better.”

“Your pulse says it’s something to worry about.”

Neil tugs away from Andrew’s hand. “It’s not. I promise.”

“Abram.”

“Trust me.”

Andrew takes Neil’s face in his hands, but doesn’t say anything. He can’t, not without insinuating that he doesn’t trust Neil.

“I love you,” Neil says.

“I love you, too. Tomorrow will you stay with me?”

“Tomorrow we’re going to sleep until noon.”

“Will I get to find out what you’re doing when you get back?”

“You’ll find out in a couple weeks, hopefully.”

“So whatever it is, it’s going to take a couple weeks. Hopefully. How many is a couple? Two?”

Neil makes some noncommittal noises.

“Okay. Fine. Let’s go, jackass.”

“Why am I a jackass?”

“First day of freedom and you’re running out on me.”

“Just for a little while! And then I’ll be back. It may require a second trip. Depending. But it’s just a little while!”

“Take the maserati, I’m blocking you in.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“You need to get better at driving. More confident.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Be more confident behind the wheel,” Andrew says, tugging Neil out of bed.

“I’m plenty confident behind the wheel, thank you very much.”

“You’re like a 16-year-old who’s been driving for four months.”

“I have never gotten into so much as a single car crash.”

“Irrelevant.”

“What, is this just because I don’t go 20 over the speed limit?”

“Probably, it’s because you spend too much time making sure you won’t get pulled over.”

“That’s a _good_ thing.”

“Is it? All I’m saying is it would be really hot if you’d drive like you knew what you were doing—”

“I don’t _drive_ attractively enough?”

“Is that _not_ supposed to be a consideration?”

“If you weren’t my husband, I’d smack you.”

“Do _you_ not think that I’m hot when I drive?”

“You’re always hot. What? What does that look mean? You are!”

“This is the worst, because you’re not even sitting there going _wasn’t that the right answer_? You honestly _believe_ it.”

“I do!”

“Do you even pay _attention_ to what I wear?”

“Black jeans? Black shirt?”

“Hey, Neil? You’re the worst.”

“Am I _wrong_?”

“All I’m saying is that I put _effort_ into my all-black wardrobe, and it would be nice if someone appreciated it.”

“When you say _someone_ , do you mean that generally? Because I could text Maria—”

“I’m talking about you, specifically. The singular _you_.”

“I can try? Hey, Andrew, those pajama pants look hot on you. The hole in the hem of that t-shirt is really sexual—”

“The _worst_.”

“I don’t know, I’ve never understood this. I love you, I think you’re hot, you could wear a potato sack and I’d still want to spend the rest of my life kissing you, I like watching you drive because I like looking at you, I like what you wear because you like it. What do clothes have to do with it? Okay, no, I get that clothes have _something_ to do with it,” Neil backtracks, remembering his very good jeans, “but I don’t know what. I _am_ sorry about that, though.”

“Don’t be sorry about that. Why would you be sorry about that?”

“Because it’s something you want.”

“I was joking.”

“Were you?”

Andrew starts brushing his teeth.

Neil shrugs. That’s fine. He’s in no rush. They’ve got time.

Not today, though. Today he’s got something to do. Business. Business to do.

“Stay for breakfast?” Andrew asks.

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

They get dressed, and Neil follows Andrew downstairs.

The kids aren’t up yet, which is fine by Neil. They’ll ask questions he can’t answer. But Andrew seems to be content to sit in silence, which is fine, because if Neil opens his mouth now, he might _talk_. Instead, he sticks his feet in Andrew’s lap and eats his cereal. Eats a few blueberries. Holds one up in a question. Andrew opens his mouth and tilts his head back. Neil takes aim, throws, and lands it right in Andrew’s mouth. Neil pushes the bowl closer to Andrew, so Andrew can grab one and take aim at Neil. Neil doesn’t even have to work to catch it—Andrew knows how to throw. He’s _incredibly_ good at landing things in the trash can from 20 feet away, as long as the thing he’s throwing isn’t a tissue—no weight to that.

Natalie wanders in five minutes and half the bowl later. “Are you—throwing blueberries into each other’s mouths? There’s, like, more efficient ways of eating, you know.”

Andrew holds one up in offering to her.

She rolls her eyes, but opens her mouth and tilts her head back.

Andrew throws the blueberry.

Natalie yawns, instinctively covering her mouth with one hand, and the blueberry bounces off her hand and onto the floor.

She looks at it. “Why would you throw the blueberry on the floor like that? What a waste.”

Andrew looks at Neil with something like betrayal as Neil cackles.

“What?” Neil asks, grinning. “Sorry our kids are fucking funny.”

Natalie picks up the blueberry, takes aim, and throws it neatly back into the bowl.

“Andrew, which one was it?”

“What, don’t want to eat the floor berry?”

“No?”

“What if what I want for holding the goal last night is for you to eat the floor berry?”

“I mean, I’ll _do_ it, but damn, Andrew, _that’s_ what you’d spend that on?”

“What if what I want is for you to tell me where you’re going today?”

Neil shuts down the part of his brain trying to think about where he’s going today. “Mm.”

“You’re going somewhere?” Natalie asks. “Can I come?”

Neil shakes his head.

“No, you’re not going anywhere? Or no, I can’t come?”

“I’m going somewhere, and I’m going alone.”

“Even _dad_ doesn’t know?”

“What doesn’t dad know?” Paige asks from the doorway.

“Where pops is going today.”

“Where’s he going?”

“I don’t know!”

“Where’re you going?”

“Can’t tell. And, actually, I’m gonna head out now,” Neil decides, standing. It won’t get any better when he comes back—they’ll just ask where he went. But at least it’ll be _done_.

“ _Where_?”

“Nope,” Neil says, grabbing his keys and heading out the door. He shuts the door on two teenagers yelling.

Not yet.

Can’t think about it yet. He might end up running back inside to tell Andrew.

He gets in the car, starts it up. Pulls out of the driveway and heads for the highway.

This is, really, shooting himself in the foot. It’s a _great_ idea, short-term. Long-term? _Horrible_ choice.

He makes it to the highway.

Oh, this is _such_ a good idea. This is going to be the best birthday present he’s ever gotten Andrew.

Neil will never live up to it again. Not as long as he lives. This is going to raise the bar _so_ high and Neil will _never_ be able to jump over it.

That doesn’t mean he’s going to turn around, though.

He makes it to the jeweler without incident.

He feels like he’s doing something clandestine. Sneaky.

He walks in and is immediately accosted by an employee. “Can I help you?”

That’s when Neil realizes he has no idea what he _wants_. “I’m looking for—I need two engagement rings.”

“Two?” She asks.

“One for me. We’re already married,” he explains. “But we got married in college, so my husband bought wedding rings, but we didn’t have the money for engagement rings.”

“You’re sure you want two? Usually only the person who was proposed to gets one, I believe.”

Neil shrugs. “There’s some confusion about which one of us proposed, and since I still think it was him, I want a ring.”

“Okay! Our diamonds are over here. What band do you want? Platinum is our most popular.”

Neil looks at them.

He doesn’t really like them.

They’re nice, but—Neil isn’t going to skimp, not on this, but the more expensive the rings get, the bigger and flashier they are. Andrew may put effort into his appearance, but it’s never about being flashy—the armbands serve a purpose, the knives—Neil thinks about the knives, about the thoughtful way Andrew chooses them every morning, the _deliberateness_ Andrew brings to so many of his choices.

Then again. Neil drove here in a maserati Andrew purchased for the purpose of spending money, and slept last night in a larger-than-average bed that requires special sheets that they only use five square feet of that Andrew had purchased for the sake of buying it.

“We can also do custom rings,” the saleswoman says. “So if diamonds aren’t for you, we can do something special. Does you two have a favorite gemstone? A favorite color?”

“Blue,” Neil says. “He says his favorite color is blue.”

“Oh! Blue—that’s great, maybe sapphires? We don’t have any ready-made in stock right now—they’re popular—but we’ll be getting more in soon, and we _do_ have some cut stones in the back—we could custom-make a ring, but it’ll be a little more expensive. Would take around a week, but that’s _absolutely_ an option. Do you want matching rings? Or would you prefer something more personalized?”

Neil wishes he had a minute, but—he needs the help, he just—he wishes he hadn’t said anything. It feels _weird_ to him, to give Andrew a ring with gems the color of Neil’s eyes. Self-centered.

Oh.

Wait.

He knows how to fix it. “Do you have any stones that are—gold, a darker gold? Brownish?” All he has to do is get a ring with gems the color of Andrew’s eyes, and then it’s fair, and also, it suddenly feels urgent to him, that he gets to think about Andrew’s eyes in the sunlight every time he looks at this ring.

“Um—I can—I’ll go see what we’ve got,” she says with a smile. “I’m Lily, by the way.”

“Thanks, Lily. I’m Neil.”

“Great, I’ll be right back!” She says.

She’s not right back.

Neil is in hell.

He wishes Andrew had come with him. Then they could be in hell together.

She returns eventually, though, bringing another woman with her, who looks prepared to have a difficult conversation.

“Hi, Neil,” the other woman says, holding a hand out. Neil shakes it. “I’m Letitia, one of the jewelers here. Lily tells me you were looking for stones of a gold-brown shade?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a particular reason for that? The thing is—when you’re looking for a ring that will last forever, diamonds are the hardiest there is. Corundum—sapphires, rubies—are second best, so we’re happy to use those in jewelry that’ll be worn daily. If you go much further down the scale, the stones become softer, more easily scratched, liable to fade in sunlight or to dissolve in water. Really, I think the lowest I’d go is topaz—but I need you to know that it’s not quite as sturdy as corundum or diamond.”

Neil shrugs. “Any way to design around that?”

“I wouldn’t be able to do—look,” she says, pointing at a few rings in the case Neil is standing next to, “a lot of the rings are set so that there’s one stone in the middle, and it stands out—or even a cluster of stones. I wouldn’t be able do that. I can do a lot, but I can’t make a soft stone move up the mohs scale. I can’t make it sunlight-proof. If you were to do topaz, well—well, first of all, _is_ topaz acceptable?”

Lily holds out the tray. “Imperial topaz is usually more of a peach color,” she says, selling like Letitia hasn’t just come out here to inject some reality into the conversation, “but I’ve found some darker pieces—they’d be cut down to size and shape, obviously, but—” she holds up a piece of a gold rock that Neil supposes is topaz. “Are you looking for something complementary to the sapphire? I could bring out some sapphires for comparison, if you’d like. What’s the reasoning here? Why gold? How brown are you looking to go?”

Neil hesitates.

Well, he’ll walk out of here and hopefully only see these women again to pick up the rings, what does he care? He’s in a jewelry store. They have a whole section of engagement rings. They must be used to listening to sappy stories. “He—my husband says that blue is his favorite color because it’s the color of my eyes. So it feels weird to me to give him a ring based on that. But I think it’s fine if I get a stone the color of _his_ eyes, right?”

Lily puts a hand to her chest. “Oh my god, yes, that’s so sweet, that’s fine, of course. Okay, hang on, so— _brown_ , brown. Okay, that’s harder,” she says, digging through the box.

“It can be a _little_ gold,” Neil says. He can’t believe he’s saying this. But if he _doesn’t_ say it, it’ll be the wrong shade, and that feels worse. “His eyes are gold, in the sunlight.”

“Oh, that’s _sweet,_ okay—oh—okay, here,” she says, picking up a stone that looks about right—Neil pictures Andrew’s eyes, brown and piercing and—and then Lily picks up a flashlight and shines it on the stone, and it flashes gold.

“That,” Neil says immediately. “That’s it. Yes.”

Lily hands the stone to Letitia, looking smug.

Letitia looks at it. “Like I said, I wouldn’t make it a centerpiece. I wouldn’t even want it to be too big—the bigger it is, the easier it is to scrape it against something, and while topaz isn’t a _soft_ stone, if you wear it for the rest of your life, it’ll scrape _something_. I could pair it with something else—diamonds? Are you looking for something big?”

“I was thinking more reserved,” Neil suggests. “For both rings.”

“How about—alternating diamonds and topaz? The diamonds would be a little bigger—or at least, would come away from the band a little bit more, just so that if the ring smacks into something, the diamonds would take the hit, instead of the topaz. It won’t be particularly noticeable. And if I do the same with the sapphires, it’ll be clear that the rings are part of a pair.”

Oh, Neil _likes_ that. “Yes. Yeah, that’s good, that works. How much? Do I pay up front? How long will it take?”

“Well—what band do you want? Platinum? I’d do gold, to match your wedding ring, but it would clash with the topaz. Platinum is sturdier, anyway.”

“Platinum works,” Neil agrees.

“Give me a week, I should have these ready for you by next Sunday or Monday,” Letitia says.

“Wait!” Lily says. “Pick your sapphire—or, actually, we can just hold it up, hang on,” she says, picking up the box of topaz to reveal a box of sapphires. She stares at Neil’s eyes, which is the weirdest conceivable experience. “These are—well—”

“You know,” Letitia says, looking like she doesn’t want to say what she’s saying, “there’s blue topaz, as well. And it’s usually lighter than sapphire—closer to the shade you’re looking for. And if I’m already designing the ring with the hardness of topaz in _mind_ —”

Lily’s sales smile stays perfectly in place. She looks torn. Maybe she’s on commission. But she sighs, glances at Neil, and nods. “Hang on, I’ll go get the blue topaz.”

She heads into the back room, and Neil is stuck with Letitia, and that’s unfortunate, because he has no idea how to do small talk.

“Lily told me there was some confusion about who proposed?” Letitia says. “How did that come about?”

“He thought I’d proposed,” Neil says. “I’d asked him to stay with me until I died of old age, and he—we have a habit of talking circles like that, he thought I was referring to _til death do us part_. But then I couldn’t go anywhere, because I was injured, and he didn’t feel like waiting, so he went out and bought the wedding rings, and I thought _he_ was proposing—we didn’t figure out until a week or so ago that we each thought the other had proposed.”

“That’s so sweet! And you ended up married, so clearly it worked out anyway—”

“Here we go,” Lily says, returning with a box of blue stones. She and Letitia squint at Neil’s eyes. Neil fights the urge to run away. They dig around in the box, holding up this one—no, that one—no— _there_ it is.

“Okay. Last thing, and I’m going to warn you that custom rings are non-refundable—not the deposit, not any of it. So if you don’t know, it might be best to set this aside until you do—I wouldn’t want you to guess. You, we can figure out here, but—what ring size is your husband?”

“I’m an 8 and he’s a 9,” Neil says, grinning. He’d been _so_ smooth. He’d almost fucked it up—he’d been smiling so hard when Andrew said it—he’s so glad Andrew is such a sap. Had suggested Neil was happy because he was putting Andrew’s ring back on. Which wasn’t _inaccurate_. It just wasn’t _accurate_.

Neil can’t believe it had _worked_. He’s not complaining—he certainly didn’t have any backup plans—but—still. _Big hands_. He’ll have to apologize for that, when he gives Andrew the ring. Neil really does have bigger hands than Andrew does, albeit thinner fingers.

“Oh! Perfect. Then let’s get an invoice written up,” Lily says, pulling out a clipboard from behind the desk.

She and Letitia hammer out the details—how many diamonds, how many pieces of topaz, width, whatever. They give Neil a total. He doesn’t bother making a deposit—it’s not like he doesn’t have the funds.

He walks out of the store, gets into the car, puts his head on the steering wheel, and breathes.

It wasn’t a mistake to spend that kind of money—he has it, it’s fine, it’s not like he’s in the habit of spending that much regularly, he won’t starve because he doesn’t have it, it’s not a waste. And it _isn’t_ a waste—he and Andrew _will_ be together forever. The rings serve a purpose, even if it’s just to make them happy—happiness is a good end, too, just like not starving. It’s okay to want something just because it makes him happy. Even if it’s expensive. Even if he’s going to live for longer than just a year, and could spend that money on other things. His mother isn’t going to come back from the grave and slap him for spending that kind of money, and Andrew sure isn’t going to be angry about it.

Andrew. Andrew’s gonna be happy about this—he’s going to _love_ it. Proof. Evidence that even if Neil hadn’t _intended_ to propose, he’s happy enough to have gotten the ball rolling. Andrew will like the matching designs, the matching bands, the fact that they both have the same stone—topaz, Neil commits it to memory, commits to pointing it out to Andrew so Andrew can give him that look that says _I love you_ and will do that thing where he stares at Neil for 20 seconds straight without saying a word. Yes. That’s good. That’s worth it. Neil has made a good decision.

He’s made a good decision, and now it’s time to go back home, back to where Andrew is.

He picks his head up and pulls out of the parking lot.

By the time he makes it home, he’s found a totally different headspace—he’s done _such_ a cool thing. Andrew is going to love this _so_ much. It’s gonna be good. Neil is endlessly impressed with his own ingenuity—keeping the secret from Andrew! Finding out Andrew’s ring size! Thinking to buy the rings, at all!

He takes a second, sitting in the driveway, to calm himself back down. To tuck this fact into the part of his brain where he puts things he doesn’t think about, and to stop being so happy about it.

He has been out of the house, but he has done nothing at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Composed, dragged down to the usual happiness level brought on by Andrew and house and kids and cats, Neil gets out of the car and heads inside.

Andrew, standing in the living room, whirls. “Neil,” he breathes, and something’s wrong. “Yes,” he says into the phone. “Yes, Neil’s here—Neil, call Eliana back.”

Neil digs his phone out—five missed calls from his PR agent. He hits redial and joins Andrew in front of the TV—Gianna’s on the screen, and he can’t even begin to care. Natalie and Paige are standing in the middle of the room, looking scared, and he doesn’t like that, either. “What’s wrong?”

“Neil,” Eliana says, picking up on the first ring. “ _Finally._ Are you up to speed?”

“Up to speed on what?”

“Tell her I got it,” Andrew says, picking up the remote and rewinding.

“He’s getting me up to speed,” Neil says.

Andrew hits play.

“Now, I _was_ looking forward to talking about last night’s championship game again,” Gianna says, looking somber, “because I _really_ don’t think we covered it enough—but—the local news station down by the Jaguars, Channel 7, has just dropped a bit of a Minyard-Josten bomb. It appears that the rivalry isn’t just a rivalry—it seems to go deeper than that. We unfortunately couldn’t get video, and it seems the audio isn’t top quality, but here’s the recording Channel 7 released.”

The words appear onscreen as Andrew’s voice, staticky and choppy but recognizable, says—“You are an _idiot_ —I swear to fucking _god_ I will walk out on you—crush your skull—there won’t even be any brains on the court, because you _have none_ —how would you like a shattered femur? Because that’s coming your fucking way, Neil Josten, it is coming your way at top speed. A shattered thigh? _Extremely_ painful, and no coming back from that, you’ll never fucking play exy again, dumbass, I hate you so fucking much—”

And then Neil’s voice—“I’m sorry, Andrew—”

“I don’t fucking _care_ , you don’t get to be _sorry_ —”

The audio cuts out. Gianna and her cohosts reappear. Neil’s blood is boiling, it’s on fire, he’s going to crush his phone, smash the TV, fly to—no—this isn’t Gianna’s fault, this is—

“Now, you can hear that we’re not getting all the audio, but it’s hard to imagine what we’re missing that would make that acceptable—” Grant is saying—

Channel 7. He’s going to go down there, and he’s going to burn the place to the ground. He’s going to—

Andrew grabs his hand, and Neil stops moving. “Neil, I’m sorry.”

Neil’s going to kill them all.

His phone, in his hand, is vibrating—the force of the voice coming out of it. He puts it back to his ear. “What.”

That silences the voice for a few seconds. “Neil, you can’t let this one sit,” Eliana says. “You can’t just _no comment_ this one away.”

“No, but I _can_ m—” He snaps his mouth shut before he confesses to murder he hasn’t committed yet.

“Neil,” Andrew says. “ _Abram_.”

Neil breathes.

He lets his head drop. Pulls in a breath, and pulls _Neil_ back over him like a cloak—quiet, pushover, nothing-and-no one Neil. It’s not true anymore, but it used to be, and he can force himself back into that persona, just for a minute, just for long enough to calm down. He puts the phone back to his ear. “What do you want from me?”

“Andrew can’t give a statement. Not on this. No one gives a shit about anything he’s got to say about this, not right now—social media is going insane, they’ve come to the conclusion that Andrew is abusing you—”

“And do _you_ think that?” Neil bites out.

“It’s not my job to think things about you,” Eliana says calmly. “I have no opinion and no stake in this game. But the fact is that this is _great_ for every news station that covers exy—otherwise, the season’s over, this cash cow is going dry for the next few months. That’s why Channel 7 waited to release this clip. They got all the mileage out of the championship game that they were going to get, and then they dropped _this_ to make exy work for them a little while longer. But since I am _not_ a newscaster, and _am_ your PR agent, I would like this to clear up and go away reasonably quickly. So, as your PR agent, I am telling you that you have _got_ to say something about this. Preferably, you and Andrew would also go be visibly in love at a fancy restaurant with a table right by a window or something, but I don’t think Andrew could sell it—he’s not exactly the world’s most expressive man. So, then, you need to put out a statement. I’ll send it to Gianna, to every news station covering this, I’ll put it out on socials, get the Jaguars rep to share it, everyone I know, but I can’t do that unless you either give me a statement or let me write one.”

Andrew is still holding Neil’s hand.

Neil drops it, turns around to stand next to him again, switches hands. Takes Andrew’s hand back. Kisses the back of it. “That’s not what happened,” he tells Eliana. “That’s not—they edited out _so fucking much_ —”

“Neil, it doesn’t matter. To me, of course, it matters,” she says, cutting him off before he has a chance to argue, “but this recording is out there, and people have heard it, and it won’t just go away. Neil, I have never known you to give a shitty statement. Give me _something_.”

He could just say nothing. Let this blow over. There will always be people who remember it, but if he refuses to give this fire fuel, the majority will give up.

And then it’ll come up again, every single time he or Andrew pops up in the news, every single time they do an interview, every single time the Jaguars are mentioned, forever, just like they bring up Nathan, just like they bring up Andrew’s past.

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand, and Neil remembers to move. He unclenches his jaw. “Here’s my statement,” he says slowly, giving himself time to think about it and Eliana time to write it down. “I think it’s disgusting that the staff of our local Channel 7 would chop and edit that conversation to make it sound like my husband is threatening me. He was not, never has, and never would threaten me. I’m not sure who at Channel 7 thought that recording, editing, and releasing a private conversation like this was appropriate, but I await their apology and resignation.”

Neil listens to the sound of Eliana typing, frantically, and then silence.

“A little repetitive, maybe,” she says finally, “but that’s not the end of the world. Do you want to give any context? Any explanation?”

Neil chews on that. “I don’t know,” he says after a minute. “Is there any way to explain it without sounding like I’m covering something up?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Mm.”

“Is the full recording any better?”

“Much.”

“Would it help if the full, unedited recording was released?”

“Probably.”

“Then make the ending… _I await their apology and resignation. Further, if Channel 7 refuses to release the full, unedited recording, Andrew and I will be filing a defamation lawsuit._ Maybe you should run that by a lawyer first, but I’m fairly certain that’s what that would be—oh, and I’ll add a time limit in there—if they refuse to release the recording within… a week. Is that acceptable?”

Neil takes a deep breath. A defamation lawsuit—he doesn’t feel like doing it, doesn’t feel like going through all that, but hopefully the threat will be enough. Hopefully people will understand that the recording they’re hearing isn’t accurate—is inaccurate enough that he and Andrew could win a lawsuit over it. “That’s acceptable.”

“Lovely. And we’ll—thoughts on doing another interview with Gianna? I could probably work it with her so that you wouldn’t have to fly up—call in, or Skype in, or something. That _would_ probably be the time for an explanation—she’ll ask, let her cajole for a minute or two, and then you say something to the tune of _Gianna, you know I’m a private person, but this is getting too out of hand—_ just _try_ not to make it sound like the reason you haven’t explained it previously is because it took you time to come up with the explanation.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“She’s weekly again, so you won’t make it on the show until Sunday. That’s fine—then if Channel 7 hasn’t released the recording, you can announce that you’re filing the lawsuit. Should probably start talking to a lawyer ASAP—better to waste the money than to not be able to follow through. Yes? And, also, _don’t_ let Andrew in front of any cameras. _Don’t_ let him near a microphone. If you can, don’t let him out of the house. _You_ , on the other hand, should go exist in public. And if you’ve got any bruises, cuts, or injuries, even if they’re from you slamming into a wall in the middle of an exy game, for the love of _god_ cover them up, Neil.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Neil says. “Are we done here?”

“We’re done here.”

“Talk to you later, then. And thank you.”

“Just doing my job, Neil. Have a nice day.”

“You too,” he mumbles, already hanging up.

He looks at Andrew.

Andrew studies him. “Not going to go commit murder?”

“Unlikely.”

“Good. Then I’m sorry.”

“Might commit some murder. Why the _fuck_ are _you_ sorry? You’ve done literally _nothing_ —”

“Sounds worse on TV than I thought it did when I said it.”

“The—it— _fuck_ that. Fuck that and fuck them—that’s not—you _know_ what you said, you _know_ what was going on—”

“Then I’m sorry for putting you through this—”

“You didn’t—you didn’t! If you hadn’t tried to make that private and _not_ embarrassing for me, Kevin would’ve said it all right there in the middle of the court in front of the whole team, it wasn’t—”

“What _was_ it?” Paige asks.

“What?”

“What was it? What was he saying?”

Neil glances from her to Andrew, and realizes that they don’t know. Andrew hasn’t explained it. Hasn’t told them. They know exactly what everyone else knows, and nothing else. “He wasn’t—I did something—dangerous. Something I’d been arguing with Kevin about trying, and I saw my shot and I took it, and it was dangerous, I could’ve hurt Frank, and I could’ve gotten myself hurt, or killed—that wasn’t things he was threatening me with, it was things that could happen if I tried it again. He was telling me not to do it. He was _worried_ , not _angry_. I was apologizing for worrying him. They cut out all the shit that made that clear. It would be like if you tried to jump off a cliff and I sat there and yelled ‘you’ll get _hurt_ or _kill yourself_ or break your legs’ and then some fucking news station chopped it so I was saying ‘kill yourself or break your legs’—”

“ _Ooooooo_ , thank god. Okay, okay, thank god, okay,” Paige says, folding over into a crouch before listing over backwards. “Yeah, I thought it would be something like that, but, I mean, shit, okay, cool,” she says, slowly stretching out on her back. “Okay, I’m down here now.”

Neil looks at Andrew. Andrew shrugs. They lie down on the floor.

“Is there something special about this?” Neil asks, staring at the ceiling, and also at Natalie, still standing.

“You guys are weird,” Natalie says.

“It’s just better,” Paige says. “Like, you get down low to avoid the smoke, right? I’m down here to avoid the smoke.”

“What smoke?” Neil asks.

“It’s a metaphor.”

“Yeah, what’s the smoke?”

“Thinking.”

“Ah.” Neil stares at the ceiling. Is it easier to avoid thinking down here? Well, maybe, because now instead of thinking about how he’s going to spend the rest of his life defending Andrew from people who don’t deserve to exist on the same planet as he does, he’s thinking about the fact that, maybe, instead of re-finishing the existing hardwood floors, they should’ve just replaced the carpet that had been here when they’d moved in with something plush. Sure, it would’ve caught the cat hair like nothing else, but, shit, hardwood is _hard_.

He hears a creak as Natalie tosses herself into a rocking chair. “Are we doing this now?” She asks.

“Doing what?” Neil asks.

“Lying on the floor?”

“Well, the three of us are, and you’re welcome to join us, but you don’t have to.”

“Cool.”

“Is this supposed to hurt my back?” Andrew asks.

“Literally, have you _ever_ slept anywhere that wasn’t a bed?” Natalie asks.

“Are you asking _me_ that?”

Natalie considers. “Okay, I’m not asking you that. I _am_ telling you that you’re old, though.”

“I’m 30,” Andrew says. “That’s not that old.” He reaches out for Neil’s hand.

Neil takes his hand. “I think this is also hurting my back,” he decides. His shoulder blades, at least, are unhappy with the situation.

Paige sighs. “None of you appreciate the floor.”

“I _do_ appreciate the floor,” Andrew protests. “I appreciate it for being under my feet, where it should be.”

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand, and then gives up and pushes himself to a standing position. “I’m gonna go throw knives,” he announces.

No one follows him upstairs.

He closes his and Andrew’s bedroom door, and stands there for a minute, a void.

Their privacy has been violated. Theirs, theirs, there’s so much that’s just theirs, just for him and Andrew—the _I love yous_ , the pet names, the nicknames, that they’re so careful to avoid in public. Andrew works so hard not to be caught by reporters, tries so hard to avoid cameras. They should have been safe, there, in the locker room in their own stadium—well, they should’ve taken a look around, but—

And then Neil isn’t a void anymore, he’s a bonfire, raging out of control, because—

Well, because he’d done something dangerous. He’d worried Andrew. He’d also put himself in danger, but—he’d made Andrew worry, and Neil doesn’t like doing that, doesn’t like triggering that fear of abandonment, of being alone. Doesn’t like making Andrew _worry_. And now Andrew had apologized, and Neil can’t figure out for what, and now they’re doing damage control for damage that’s been made up—and that’s it, too, because Andrew tells the _truth_ , he so rarely bothers lying, and Neil has put in so much work to tell the truth, to be honest, and this is a lie, and there’s no need for it, what has Andrew ever done to Channel 7? Denied them an interview? Neil’s vision vanishes for a minute—if that was it, he’s going to—

He grabs all the knives out of Andrew’s bedside table and starts throwing them.

He hates that this is something good for him. It shouldn’t be. It should be—blood, and pain, and torture—

But knives are Andrew’s thing.

He lets Andrew take it from Nathan, and Lola, and Nathaniel, and lets the process of aim—throw— _thunk_ —retrieve be grounding. Aim. Throw. Hear it land. Do that, six more times, and then pull them all out and start again.

Someone knocks on the door an indeterminate amount of time later, and Neil pauses. “Come in.”

Andrew comes in, closes the door behind him, and sits on the bed. He gestures for Neil to continue.

So Neil does.

He feels better with Andrew there.

Andrew doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t interfere, doesn’t say a word, just waits, watches, while Neil makes patterns with the knives, until Neil lands them in a spiral, takes a deep breath, and looks at Andrew.

“How are you?” Neil asks.

“If I say _how are YOU_ , will you just say that you asked first?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t really care what other people think about me. Furious that they think I’d treat you like that. Vaguely impressed with their editing job. Furious that they’d edit it. That they released it, at all. And sorry for yelling at you like that. It sounded—I didn’t think about—I’m sorry I wasn’t—”

“Don’t, Drew, don’t. I didn’t care and I still don’t. Your anger has never hurt me, not now or then or before, and it doesn’t scare me.”

Andrew flicks a hand out. “Still. You shouldn’t let me talk to you like that.”

“Like what? You were worried, I—”

“Like every person who’s ever been a jackass to me, everyone who’s ever told me off for—whatever the fuck I was doing wrong at the time, like—”

“No, I won’t fucking stand for that, that’s not what you were doing and you know it—”

“Do I _always_ sound like that when I’m angry—don’t say I was just worried, that makes it worse—”

“Andrew.”

Andrew stops.

Neil takes Andrew’s face in his hands. Tilts it up so Andrew is looking at him. “When have I ever let you speak to me in a way I wasn’t okay with?”

“ _It’s always yes with you_. Would you tell me to stop?”

“I would. But it’s always yes for a reason, and it’s that I trust you, and you have never once broken that trust. Not fucking once, Andrew Minyard, not _once_ , I don’t _give_ a shit if you get angry when you’re worried, I don’t give a shit if you sound angry, I don’t. Don’t treat me like I don’t know the difference. Don’t treat me like I won’t talk back if it’s called for. You fucking know me, you know I won’t sit back and take shit I haven’t earned.”

“That’s not—” Andrew reaches up and wraps a hand around Neil’s neck. “Just—”

“I’m literally doing it right now. I tell you to shut up all the fucking time. You were telling me you were worried, and I was apologizing for worrying you. Hey. Fuck them, and fuck their understanding of you. _I_ understand, and who gives a shit about the rest of them?”

“They do, probably,” Andrew says.

“Don’t use my words against me, that’s my job.”

Andrew sighs, scoots backwards, tugs Neil with him. Grabs for a pillow for under his head. Neil presses him down. “It’s your job to use your words against yourself?” Andrew asks.

“No, my job to use your words against you,” Neil says, folding his arms on top of Andrew’s chest.

“That’s fair. What did you do to Flannery, yesterday?”

“No idea,” Neil says.

Andrew gives him a _look_.

Neil makes a face. “Whatever it took, clearly. Easier to get someone off you when they’re tackling you than if they’re just pushing you down—all you have to do is lift a knee up for them to fall on, _and_ you can use their momentum to keep them going—whatever it takes. Whatever it took. I was never trained in one particular discipline.”

“Why does this shit keep coming up? You just open your mouth and tell me something new and horrifying. How is there still stuff I’ve missed?”

Neil shrugs. “There was a lot that happened. I don’t think about it. And my life isn’t—violent enough for most of it to come up. Definitely getting there, though.”

Andrew watches Neil.

Neil is content with that. It allows him to watch Andrew, after all. And he’s comfortable. Andrew is comfortable. And they’re in their own room, in their own house. The kids—Neil assumes they’re fine. Inside, anyway.

It hits him that he’s exhausted.

It’s just been a very emotional day.

“Thoughts on a nap?” he asks.

“I already warned the kids we’d be up here for a while,” Andrew agrees, grabbing for a blanket to pull over Neil.

“Oh? Came up here wanting a nap?”

“No, came up here knowing you’d be in no shape to hang out with a couple kids.”

“Ah. Fair.” Neil turns his head sideways. He likes being able to feel Andrew breathe, likes being able to feel Andrew’s heartbeat against his palms. Andrew runs his hand through Neil’s hair. Neil takes a deep breath. This is theirs. This, at least, he has managed to protect, thus far. And, really, what does it matter, what other people think? It doesn’t. The fact that they’re wrong, that they’re so wildly wrong about Andrew—irrelevant. And Neil and Andrew are doing something about it. Putting out a statement. Neil isn’t sure what that’ll do—but, then, didn’t he get Tetsuji to force the Ravens fans to stop destroying Palmetto’s campus? A statement from Neil and a statement from Tetsuji and the Foxes had gotten a conditional peace, of sorts. And Neil has talked his way out of being murdered more than once. So—one fucked-up recording won’t lose them their jobs, their place on Court. They won’t lose their house over it. And Neil won’t lose Andrew over it. Andrew’s hand stills in Neil’s hair, and Neil gives up thinking.

When they wake up, it’s afternoon.

“How are you, now?” Andrew asks softly.

“More capable of being around children, probably.”

“Not to steal your words, but—that’s not an answer, Neil.”

Neil puts his chin back on his hands, the better to look at Andrew’s face.

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

Neil shrugs. “I’m all right. I’m sorry I lost it.”

“Well, that’s not what I asked, but that’s okay. Want to go downstairs?”

Neil mulls that over.

The answer is kind of no.

Downstairs is feeling less and less safe—more and more like someone horrible could walk through the front door and ruin everything, destroy them all. Upstairs still feels like a fortress.

Well, and whose fault is that?

Neil’s fault. For failing to—he’s still not sure what he could have done. Failing to have a strong enough opinion about fostering kids to stop that from happening?

No, that’s not the way to fix this. That’s not the post-mortem this problem deserves. Natalie shouldn’t still be surviving on the kindness of a deli owner, and Paige shouldn’t still be surviving on the illusion of normalcy. The fostering thing—Neil decides that that was okay. It was the best thing for the girls, anyway, probably, and once he decides that, he can admit that he doesn’t want to give them up. His daughters.

He jumps as Andrew pokes his ribs. “Yes?”

“What?”

“I don’t know, _you_ poked _me_ ,” Neil points out.

“No, I’m asking what the fuck you’re thinking about.”

“Don’t want to lose the kids.”

“Are we _going to_?”

“No. I’m just—I don’t want to go back in time and stop us from getting them. They’re not the problem.”

“Hey, Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“Give me a better explanation than that.”

“I just…” Neil flicks a finger. “Downstairs doesn’t feel very safe anymore. People can just come and go as they please, apparently, and I can’t stop them. And I couldn’t stop Channel 7 from doing _this_ , and I can’t stop anything, and I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong. It wasn’t fostering the kids. I have concluded that this is probably better than how they were living before.”

“Well, that’s good,” Andrew says sardonically. “Not sure why you think _you_ could have stopped the yakuza, except for the fact that you very much did, but—moving right along, what would it take to make you feel safe here? We could move. We’ve got to stay in the state and reasonably close to the stadium, we don’t have to stay in this _house_ , specifically.”

“Let’s build a fortress. I want three-inch-thick stone walls, a moat, and wrought iron doors. It should be on a hill, so I can see people coming, and also should have tunnels underneath it, so we can escape. There should be hidden rooms. Hidden passages. If someone comes in, they should be able to explore the whole house and never see any of us. The rooms will have to be bomb-proof, of course—”

“Who’s coming after us with a _bomb_?”

“I don’t know, I just think it’s worth preparing for.”

“Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“You promised me a favor, if I held the goal.”

“I did,” Neil agrees. What about this conversation has made Andrew think of something to ask for?

“Did I hold it? Or did I break my promise, by letting in two goals?”

“No, I think you held it,” Neil agrees. “We didn’t set a limit, and we won, and only letting in two goals was basically a superhuman feat.” What will Andrew ask him for? Should he be curious? Or scared?

“You promised me anything.”

“I did.”

Andrew taps two fingers against Neil’s cheek. “If I asked you to go to therapy, would you do it? That’s not what I’m asking for,” Andrew clarifies. “I’m just asking if you would agree to it. And there would be—stipulations. You would have to take it seriously. But I wouldn’t be asking you to go indefinitely—maybe, just, three times, to see if it was worth anything to you. And then if it wasn’t, you could stop, and I’ll never mention it again.”

Neil frowns. He’s used to Andrew’s brain jumping around, but there’s usually a purpose to the timing of when Andrew _says_ things—whether to throw Neil off, or to change the subject, or to connect two concepts. “What about this conversation made you think of _that_?”

“Possibly,” Andrew says slowly, “the part where you think it’s somehow your fault you were incapable of keeping the yakuza out of the house altogether, single-handedly. Or the part where you suggested that a possible solution to not having perfect control and safety was to _go back in time and prevent us from fostering our daughters_. Or the part where _safety_ , for you, involves bomb-proofing every individual room of a fortress with more hidden places than visible ones, on a hill with a moat. You know what? If you just run this conversation back in your head, you’ll probably see what I’m talking about.”

“Am I _wrong_? It’s not like—I mean, we’re not _safe_ , and I can’t—I don’t know how to make us safe. I’m a little paranoid, I know, but—you’re not paranoid if someone’s after you.”

“Who is after us, Neil? Who are you keeping us safe _from_ —”

“From fucking _no one_ , Andrew, that’s the problem, I can’t keep anyone out—”

“A list, Neil, I want a _list_. Who is putting us in danger? Who are we scared of?”

Neil flexes his hands against Andrew’s shirt. “Ichirou. Paganos. The Henry Warrens of the world. Patrick fucking Gray.”

“Is that the whole list?”

“There’s two separate mafias on that list, what else do you need?”

Andrew ticks them off on his fingers. “Ichirou isn’t after us—he has, actually, extended his protection to me and the kids. It took an amount of money that very few people have to convince one guy to turn against him—not a lot of people with that money or those connections, so I’m not concerned about the Henry Warrens of the world, because there just aren’t that many, and the rest of them have no reason to come near us. The Paganos specifically told Henry Warren to suck it up—they’re not coming after us, and never have. And Patrick Gray is a pain in the ass, but he’s not _dangerous_. He’s nowhere near the level of the two separate mafias who have both decided to leave us alone. Neil, none of those people are after us.”

Neil blinks. It sounds—logical, when Andrew puts it like that. But—it also isn’t—Neil remembers the dead body in their front hallway, the terror of waiting to watch Andrew die, and he can’t pretend it didn’t happen. He hadn’t broken the terms of his agreement with the Moriyamas, it’s not like he’d brought that on their heads, but it had happened nonetheless, and, therefore, it can happen again—why can’t Andrew _see_ that? “I’m not being _needlessly_ paranoid. I’m not scared of _nothing_. The mafia broke into our house, tried to kill all of us, and then Ichirou came in and could’ve killed us all again, and then Patrick came in and put Paige and Natalie through the fucking wringer—”

“No, you’re right about all that,” Andrew says, “but none of it is your _fault_. None of it is anything you could have _stopped_. In fact, you are single-handedly the reason why we’re all alive—possibly, you’re the most competent person in this household. Worst comes to worst—we tell the FBI about the Moriyamas, and then we run. But we aren’t—we aren’t under siege. We aren’t living in fear of an armed insurrection of our house. I don’t foresee another Henry Warren. It would take a lot of money and connections and a grudge to make that work again, and I don’t think anyone else can pull it off. The kids and I aren’t scared about that, Neil.”

“Well, maybe you don’t get what we’re up against,” Neil snaps. “I was running from them for _years_ , we were changing names and faces twice a year, and they still managed to find us—they found us so hard they killed my mom, and we’re just _sitting_ here, so public that Patrick Gray, with no special money or connections, could find us without even wasting any time about it, and—just because you three have been—lulled into a false sense of security doesn’t mean _I’m_ going to make that mistake again. I forgot, for ten years I forgot, and fucking look where we ended up—nearly got the kids killed, nearly got _us_ killed—”

“I know, Neil, I know. I literally can’t forget.”

“Well then, what? Did you come up here just to try and convince me to go to therapy? Did you make me promise you something in return for doing your goddamn job just so you could force me to do this?” Neil asks, pushing off Andrew. “You know I don’t want to go, don’t want some fuck psychoanalyzing me—I can’t even tell anyone much of _anything_ , what kind of help will any therapist be if I can’t tell them about the _mafia_? If I say _yeah, I’ve killed people, but that’s not even an issue, please don’t call the police or be scared_? I mean—”

“That’s not why I came up here, no,” Andrew says, sitting up as Neil stands. “And it’s not what I had in mind when I asked you to make me a deal. And I’m still not asking for it, Neil, you can tell me to ask for something else. But it’s the conversation we’re having, now.”

“I mean—therapists can’t—make the mafia _go away_ ,” Neil says, trying not to snap, trying not to bite, trying, trying. “They can’t make us _safe_.”

“No, they can’t, that’s not the point,” Andrew says.

“Then what _is_ the point?” Neil says, louder, before he swallows it back down. No yelling. No yelling. “It’s not—this shit isn’t in my head, Drew! It’s _real_ , it’s—I’m not making it _up_ , this isn’t be reacting to things that don’t exist, I’m—”

“Do you think my sexual abuse and rape were made up?”

Neil recoils. “No, no, of course not.”

“Then what do you think Bee _did_? She didn’t go—kill all my rapists for me. She didn’t stick me in a fort. She didn’t put me in a fucking chastity belt and some bubble wrap. She helped me find ways to cope with it, to deal with it, to deal with the fear of it happening again. She helped me with my depression. She helped me with my fucking thought patterns, so that I don’t end up sitting here trying to figure out what the fuck I did wrong that made people want to rape me. _That’s_ the point, Neil. For you to go see a therapist and say— _I’m in some bad shit, and I can’t tell you what, but sometimes bad people turn up at my door, and I need to know how to cope with that. I need to learn how to stop myself from diving into thought patterns about how bad I’ve fucked up when people I love are in any kind of danger or are at all unhappy, and I need help coming to a better understanding of myself._ Neil, I’m fucking _worried_ about you. Flannery couldn’t straighten up properly for half an hour, and you don’t know what you did to him—”

Neil sits down on the floor. Is Andrew—is _Andrew_ scared of him? Andrew’s right, though, Neil _doesn’t_ really know what he did—it was fast, he was on the ground—does Andrew think Neil would do that to _him_? Is he _right_? “Are you—are you going to leave?”

“ _What_?”

“I—I’m just—I don’t want to give up something that keeps us safe—but I don’t want to scare you, I don’t want to hurt you—”

“I’m not scared, Neil, but—but this is the issue,” Andrew says. “The paranoia, the overthinking, the loss of control—”

“I haven’t lost control,” Neil says.

“Abram. Neil. As your husband, and as someone who loves and trusts you with literally every cell in my body, you’re losing it. I had to stop you from committing homicide not three hours ago. You hurt Flannery, and either you don’t know how or you’re not willing to think about it, and both of those are bad—”

And when Andrew puts it _that_ way, Neil can’t help but think about the kids, and about whether or not he’ll hit Natalie and Paige, and if he’ll injure them, and—and Andrew would have to take the kids and leave. “You should take the kids and go, now,” Neil says. “Before I hurt—”

“Neil. Hey. Shut the fuck up,” Andrew says, joining Neil on the floor. “You haven’t hurt anyone—well, Flannery, but he got better. I’m not saying you’re a fucking danger to the family, what I’m saying is that you need help, and it’s help that I can’t give, because you’ve got a fuckton of baggage to work through, and shoving it to the back of the closet every time it falls through the door isn’t actually a good way of dealing with it. I don’t know, is what I’m telling you. I don’t—I’m not saying that nothing bad will ever happen again, I’m not saying you’re wrong to be nervous about the mafia, I fucking agree. If a therapist had tried to help me while I lived with Cass, I don’t know what goddamn help it would’ve been. I’m asking you to try and dismantle your survival skills while they’re still needed, I know, but—we’ll manage. You aren’t doing this alone, Neil. You don’t have to single-handedly keep us all alive. And you haven’t managed to save us through paranoia and physical fighting—it’s mostly been because you’re fucking smart, and you talk us out of it. And you killed that one guy, but look, that one was also not made possible by paranoia or anxiety, it was made possible because you’re fast and good at what you do. And the shit you’re putting yourself through is exhausting you, Neil, and it’s wearing you down, and if you’re trying to give yourself an edge for the next time someone turns up, _this isn’t the way to do that_. Also, Neil Josten, love of my life, you have spent the past month and a half telling our children to go to therapy, what the fuck do you think Bee is going to do for them that she can’t do for you?”

“Well, it’s _different_ for them,” Neil grumbles, but—he can’t really argue. Andrew is making more and more sense, and—it’s Andrew. Neil trusts Andrew, hadn’t he just said that? And what is Andrew saying that Neil disagrees with, really? Neil is _tired_. He’s tired of this, of being scared all the time, of overthinking everything he does, of being scared of the doorbell. He opens his mouth to argue that it kept him alive for nine years, but—Andrew’s answer to that would just be that they’re not being chased, and he’s not wrong. Neil tries to force himself to adopt Andrew’s perspective—blue suit as a one-off, as tied in with Henry Warren and therefore only one threat, a threat that has been comprehensively dealt with. And Patrick—may have threatened to take the kids, but it’s a different level than the threat of murder. “It’s _different_ for the kids,” Neil says again, because this is one argument he _can_ make. “They’re in a better place than they used to be—well, the mafia is here, so maybe not better—”

“No rapists in this house, though. Lots of food in the kitchen. It’s better, Neil. You’re allowed to say that. And, anyway, aren’t you, also, in a better place than you’ve been in?”

Neil stretches his fingers—straight, curled, straight, curled. He reaches out, and Andrew takes his hand.

“Why _won’t_ you go to therapy?” Andrew asks, voice soft. “What are you afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen?”

A memory flashes into Neil’s mind—Andrew, suffering, curled up, moving like he was trying to vomit, but he hadn’t eaten in nearly an entire day—and Neil had handled it, would do it again, had done it happily. But if he himself is ever going to go through that, he wants to do it alone—doesn’t want Andrew to have to deal with that, _certainly_ doesn’t want the kids to see it.

Maybe it won’t be so bad.

On the other hand, maybe it _will_ be, and maybe he won’t get through it like Andrew did, he’ll just be a goddamn wreck for the rest of his life and Andrew won’t just have to take care of Neil for a year, he’ll have to take care of Neil _forever_ while their kids just—

Neil tries, forcibly, to shift perspectives again. Is it better for the kids to watch Neil fall apart, control slipping through his fingertips, paranoid and anxious and only getting worse, than it is for them to watch him struggle through getting better? And anyway, what makes this so much worse than letting Andrew help bandage him up after Lola had burned him?

Well, actually, Neil can answer that second one. He’d known the burns and cuts would heal, and he’d had a timeline. His own brain is a much more murky space.

He looks at Andrew. “I want to drive myself to and from therapy.”

“Okay.”

“I might want to go to a therapist who isn’t Bee.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll need to give me a time limit. How much time I get to search for a therapist before I have to start trying.”

Andrew considers. “Two weeks, and then you have to book an appointment. If you don’t like that therapist—a new one every other week, until you find one you’re willing to stick with.”

“How many therapists do I go through before I have to stick with who I’ve got?”

“I’ve already said you have to take it seriously. If you are, then I don’t care how many it takes before you find a good one.”

Neil tugs Andrew closer, and Andrew comes willingly, and that’s reassuring. He’s not keeping his distance because he’s scared of Neil—he’s just respecting Neil’s boundaries.

Andrew hooks a finger into the collar of Neil’s shirt. “You’re safe here, Neil. You’re allowed to feel safe.”

“Doesn’t feel safe,” Neil says, quietly, eyes on Andrew’s shoulders.

“You are the only one of us who feels that way,” Andrew says. “The kids and I—we feel safe. Mostly, we feel safe because you’ve made it safe, here, but Neil, you were caught off guard by the one guy who wanted to kill us and you _still_ kept us safe. That was half luck, to be fair, because if Natalie hadn’t been standing behind you with a knife it would’ve been worse, but—but then it would be much more helpful for you to just start carrying knives on you than for you to spend every second of every day paranoid and losing your mind.”

All the tension drains from Neil’s shoulders. _That_ feels right—that feels— _actionable_. More so than sitting here trying to fix things that have happened in the past, anyway. And that’s not denial—it’s _useful_. It’s something he’s avoided, but he can handle knives, now, that’s not an issue. He can get used to the armbands again. Having knives on him feels like a better preventative than most anything else, short of a gun, and he’s not going to walk around with a loaded gun on him. Not anymore.

He looks at Andrew. “Ask.”

“Neil Josten, in return for me doing my goddamn job—”

Neil flinches, but Andrew doesn’t pause.

“—will you go to therapy? And take it seriously. For five weeks.”

“I will,” Neil agrees. “And I’m sorry. For pretty much everything I’ve said in the past 20 minutes. And for making you deal with all this.”

Andrew kisses the back of Neil’s hand. “Apology accepted, for the shit you’ve said in the past 20 minutes. Apology not needed for me helping you with this. I have a therapist to talk to about it and to help me work through it if you need help from me in the future, and because you did all this and way more for an entire year straight and then a few months after that, I’m really in a reasonably good place, excepting my bad days, which don’t happen very often anymore. If you need help, that’s fine. I don’t mind returning the favor.”

“I didn’t do it as a favor, Drew, I did it because you needed it and I love you.”

“And what, you think less of my love for you?”

“No—no, wait—”

“Keep going, Neil, keep digging that hole—”

“No, hang on, I wanna get out of this hole, I don’t want to be down here anymore—”

“And a good therapist can get you to a place where you don’t have to insult my love for you just because you don’t know how to say thank you,” Andrew says smugly.

Neil puts his forehead on Andrew’s shoulder. “Thank you, Andrew.”

“Not a problem, love. Are you hungry?”

And that’s it—the out Neil needs.

He sits there, head on Andrew’s shoulder, for another minute, and Andrew lets him, doesn’t argue, doesn’t ask again if Neil is hungry.

But they can’t stay there forever, so Neil gathers himself and kisses Andrew’s cheek. “Starving.” He stands and helps Andrew up.

“Something to be said about the floor, after all,” Andrew says, following Neil out the door.

They reach the kitchen to find the kids eating sandwiches. That’s as good a meal as any, so Neil grabs the bread, Andrew grabs the ham and cheese, Neil grabs plates.

“So were you really gonna murder your PR agent?” Paige asks, apropos of nothing.

“No, I wasn’t going to murder _her_ ,” Neil tells his sandwich. He’s fairly certain that’s the truth.

“ _Her_? If you weren’t going to murder _her_ , than who _were_ you going to murder?” Paige asks.

Jesus, they got curious kids. “Channel 7.”

“Just, like, everyone there?” Natalie asks.

“Well, no, I don’t have a gun, and I didn’t even have any knives, so I’d probably only have managed one or two people.”

“That’s terrorism,” Paige says. “Pops, you know that, like, that’s terrorism, right?”

Neil makes a face at her. “I don’t think so.”

“No, she’s right,” Natalie insists. “Even if it’s just one or two people you murder with your bare hands, walking into a news station and killing people is terrorism. You know that, right?”

Neil looks at Andrew for backup, but Andrew is poking his sandwich, like he’s considering putting something else on it. He _agrees_.

Neil takes a deep breath, and considers the possibility that they’re right.

Okay. Maybe they’re right. “Okay, you’re right,” he says. “That’s fair. I won’t commit an act of terrorism. Also, I’m probably going to start therapy,” he says, before he can lose his nerve. “To help with my paranoia. And anxiety. And homicidal impulses,” he says, tossing that one in to see how it feels. “Now, to be fair, that last one _was_ stoked by Andrew, but—”

“I’ll take responsibility for that one,” Andrew agrees, pushing his chair out so he can stick his feet in Neil’s lap.

“Still.”

“And, also, your guilt about things that aren’t your fault, your need to do everything yourself—”

“Well, now we’re just tearing down half my personality,” Neil says.

“No,” Andrew says in Russian. “No, six months ago you weren’t doing this. Now, ten years ago you probably were, but—you were better, for a while, and now you’re not. There’s a whole ass husband of mine just waiting to be himself again.”

Neil takes a deep breath. He’s been worrying Andrew, and isn’t that most of what he’s not supposed to do? He pats Andrew’s ankle and takes a bite of his sandwich.

“We should call ourselves the… the… beehive,” Paige says, grinning. “Cause we all go to Bee. Or, well, will, starting in a couple days, anyway.”

“No, Beyoncé already took that one,” Natalie says.

“Well, it’s a good one, it’s not _my_ fault Beyoncé is famous,” Paige says.

“I’m not going to Bee,” Neil says, grinding the whole conversation to a halt.

“What? Why not?” Natalie asks. “We are!”

“Yeah, but I—I have a whole relationship with her, outside of therapy. She’s _good_ , she’s extremely good,” he says, rushing to reassure the girls, “I just—want someone who maybe doesn’t already know me, outside of therapy.”

Silence for a second, and then Paige shrugs. “Okay,” she agrees.

Neil eats his sandwich, and contemplates ten years of therapy. Eternal, unending therapy.

He wants to vomit.

It doesn’t seem to be going too poorly for Andrew, though, so—and maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe it won’t take that long. And, anyway, there are worse things to do on a weekly basis.

Neil unclenches his jaw and does his best to listen to the conversation the girls are having—bee puns, and Beyoncé, and other musicians, only a few of whom Neil recognizes by name, and then they’re talking about NCIS, and then Scrubs, and Neil looks at Andrew to find Andrew already looking at him, and feels abruptly more confident in his decision to go to therapy. Maybe it will help him enjoy this—lunch on a Sunday with Andrew and Natalie and Paige, whatever else happens in the future—instead of worrying straight through the whole thing. No more losing whole conversations to being stuck in his own head. That could be a good thing.

Yes, he decides as Paige shrieks with laughter about something Natalie’s said that Neil has completely missed, that will be a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway thanks @ criswisstuf for commenting "andrew's gonna ask neil to go to therapy" cause otherwise andrew asking neil for an unspecified thing wouldn't have come up for another like 3 months because i had NO thoughts on what he'd ask for 
> 
> also!! thank you to everyone who comments!! i love you all and I know I've missed a few comments over the past couple days but i WILL get to them anyway you're all the best <33333


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the story of how andrew and neil moved in together!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is set after The Crooked Kind. back next week with your regularly scheduled angst

They don’t have much time—Andrew has to leave in the morning, to make the plane back to Oregon. But it feels less like an ending, this time.

They’re curled up in bed, hands between them, Andrew fiddling with Neil’s wedding ring.

“Do we keep the apartment?” Neil asks. “Or do we move somewhere with more space?”

Andrew shrugs. “How much space do we need?”

Neil shrugs right back. “Space to grow.”

“I don’t know about you, but I think I’m done growing.”

Neil grins at him. “Space for—I don’t know. When friends visit. It just feels like we’re adults, we’re supposed to have a house.”

“Plenty of adults don’t.”

“That’s true.”

“And anyway, we’re unlikely to find a _house_ in the middle of the city.”

“Why should we stay in the city?”

“Do you want to _leave_ the city?”

“Might be safer in the suburbs,” Neil suggests.

“What kind of safety?”

“Safety from people who would come looking for me. Safety from anyone who’s left.”

Andrew’s eyes flick up to meet Neil’s. “Are people looking for you, Neil? Who’s left?”

Neil shrugs. The target on his back doesn’t feel like it’s decreased much, somehow. Maybe it’s just—being in the city. He still remembers walking out of a movie theater to find Romero and Jackson waiting to kill him, to kill Andrew, and just because they’re now dead doesn’t mean there’s no one else out there, and just because Ichirou is powerful doesn’t mean Neil is willing to rely solely on his control over his people. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Andrew tucks two fingers into the collar of Neil’s shirt and tugs. “What kind of safety does the suburb offer that the city doesn’t?”

“Being _seen_. Your neighbors know you, they get used to your schedule.” He’d watched it in Millport—people would water their plants at the same time every day, take walks at the same time every day, leave and come home on a schedule. They’d wave at each other. “I never got to have that, particularly, because my goal was to _not_ be seen, but these days it doesn’t matter.”

“In the city, though, you’re anonymous,” Andrew says. “How could anyone figure out your schedule? If you’re feeling followed, there’s a crowd you can duck into, shops with back exits, places to hide.”

“And if I disappear, no one will notice until my landlord comes to collect rent,” Neil counters. “If I don’t pick up the mail in a suburb, the mailman notices. If I don’t leave for work on time, neighbors notice. People are nosy.”

“Are you basing this on Millport?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s old people, Neil. That’s not suburbs you’re thinking of, it’s old people.”

“Oh.”

“And in the city, who would notice you? If someone comes around looking for you—how many of your neighbors know your name, know what you look like, know when you’re home and when you’re out?”

“That’s true,” Neil agrees. “It’s just—I can’t turn it off. I check every face, every time I walk out the door. Every noise in the hallway is someone coming to my door. Someone came home drunk a couple weeks ago and spent three minutes trying to get into my apartment before they realized it was the wrong one, while I stood there with my racquet waiting for them to pick the goddamn lock already and come try to kidnap me. But—I guess if we own a house, then there’s not even a landlord to come looking for us—oh, shit, _us_. What if someone comes looking for me and finds _you_? Never mind—we’re staying in the city. At least someone will _hear_ it if there’s a fight.”

“Nope, we’re moving into the suburbs,” Andrew says.

“What?”

“If you can’t calm down in the city, we’re moving to the suburbs. We can be the nosy ones, we can be the ones who know all our neighbors, and then when there’s a new face, we’ll know.”

“And if someone breaks into our house, no one will know until the newspapers form a wall at the bottom of the driveway—”

“But we’ll have a better shot at surviving someone who’s poking around, who’s asking questions. We can make friends with our neighbors—”

“That’s old people, Drew. We won’t do that. That’s not us you’re thinking of, it’s old people.”

“Well, at the very least, I can memorize cars and tell you when there’s someone new in the neighborhood. It’s easier for me to keep track of who’s supposed to be where when I know the answers to those questions.”

Neil and Andrew stare each other down.

Neil pokes Andrew in the shoulder. “Don’t look at me like you’re firmly convinced of how correct you are when not two minutes ago you were on the city side.”

“I won’t, as long as you don’t sit here acting like the suburbs are a _ridiculous_ choice when it was your choice in the first place.”

“I just want what’s best for both of us,” Neil says softly.

“And my maserati will do better in a suburb, where we have our own driveway.”

“I said _us_ , Drew, not the maz.”

“ _The maz_ ,” Andrew says mockingly.

Neil waits.

“I would probably also be more comfortable in a place where I don’t have to listen to my neighbors having sex,” Andrew says after a couple minutes. “And a place where people are less likely to think our door is theirs. And a place where there’s no landlord who could come in.”

“That doesn’t solve the problem of what happens if someone comes looking for me and finds you instead.”

Andrew cups a hand around Neil’s cheek. “Being here is bad for your paranoia. But I don’t think that someone finding me _is_ a problem. It’s a problem that someone is coming after you, but if they find me, they’ll get a knife in the stomach. If they find you, they’ll just get punched. One of us is better equipped to defend ourselves, and it’s me. So shut up, and start talking to me about when your lease is up, and when we want to go house hunting.”

“Two months,” Neil says. “It ends a week after the season ends. I could go house hunting—send you pictures, call you while I’m there.”

“You’re sure you want to do this alone?”

“I mean, I’m not going to paint the house by myself,” Neil says, “but I can probably pick one by myself.”

“Are we painting the house?”

“If there’s so much as a singular white or beige wall in it, yes.”

“Why?”

Neil waves a hand at their surroundings. “It’s the color of apartments and hotel rooms. I have spent too much time in those places to want to _live_ in beige-and-white if I can change it. I’m not saying it has to be neon green—I could go for a light grey, or light blue, whatever, I’ll stick it in the group chat and let the foxes make suggestions, but I’m not living in a hotel room for the rest of my life.”

“What if it doesn’t match our furniture?” Andrew asks. And then he makes a face. “You know, I was joking, but, fuck it, I think all our furniture is secondhand, we’ll just get new furniture. If I order it, we can probably have it delivered right to the house.”

“Are you going to furnish the house color-by-color?”

“That’s a thought. Yes.”

“Okay. How long do you think it’ll take me to find and close on a house?”

“You’ve got two months.”

“I’ll get moving, then,” Neil agrees, grinning.

So he does.

The next day, Neil starts house hunting.

He gets an agent. He feels like an adult.

“Someplace quiet,” he tells her. “Someplace where—where we’d be able to know all our neighbors.”

“A great place to raise a family,” Denise interprets.

Neil doesn’t bother disabusing her of the notion. A neighborhood with a bunch of kids might have its own advantages—they play outside, their parents watch them. The neighborhood would have to be safe, for that to happen. And it gets Neil the hawk-eyed neighbors he wants.

“My husband has given me a two month time limit,” he tells her.

“That’s—harder to accomodate.”

Neil wishes she could see his shrug through the phone. “If we go over, it’s not the end of the world. He’ll get over it.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promises.

So the hunt begins.

She shows him three houses he doesn’t even bother sending Andrew pictures of—two of them are one-story, and the idea of sleeping on the ground floor is unappealing to him, even if it doesn’t make any logical sense; it’s not like someone who wanted to get into his bedroom couldn’t get to him on the second floor. But one of them has popcorn ceilings, and Neil has a vague memory of hearing that those are a problem, and he doesn’t feel like dealing with it, anyway. And the two-story house is open-plan. He nixes that one so fast, they don’t even bother seeing the upstairs.

One house—it’s a contender. He sends Andrew pictures. He gives up on waiting for a text, and just calls him.

“Thoughts?” Neil asks, carrying his phone through the house, Andrew on speakerphone, trying to reorient his ability to _notice_ things to help him notice problems. He only has minimal idea of what he’s looking for—he’s lived in abandoned houses before, he knows how to spot a house that’s no longer lived in, but he’s not sure what the signs are of problems-to-be. And this house _is_ lived in, and there’s stuff on the walls, stuff in corners, and besides the fact that there could be huge problems hidden behind bedsteads and pictures, he feels like an intruder.

“Nice kitchen,” says Andrew’s voice, tinny through the phone’s speaker. “We can redo the bathroom.”

“What’s wrong with the bathroom?”

“It’s pink.”

“What, too girly for us?”

“No, it’s ugly.”

“Fair enough. Thoughts on the master bedroom?”

“Nice of them to have two closets, when what we really need is a closet for me and a garbage bag for you—I’m taking you shopping after we move in, by the way.”

“What’s wrong with the clothes I have now? You bought them all.”

“Yes, two years ago.”

“It’s not like I’ve grown.”

Silence.

“Wow, I didn’t know my phone had video capabilities,” Neil says cheerfully. “I can _see_ the expression you’re making right now.”

“I don’t make facial expressions,” Andrew says.

“Sorry to interrupt, but if you look in there,” Denise says, apparently done waiting for them to stop talking, “you’ll find that it’s a sizable closet, ideal for storage of bigger things—I think right now they’re using it to store patio chairs.”

“Probably, I could fit in there,” Andrew suggests. Neil opens the closet. “I might not be a bigger thing, but I’m the same size as most things considered bigger.”

The closet is as described. “You could,” Neil agrees. “It’ll be perfect for when I bully you. I’ll steal your lunch money and then shove you into the closet.”

“ _Back_ into the closet,” Andrew corrects.

“Sorry, again, to interrupt, but I want to show you the basement—it’s finished,” Denise says.

“You don’t have to apologize every time you interrupt us,” Neil says, following her down the stairs. “We’re very bad at shutting up.”

“I’d argue that _you_ are bad at shutting up,” Andrew says primly. “ _I_ have been known to go _days_ without—”

“There’s a bathroom through that door,” Denise says. “And they’ve retrofitted that corner of the basement so it functions as a wine cellar.”

“Ooh,” Neil says. “A bathroom, Andrew! So I can shove all your bullshit about being stoic and silent right down the fully functioning toilet.”

“I wouldn’t call it _bullshit_ ,” Andrew says. “I am _extremely_ well known for flatly refusing to talk to pretty much anyone but you and Renee.”

“This is true,” Neil allows. “Anyway, the basement’s pretty cool. We could get into wine.”

“I’m barely into whiskey.”

“We could get into both.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

“Either or. Dealer’s choice.”

“You’re the dealer, in this case.”

“Are you ready to see the backyard?” Denise asks.

“Yup,” Neil agrees, following her up the stairs and out into the backyard. It’s a nice backyard. He turns a slow circle.

“The porch is new,” Denise says, pointing at the boards they’re standing on. “They just built it last summer. And, of course, it’s up to code.”

“It’s a nice porch,” Neil agrees.

“Could we live there?” Andrew asks. “In the house, not on the porch.”

Neil shrugs. “I mean, yeah.”

“Don’t shrug at me,” Andrew says. Denise snorts. “If you don’t like it, it’s not the one.”

“It’s not that I _don’t_ like it,” Neil says. “It’s a house. There’s a roof, and it has walls. I could live in it.”

“Keep looking,” Andrew orders.

“It’s been three weeks. At this rate, we won’t make the two month deadline.”

“Worst comes to worst, go monthly instead of signing a year-long lease. Or we’ll camp out in a hotel for a few weeks. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Sure you don’t want this one?”

“I’m sure,” Andrew says.

“Take some time to think about it,” Denise suggests. “In the meantime, I’ll keep looking.”

“Thank you,” Neil says. “Sorry we’re so picky.”

She waves it off. “The pickier you are, the easier it is for me to figure out what you want. Harder it is for me to find it, maybe, but at least I know what to look for. I’ll let you know when I’ve found something else?”

“Great, talk to you then,” Neil agrees.

She gets in her car. Neil gets in his.

“Maybe I should start checking out storage units,” Neil suggests.

“You don’t have much stuff,” Andrew says. “Just get rid of it.”

“Wasteful.”

“I didn’t say put it in the garbage. You could drop it off at a thrift shop. Habitat for Humanity.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Neil agrees. “I’ll give it to them.”

“And, hey, if it takes Denise a long time—I’ll be able to go house hunting _with_ you. I’ve been watching House Hunters, by the way. It’s still the worst show on TV.”

“You love that show.”

“I hate it.”

“Just like you hate me.”

“No, I—yes. Just like I hate you.”

Neil grins. “All the shit they do on that show is probably just for the drama.”

“Sure. If I hear another man talk about how much closet space his wife uses, I’m going to make him wear one, single, potato sack for a month.”

Neil closes his eyes. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“I’ll see you this weekend, right?”

“Right,” Andrew says. They’ll be playing games a three-hour drive away from each other. They’ve booked a hotel room in the middle. “Talk to you then?”

“Yeah,” Neil agrees.

He almost doesn’t hang up. He doesn’t _want_ to. He wants to keep hearing Andrew’s voice. Wants to keep talking to him. Misses him so badly it hurts.

But that’s stupid.

He hangs up.

They spend that Saturday night together, though. It’s not much. It’s not a whole lifetime, just one night, but it’ll be a whole lifetime, soon. And it convinces Neil that, next time he’s in a house that meets their vague criteria, he should just say he likes it. He feels more at home in a hotel room with Andrew than he feels in his own apartment. He’s not going to find a house he loves; he won’t love it until Andrew’s in it. Maybe he should just stall until Andrew gets back, and then he can put Andrew in the houses and see if that changes things.

Denise solves the problem by not calling him for another two weeks. Neil would like to be annoyed—they’re nearing the two-month deadline—but when she finally does call, he finds that he’s more sad that she didn’t put it off another three weeks than annoyed that he hasn’t heard from her in so long. “I’ve found one I think you’ll like,” she says. She sends him the listing.

Neil doesn’t bother looking at it. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll just wait another couple weeks,” he tells her. “Andrew will be home, then, and then I can make him do this with me.”

“It’s maybe half an hour outside the city,” she says. “You can’t take an hour and a half to come look at this house? Here’s the best part about it—the owners have already moved out, they’re using it as storage, it’s practically a shell. If you like it, you can move in as soon as you close on it.”

He stares blankly at his apartment. He doesn’t feel like arguing. “I’m going to be really busy, the next couple weeks,” he warns her. “All-day busy.” It’s championships. The Jaguars are going. With or without Kevin here to force him to practice all day, that’s what he’ll be doing.

“Then best come see this soon,” Denise says. “Tomorrow?”

Neil holds in a sigh. “Sure.”

So after training the next day, he showers, gets dressed to look like a respectable adult human being instead of like the beneath-everyone’s-notice guy who slinks through the city at the end of the day, and heads out to the suburbs to see another house in another neighborhood.

He pulls up to the house, and he likes it. There’s not much there to hate. Brick front, clean vinyl siding—no mold, no dirt, someone’s been cleaning it. The driveway isn’t huge, but it’s big enough, and Neil has the odd thought that he could see the maserati in it.

And then he gets out of the car.

Denise is waiting for him on the porch, and he notices that, catalogues it away, and forgets about it almost immediately.

It’s _silent._

He can hear _birds_.

No kids outside playing, so he supposes he doesn’t have that extra security buffer, but it’s _quiet_. There’s _space_ between the houses. Behind this house, there’s _forest_ —no house ten feet away, no backyard backed up to his. And he can’t actually see the backyard, either—the fence is made of wood boards, fitted tightly together, and Neil’s sure there’s a name for that, but he doesn’t know it and all he cares about is that he and Andrew could sit back there and smoke and not have to wave at neighbors or pretend that Andrew isn’t actively playing with a knife. Neil looks up and down the street—there’s a box on the porch of the house across the street, just sitting there, no one here is worried about boxes being stolen; there’s someone sitting out on their front porch down the street, in a rocking chair. There’s people here, and they feel comfortable outside, and maybe it’s just because it’s during work hours, but—

It’s _quiet_.

Denise is waiting for him.

He calls Andrew, who picks up on the first ring, interrupting Neil as he tries to say hi to Denise. “I think I’ve found our house,” Neil says.

Denise grins. “I haven’t even shown you the inside yet.”

“So what is this based on?” Andrew asks as Denise opens the door and waves Neil inside. “If there’s a sign outside that says _Neil’s House_ , that’s either a coincidence or a trap.”

Not open-plan, no, but—there’s space. There’s space for the two of them. They wouldn’t have to squish past each other—not that Neil particularly minds that, but it would be nice to do that by _choice_ instead of out of necessity, and it’s better for Andrew’s bad days.

There’s a doorway right off the front hallway—Neil wanders into the kitchen. He can see Andrew cooking in here—stove next to the sink next to the dishwasher, set up by someone who knew, clearly, what it takes to cook. Counter space. There’s a table in the back of the room, some other shit—Neil assumes that that’ll be gone when they move in, which is fine. They’ll get their own table.

“Neil?” Andrew prompts.

“Did you want to see the living room?” Denise asks.

“Yeah—oh. Pictures,” Neil says. “Let me—”

“I probably have a better camera than you do,” Denise says. “Would it make more sense for me to take pictures and send them to Andrew?”

Neil hadn’t even thought of that. “Yes. Yes, please. Andrew.” He switches into Russian, and never mind that Denise nearly drops her phone in shock. “It’s _quiet_ outside. We’re at the back of this neighborhood—our house backs up to the woods, it’s got this fence, we’d have privacy. It’s _peaceful_. The kitchen is nice—there’s space for us, and it’s long, there’s space for a table right by the back windows, it would be perfect—” Somehow, the fact that he has to go around the whole entire wall to get to the living room is comforting. Most rooms are square—the houses they’ve been in with a longer room, like a porch, have had two entrances to that room. Not this one. He has an odd feeling that whoever lived there first re-did the house to make it like that—probably, the back half of the kitchen had been a dining room, or—

“They added that wall,” Denise says. “Other houses in this development are open-plan. Should’ve put a doorway into the living room, but you could always knock one out—that wall isn’t load bearing.”

“No, it’s good, I like it,” Neil says, heading into the living room. “Did you hear that, Andrew? It’s like a fucking anti-open-plan house.” He likes the living room, too. It feels—cozy. There’s more furniture smooshed against the back wall, but that’s fine, he can look past it. Their couch wouldn’t have to be 18 feet away from the closest wall in order to get them close to the TV—and their backs will be to the wall enclosing the staircase, not to the door. “The hallway leads to the side of the living room, not the center—from the door, all you see is stairs, we could put a couch in the living room and not have our backs to the door. Oh, hey, there’s a door to the porch, over here—” He heads out back, and, yes, this is good. “Oh, the porch is brick, that’s cool.”

“Won’t ruin it with cigarette ashes,” Andrew says.

“Yeah—probably sucks, whatever temperature it is, cold in the winter and hot in the summer,” Neil says, but he decides he likes that. “Our stupid brick porch.”

“Hey, thanks, Denise,” Andrew says in English, and Neil glances up at her.

“What?” Neil asks.

“Sent me a picture of you and the porch, which I appreciate.”

Denise shrugs. “Couldn’t get the porch without you, and you seemed absorbed. Anyway, there’s space for a small pool, and the ground is flat enough for it.”

“Eh,” Neil says. “We’d have to spend all day scooping leaves out of it. And we’re not really swimmers anyway. It can stay as is.” He turns and heads inside—he wants to see the upstairs. He almost forgets to hold the door open for Denise.

“Did you forget I was here?” She asks, laughing.

Neil makes a noncommittal noise—had he _forgotten_? No. Had he forgotten to care? Yup. “Sorry, you can take the lead.”

“Thanks—oh, that’s the garage—the basement is—”

“Can I see the upstairs first?” Neil asks.

“Interest!” She crows. “I got you _interested_! I told you you’d want to see this one. I have no idea what you like about it, but I knew you would.”

Neil follows her up the stairs—one of the stairs creaks, and he likes that, likes that anyone coming up the stairs has to announce their presence—and she shows him two smaller rooms, and he has no idea what to do with them, but that’s fine. “Worst comes to worst,” he tells Andrew in Russian, “we’ll shut them up. Maybe we’ll stick some plastic skeletons in there. Some cobwebs.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Andrew agrees.

“Laundry room is on the second floor,” Neil says, delighted. “No carrying laundry all over the house.”

“Oh, thank god, your running clothes get _rank_ , I don’t want you waving those through the house.”

“Shut up, you love it when I get sweaty. Oh my god, Andrew, our room is _good_.” It’s _big_ , there’s space for a bed large enough for them to spread out—Neil feels an odd twinge at the thought, but, hey, they can’t sleep on top of each other forever. Andrew will probably like being able to spread out. And it’ll be good on bad nights. There’s one big window, and Neil likes that—it has a wide windowsill, and that’s different, and Neil likes it. He glances at the sky. “The sun is going to come almost straight through this window, every morning, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives waking up to the sunrise.”

“I’ll buy blackout curtains,” Andrew says. “Or I’ll just take the side closest to the window.”

“Why? Then you’ll _definitely_ wake up with the sunrise every morning.”

“Sure, but at least I can look at you without the sun in my eyes.”

Neil shakes his head, but he’s grinning. He checks the bathroom. “Two sinks in the bathroom,” he announces. “And a bathtub.”

“Can it fit both of us?”

“Most bathtubs can.”

“This is patently false.”

“But no, unlikely. Okay,” he says, switching back into English, turning to Denise. “We can see the basement now.”

“Wonderful,” she says, leading the way down. “It’s not finished, as you can see,” she says, pointing at the concrete floor, the wood beams, “but that’s a plus for you—the house will be cheaper, property taxes will be cheaper, and you can always finish it later.”

“We’ll just paint it,” Neil decides. “Hate white walls.”

“Neil?” Andrew says.

“Hmm?”

“Give the phone to Denise.”

Neil hands the phone over.

“Hello, Andrew, I’ve got the phone,” Denise says.

“Denise, get us this house. Ask them what their highest bid is, and tack $10,000 on. Keep going up, if that doesn’t do it.”

“Oh, jesus, that’s not—that feels like probably too much,” Neil says.

“Neil, literally 20 minutes ago you referred to this as _our house_. And you talked about _our porch_ , and _our bedroom_. You like the house. We’re buying the house.”

“I mean, there are other houses,” Neil says, frantically. “We don’t have to—we don’t have to drop _all_ our money on it—”

“First off, not sure why you think we’re broke. We’re rich. Second of all, not sure what I’ve ever done to make you think I cheap out on things I want—”

“You don’t even want this house, _I_ kind of want this house—”

“Don’t _kind of_ me, you _do_ want the house. Also, the things you want are, generally, also the things that I want. Denise, thank you in advance for getting us this house.”

“Not a problem,” Denise says, grinning. “You’ll own it before you get back to this state.”

Neil takes the phone back. “Andrew, that’s a lot of money.”

“Denise sent me the listing, it’s really not, it’s cheaper than what we prepared for. You just hate having people spend money on you. Anyway, now that I know what kind of space we’ve got, I can start buying furniture.”

“We don’t even own the house yet.”

“We’ll get the house, Neil. It’s our house.”

“Great,” Denise says, having apparently taken to heart the idea that she can just interrupt when necessary. “If you’ve seen everything, we should head out so I can put down an offer.”

“Yeah, of course,” Neil says. He doesn’t want to leave.

Oh, he’s in deep.

But he follows her out of the house, gets in his car, and pulls away. “We’ll have to paint. Pick some colors, everything in there is beige and white.”

“Red for the kitchen,” Andrew says. “Do you want to hold off on moving in for a couple weeks? That way we can paint before there’s furniture in there.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Neil says.

“But?”

“But, what?”

“There was a _but_ at the end of that sentence.”

“But, I don’t want to. I don’t even want to go back to my apartment _now_ , let alone later. Fuck it, we’ll sleep in paint-smell. If we get our bedroom done first, we can sleep with the window open, while it’s still not too cold out.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry. We can paint first. I’m already making you paint, I don’t want it to be a pain in the ass—”

“Shut up, Neil.”

Neil shuts up.

“You like that it’s quiet?” Andrew asks, a few minutes later.

It’s odd, Neil thinks, that he can be standing right next to Denise and have her slip completely out of mind, but even when the phone is silent, Neil knows Andrew is on the other end. “No one to keep track of. No one to memorize. No one to hide from. Half my brain shut off as soon as I got out of the car.”

Neil waits— _you barely have half a brain as is_ must be coming, must certainly be on its way, but instead, there’s silence. Neil glances at his phone to make sure the call hasn’t cut out, to make sure the speaker is still on.

“I can’t wait to live there with you,” Andrew says quietly. It’s stilted. Awkward. Andrew doesn’t like being open. And it’s the middle of the day, over the phone—this is no safe space.

Neil wants Andrew, so strongly, in a way he can’t articulate. It is physically painful, not having him here, not being able to force his own body between Andrew and the rest of the world so Andrew can feel safe. He _aches_. He aches down to his bones, aches through his stomach, believes for a moment that the strength of his desperation is enough to teleport him to wherever Andrew is—

He sighs. “I can’t wait to live there with you, too, Drew. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

Neil expects to spend the next couple weeks in agonies. Expects to go through championships distracted by the concept of existing in a quiet house with Andrew.

Two days after viewing it, he’s sitting down with Denise and the sellers, signing the papers. The sellers put the keys in his hand.

Neil Josten is a homeowner.

That feels—

He shakes hands with the sellers, presses the key into his hand. And then he stops. They’ll have to change the locks. They’ll need _better_ locks. Deadbolts. Locks for the windows. No sense in memorizing a key he won’t have for long.

He and Andrew have a _house_.

This is _terrifying_.

He drives back to his apartment. He can’t move in yet—can’t do anything yet. The house may be his and Andrew’s, but finals are about to begin, he’s going to be busy, and—he may have _seen_ the house alone, but he doesn’t want to live in it alone. It belongs to him and Andrew. Theirs.

He heads up the stairs. Opens his apartment door. For a moment—as he has every single time he’s entered his apartment—he wonders if Andrew will be waiting for him. He can’t imagine why this would happen, or why he hopes for it every single time he opens the door, but—

But.

Andrew isn’t there.

Neil toes off his shoes, climbs into bed, and calls Andrew.

“Hello?”

Neil closes his eyes and holds the phone close. “Drew, we’re homeowners. We own a house.”

“Took a long time to sign those papers.”

“No, I drove back to the apartment. I’m in bed already. I think I’m done for the day.”

“Hang on,” Andrew says. Neil hears movement. A creak. “I’m in bed, too, now.”

Neil smiles. “Two more weeks. That’s not long. When I thought I was two weeks away from dying, I thought that was no time at all. And we’ve been waiting two years for this. Two weeks is nothing.”

“Nothing,” Andrew echoes. “Pick a color for the bedroom.”

Neil hums, considers the spectrum of color. “Purple,” he decides. “Dark purple. Plum.”

There’s silence for a minute. “We finally actually have something to talk about,” Neil says. “I have nothing to say.”

“Do you ever?” Andrew asks. “Tell me about your day.”

So Neil does.

He tells Andrew about Riley missing a goal by a quarter inch, Maria physically stopping her from smashing her racquet to the ground in frustration. The victory dance when she made the next goal. The whole team calling advice—both useful and shitty—as Neil headed out to go close on the house. The locks they’ll need to get. Denise congratulating Neil, and him being so desperate to get home and call Andrew he’d almost forgotten to say thank you.

Andrew tells Neil about his neighbors, the ones who have sex at five in the evening every day, the ones who watch Jeopardy every night without fail. The guy he smokes with—they never talk, but they nod at each other when they meet up outside and nod when they go back inside. His phone call with Nicky the other day, which had been largely one-sided—but Andrew had texted Neil through the whole thing to help himself pull through without hanging up. He’s trying to be nicer to Nicky, who maybe deserves that.

A few minutes after Andrew stops talking, Neil sighs. “We’re getting mushy.”

“ _Mushy_? We’re not—I wouldn’t— _mushy_?”

“Did you just break? Mushy. We just spent half an hour talking about stupid shit, just because we don’t want to hang up.”

“Neil, I need you to look up Alaskan King mattresses.”

“You want me to _get up_?”

“Don’t you keep your laptop right by your bed?”

“No? Why would I have it there?”

“You had it there the whole time we were in college.”

“Yeah, because we had one room. I have a whole apartment.”

“Well, then, this is your fault. Should’ve kept your laptop by your bed.”

“Just tell me what the mattress is. I’d rather hear you talk about it, anyway.”

“Okay. Picture this: _two_ full-size mattresses. One bed.”

Neil considers his current full-size mattress, which fits both him and Andrew nicely. “Who needs that?”

“Us, Neil.”

“ _Us_? I—I don’t think that’s true, probably. If—” Neil bites his tongue. If Andrew wants his own bed, effectively, Neil won’t be the one to tell him otherwise. “Okay. How much—I don’t want to know. Okay. We’re going to have the world’s biggest bed. It’ll be a tourist attraction.”

“You—you’re okay with that?” Andrew asks.

“I have gotten over it. If I roll into the middle you might have to supply a road map to help me find my way out, but I could work with that.”

Silence.

And then Andrew sighs. “You’re _supposed_ to try to make me get a smaller bed.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s going to be absolutely impossible to buy sheets for a mattress that fucking big.”

“The internet exists, we’ll manage it.”

“No, but I want the _Wyoming_ King.”

“Why are these all named after states? What’s the Wyoming King?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s 30 inches wider than a full, 10 inches longer.”

“Well, that’s not double.”

“No, it’s not, but it’s probably easier to find sheets.”

“Could just buy a bolt of cloth and tape it on.”

“Tape? Stapling would probably work better.”

“ _Duct_ tape.”

“I could do duct tape. Remind me to never try and manipulate you into a compromise. You just agree.”

“People will say, _Andrew, how did you talk Neil into that?_ And you’ll say _I asked_.”

“Is that a reference to something?”

“For the past several years of my life, I have convinced you to do things no one thought you’d ever do, and when asked how I got you to do them, I say: _I asked_. It’s true, mostly.”

“In some circles, I think that’s called _being whipped_.”

“Never been into BDSM, but I suppose this isn’t half bad.”

“Neil—”

Neil waits for the end of that sentence, but it never comes. “I miss you,” he says, finally.

“I miss you, too. We’re moving in on the 21st, by the way.”

“Two days after championships.”

“The day I’m flying in, too. I’m handing over my car a few days before that—thanks, Jaguars, for paying to move my car. It’ll meet me at the airport. I’ll meet you at the house?”

“Yeah,” Neil agrees. “Meet me at home.”

“Home.”

And that’s it, for a couple days. For a couple weeks.

Neil has never been less interested in exy—and more dedicated to it—in his whole life. If he throws himself into it, he doesn’t have to think about how slowly time is passing.

And pass it does.

It passes, until Neil is sitting in his car in the driveway of his _house_. His clothes—and everything else from his apartment deemed worthy of bringing with him—are in his trunk and backseat, and besides that, Neil has nothing, because the majority of his possessions have been given to Habitat for Humanity. He still feels like he has too much. And soon, people will be here with furniture, appliances, delivered direct-to-house and to be moved inside. And after that, Neil and Andrew will install the locks and deadbolts currently sitting in the passenger seat of Neil’s car.

Neil takes deep breaths. Andrew is on his way. There’s nothing Neil can do but—

He hears the engine. Whips around in his seat—

That’s not Andrew. It’s someone else, passing his house, pulling into a driveway two houses down. Neil sighs.

He’s being pathetic.

He’s the son of a gangster. Owned by the yakuza. Spent ten years being beaten by his father, and then eight years on the run and being beaten by his mother. He has killed people—too many to keep track of—and butchered animals. He should be stronger than—

He whips around at the sound of a car engine.

He puts his face in his hands. Still not Andrew. Still fucking mushy. Still fucking weak. If his mother was here, she’d pull all his hair out. He’s behaving like a teenager waiting for his prom date to arrive.

He looks up in time to glance in his rearview mirror and see the maserati pull up behind him. His stomach flips—and then he sees Andrew’s face, and it settles down.

Neil gets out of his car nearly as fast as Andrew does, and resolves to never, ever make fun of the speed with which Andrew moves towards Neil. Neil will never even _mention_ it. He’ll just hold it in his brain forever, the way Andrew reaches out, like Andrew’s hands have been aching for Neil the way Neil’s hands have been aching for Andrew, the way Andrew barely manages to breathe the words _yes or no_ before Neil is saying _yes_ and kissing Andrew, kissing him like it’s been years instead of a few weeks, like they never thought they’d see each other again instead of knowing precisely what date and time they’d meet again. Neil can’t stand it. Andrew can sit there and talk shit as much as he wants about not being mushy, not being a romantic, not being—whatever—but when Neil pulls away, brain on the verge of disintegration, Andrew follows him. Not far. But Andrew follows him.

Neil puts his forehead against Andrew’s to cover for Andrew. This way, they can both pretend that it didn’t happen.

“It’s—quiet,” Andrew says after a minute.

Neil revels in the sound of Andrew’s voice _not_ coming through his speaker. “Told you.”

“I didn’t expect that to make such a big _difference_.”

“Difference in what?”

Andrew waves a hand. “It feels—nice.”

“Want to go inside?”

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees.

Neil leads the way. Unlocks the door to his house. Pushes the door open. Stands back—Andrew may as well go in first, since he hasn’t seen it yet. Andrew’s arms move in a way that Neil doesn’t quite understand—and then Andrew has scooped Neil up, bridal style, Neil clutching at his shoulders as the ground falls away.

“I think this is what newlyweds do, right?” Andrew mutters. “Husband carries wife over threshold of new home?”

“Why am _I_ the wife?”

“Too weak to carry _me_ over the threshold,” Andrew says, stepping over the threshold. “And since they never came up with any way to determine who should carry who that _isn’t_ broken along gender lines, that’s how we’re going to decide.”

“Sounds good to me,” Neil agrees, waiting for Andrew to put him down. Watching Andrew’s face as he takes in the hallway, the window in the living room that can be seen from the doorway, the glimpse of the backyard it offers. The staircase—enclosed, but wide, wide enough that they shouldn’t have much trouble getting furniture up the stairs.

Andrew turns and carries Neil into the kitchen. “This _is_ nice,” he says. “Someone who cooks designed this setup.”

“That’s exactly what I thought,” Neil says, satisfied. Waiting for Andrew to put him down. Over-aware of Andrew’s arms.

Andrew carries him to the back of the room, looks out the window. “Nice backyard. Too bad it’s flat, or we could roll down the hill.”

“You’ve never struck me as the hill-rolling type.”

“Neil, you don’t know everything about me.”

“Fair enough. What if we plant a bunch of wildflowers and daisies and whatnot? Then we can frolic.”

“I take it back. You _do_ know everything about me.”

Neil grins at him. He’s starting to get used to being held, and Andrew doesn’t seem to be at all inconvenienced by it. “Were you planning on putting me down?”

“Not particularly. Do you want me to put you down?”

“No, I’m getting used to this.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Wanted to know if I could get comfortable here, or if I should be prepared to hit my feet at any time.”

“What does _comfort_ look like? Is this _un_ comfortable?”

“Just worried your arms might get tired.”

“Who do you think I am?”

Neil grins a little wider. “Probably, my husband.”

Andrew doesn’t answer that, just turns around and walks back through the kitchen and around into the living room. “Space,” he says.

“The final frontier.”

“I hate you. There’s _space_ here. I think this room alone is half the size of my apartment.”

“Half the size of mine, too,” Neil agrees.

“There’s a bathroom down here, right?”

“Other side of the stairs.”

Andrew wanders over that way and kicks the door open. “Everything in this house is _long_. Aren’t rooms supposed to be square?”

“Do you not like it?”

“No, I like it,” Andrew says quickly. “It’s just—odd. That’s never stopped me, though,” he says, glancing down at Neil’s face. “I like odd things. Like you, for instance.”

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, love having a full bathroom downstairs. This way if you break your leg doing fucked up exy stunts, I don’t have to carry you up the stairs.”

“Too weak?” Neil asks, grinning. He can’t stop. He can’t help it. Andrew is _here_ , and not leaving, never leaving again, and they’re _home_.

“Too lazy.”

“Really? Bet you can’t carry me up the stairs.”

“Bet I can,” Andrew says, making a beeline for the staircase. And then he stops.

There’s a truck in front of their house.

“Delivery’s here,” Andrew says, setting Neil down.

“Convenient timing,” Neil says.

And then they move in.

It’s hectic. Hellish. Neil and Andrew are directing the delivery men as they haul furniture through the house—and it’s pre-built, it doesn’t look anything like the secondhand Ikea furniture Neil owned, and he can’t imagine how expensive it must’ve been. New appliances arrive, old ones are taken away—sleek, clean, up-to-date appliances, and Neil can’t imagine what _they_ must have cost, either. Neil can estimate the cost of a week’s worth of food for two people on the run; he knows enough to know when he’s being ripped off at a motel; he can tell at a glance how much money a fake passport must have cost, based on what country ‘issued’ it and how ‘used’ it looks and whether or not the correct paper was used and how perfect the watermark is. He has no idea how much an _oven_ costs, let alone _that_ oven. Does Andrew _have_ this much money? But yes—Andrew must—two years of salary, spent only on his shitty apartment and the upkeep of his car—Neil tosses his salary in there, which is still a solid chunk of money, even after the Moriyamas’ cut—he could just check Andrew’s bank account. Neil has access, even though they keep their money separate—Neil doesn’t want the Moriyamas looking at Andrew’s money, doesn’t want to risk it, even though he’s certain the Moriyamas have better access to Andrew’s bank account than Neil himself does. But—

The bed frame moves through the door.

It is big enough to fit god.

Neil watches it go up the stairs in a kind of awe.

And then there’s the non-furniture—bedding gets delivered, pillows, soft things, some of which Andrew sends into the living room and some of which he sends upstairs. Andrew follows it up, and a minute or two later Neil hears the washing machine pull water for the first time, and then Andrew is back down in time to direct an enormous bathtub up the stairs—when will they _use_ that? 

A supervisor grabs Neil—“You have two more pull-out couches—where do you want them?”

They do? There’s already a couch in the living room, Neil knows, so they don’t need more there. Neil thinks, quickly, about the Foxes coming to visit—about finishing the basement, at least mostly—“One in the small room upstairs, one in the basement—”

“Neil, hi—” Denise grins at Neil, clearly happy to see move-in going so well, and then sticks her hand out to the supervisor—after adjusting the basket of fruit she’s holding. “You must be Andrew?”

“Andrew? No—no, that’s Andrew,” the supervisor says, pointing him out.

Denise blinks at Andrew, standing in a corner, watching furniture move past him, occasionally directing traffic. “Oh.”

“So—one upstairs, one in the basement, got it,” the supervisor says, before making his escape.

“Is there something wrong?” Denise asks, frowning. “I know I’m just the real estate agent—there’s not much I can do, but if it’s about the house—”

“No, everything’s perfect,” Neil says quickly. “We love it.”

“Andrew doesn’t look—particularly thrilled,” she says, delicately.

Neil glances at Andrew. “I mean, sure, he’s not happy to have so many people in the house, but—that’s _happy_ —Denise, he doesn’t smile. That doesn’t mean he’s not happy. Look at him, he’s overjoyed.”

She blinks, and he can tell she doesn’t see it. So few people do. Renee does; Matt does, sometimes. Aaron would never admit to it, but he can see it, when he wants to.

Andrew isn’t dead anymore. He’s not flat. He’s not _alive_ —possibly, he never will be—but there’s something there, in the softness of his gaze, in the relaxed set to his shoulders, in the unclenching of his jaw. Neil can see it, and he loves it.

“Well,” she says tactfully, “I just wanted to see how things were going. And, here—congratulations on your new home,” she says, handing over the fruit basket with a smile.

“Thanks,” Neil says, grinning, heading for Andrew and the kitchen. “Andrew! Fruit!”

“Where?” Andrew asks.

“What do you mean, where? Anyway, there’s oranges, and this is Denise.”

“Oranges? Hi, Denise. If you’re peeling an orange—”

“Yup,” Neil says, dropping a hand as he passes Andrew so Andrew can reach out a couple fingers and brush Neil’s. The way his touch sends electricity up Neil’s arm—Neil didn’t expect that, but he can hide it. Takes a knife to the orange peel, and sets his mind to peeling the orange instead of thinking about Andrew’s hands.

“Denise? I love the house,” Andrew says. “Thank you for getting it.”

“I’m sorry I had to go so far above asking price,” she says carefully.

“Don’t apologize. It’s exactly what I asked you to do, and it was worth it.”

Neil peels oranges, and he smiles.

He offers an orange to Denise, who turns it down—“Thank you, but I have to head out, I have a showing—just wanted to drop by and make sure all was well—” and holds a plate of orange slices for him and Andrew, and tips the delivery guys as they leave. Andrew disappears up the stairs at the sound of a beep, and then Neil hears their dryer start up and hears the washer start pulling water again and wonders what, precisely Andrew is washing, and doesn’t care enough to ask, and Andrew comes back down, and they finish the orange slices as the last of the delivery guys heads out, and then Neil picks up a drill and changes the locks on all their doors. Andrew follows him around, installing deadbolts. They lock the doors as they go, and Neil hands copies of keys to Andrew.

And then they make another circuit of the house, hanging blinds, and when they finish hanging the blinds, the dryer beeps, and Neil discovers that the answer to _what was Andrew washing_ is _curtains_ —at least, the first load of laundry was curtains—and they hang those, too, and close the blinds and draw the curtains, and it’s _safe_.

Neil has never felt this safe in his life.

But—but he’s safe. And Andrew’s safe. And when his family comes to visit, they’ll be safe.

Neil points at their bed. “This is fucking enormous. We’re both small.”

Andrew shrugs. “What, are you worried you’ll have trouble getting out of the bed?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll push you. Want a strawberry?”

“Of course I want a strawberry.”

“I think I saw watermelon in there, too.”

“Can we tip Denise? Is that normal?”

“She got paid a percentage of the sale of the house, she just made _way_ more money than she expected.”

“That’s true,” Neil agrees, following Andrew down the stairs, noting the way Andrew’s fingers brush the railing, noting the way that one stair creaks, watching Andrew notice it and decide to ignore it. It’s their house; what do they care if they’re loud? What do they care if they make noise?

Neil takes a deep breath. It’s the fifth one he’s taken in ten minutes. It just keeps feeling like he _can_ take them. Doors are locked, no one can see through the windows, people would be able to see through the back door but there’s nothing back there but a high fence and a forest—there’s _no noise_ , no noise but the noise they’re making, and Neil’s head feels as empty as he’s always thought it was.

Andrew plucks a strawberry out of the basket and holds it out; Neil takes it, letting his fingers brush Andrew’s, watching Andrew take control of himself. “I think we should paint first,” Andrew says. “And then we can swap out the cabinets. And then we can figure out what’s up with the flooring.”

“What’s wrong with the cabinets?”

“Ugly.”

“What’s wrong with the flooring?”

“Nothing, in here—this tile is nice. But the carpet out there is gross, and flat, and dirty, and cleaning it will only make it so nice—I wonder what’s under it?”

“Do you _know_ anything about flooring?”

“Nicky, Aaron, and I were too broke to pay anyone to renovate our house, so if we wanted to change something, we did it ourselves. Also, I have started watching HGTV.”

“And?”

Andrew shrugs, hands Neil a piece of watermelon, licks the juice off his fingers, apparently unaware of the fact that he’s driving Neil up a wall, and heads out into the hallway. He kneels down in a corner, pokes at the baseboard, pulls out a knife, and chops out a section of the carpet.

Is this _supposed_ to make Neil dizzy? Possibly not. Possibly it’s just that Neil has nothing else going on in his brain right now, and he may as well think about Andrew’s lips, Andrew’s hands, Andrew—

He shuts that train of thought down. It is the middle of the afternoon.

Then again, what _else_ do they have to do?

Andrew pulls up padding, whipping a hand back as a staple tries to stab him. “Should’ve worn gloves,” he grumbles, but then—“We’ve got hardwood!”

“Is that good?”

Andrew glances over his shoulder. “Yes, Neil, it’s good. But if we leave the carpet down for now, we don’t really have to care too much about spilled paint—although I guess we don’t want to _walk_ on it, so we should probably put down tarps anyway.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees. “Want a piece of pineapple?”

Andrew follows him back into the kitchen, and takes a piece of pineapple.

And then he takes Neil’s chin in his hand. “Hey. We have a _house_.”

Neil grins. It feels like he’ll never stop smiling—like maybe, just maybe, he could be happy here, forever, with Andrew, in their house, doors locked and curtains drawn and _safe_ , so safe, wrapped up in the peace and quiet, just the two of them. “Dance with me?”

It’s a selfish request with an ulterior motive—Neil _needs_ to touch Andrew, needs it like food and water, wants Andrew pressed up against him, wants Andrew, _wants_ , but—

New house, and so many people, and Andrew had just flown in that day, and that’s a lot, it’s a lot, and Neil himself would be tired if he wasn’t so _desperate_ —but he’s not going to ask for anything Andrew doesn’t want to give.

But he can ask for a dance.

Andrew, wordlessly, takes Neil’s hand, and Neil thinks that, maybe, Andrew is just as desperate as Neil is—there’s something about the slow, careful way Andrew slots his fingers between Neil’s, curls his fingers over, palm warm and rough, every millimeter of skin contact almost more than Neil can handle. Andrew tugs him out away from the counter, steps into a waltz. He starts humming a moment later—the song is familiar, and the lyrics fit themselves to the tune in Neil’s head: _I don’t remember us falling in love, but I’m sure that it happened_...

Andrew stops humming a minute later, but they don’t stop dancing, waltzing little circles around _their_ kitchen, _their_ house, theirs, Andrew’s left hand warm in Neil’s right, Andrew’s right hand firm on Neil’s waist, Neil doing his best to hide how _aware_ he is of it.

“Staring,” Andrew murmurs, but he doesn’t look away from Neil, doesn’t push Neil’s face away.

“You can make me stop, if you’d like,” Neil says softly.

Andrew tilts his face up, a sunflower to the sun. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, meeting Andrew where he is, shocked at how it feels like it’s the first time kissing Andrew in months, years—astounded anew at how _involved_ Andrew gets, kissing Neil like it’s more important than breathing, hands on Neil’s hips and pushing him back until Neil is pressed up against the counter, hands buried in Andrew’s hair, hips pressed up against Andrew, and Neil can’t hide it, can’t pretend his breath isn’t coming in gasps, can’t pretend he’s not searching for contact, can’t pretend he’s not devoting all his brain power to existing _here_ , existing _now_ , feeling Andrew’s fingertips sliding under his shirt, tip-toeing up his sides, muscles jumping with every touch—

But he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to pretend anything at all, because he’s not alone, it’s not just him—Andrew, too, is breathing hard, hands clutching at Neil’s waist, his whole body searching for contact with Neil, and that very nearly does Neil in. He opens his eyes to find Andrew’s closed, and when he pulls back it takes Andrew a second to open his eyes—a second Neil has historically missed, because he’s had his own eyes closed, and he can’t imagine _why_ he thought that was worth it—why he’d so often missed the gentle flutter of eyelashes, the moment when Andrew’s gorgeous eyes were revealed, dark and heavy and hot—because Andrew wants Neil. Andrew wants Neil, and Neil gasps and tilts his hips, searching for friction, mumbling incoherent protest as Andrew removes a hand—but then Andrew’s fingers are unzipping Neil’s pants, undoing the button, and it’s unfortunate that there has to be space between them to fit Andrew’s hand but—but—then Andrew wraps his hand around Neil’s dick, and Neil tenses every muscle in his body to avoid bucking into Andrew’s hand, to avoid pushing too much. Andrew doesn’t go slow, though, almost as a rule, and today is no exception, and it feels _good,_ Neil drops his head to Andrew’s shoulder for a minute until Andrew’s other hand pulls Neil’s face up, and Neil might resent it but when Andrew sees Neil’s face he _moans_ , pulls Neil in for a kiss, and Neil keeps his face up, tries not to hold Andrew’s hair too tightly, tries not to make too much noise when Andrew drops his hand back to Neil’s hip, when Andrew kisses Neil’s throat, his collarbone, a line up the side of his neck, and then finds his way back to Neil’s mouth, and Andrew’s own hips twitch, jolting his hand, jolting Neil’s cock, and Neil shudders, loses it, pushes his head into Andrew’s shoulder, making a noise that sounds too much like Andrew’s name to be a coincidence.

And he stays there, breathing, while Andrew tucks him back into his pants. And Andrew lets him. Doesn’t pull him closer, though, which Neil understands a moment later, understands the movement of Andrew’s hand—thrilling to the realization that Andrew feels safe enough, here, in their kitchen, in their house—he keeps his eyes closed, while he’s got his head tilted downwards, but he doesn’t stay there long, turning his head to the side to lick a stripe up Andrew’s neck, laughing when Andrew jumps, murmuring bullshit into Andrew’s ear—encouragement, love, whatever comes to mind, which isn’t much, Neil feels brainless, empty, but it’s a comfortable sort of empty, the kind of empty that presages a nap.

But not yet—no nap yet—he wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders and talks to and kisses him until he comes, face turned away from Neil, and Neil can’t even tell if he’s listening, but he hasn’t yet told Neil to shut up.

Still. Neil shuts up anyway. He can’t move away—not without brushing against Andrew—and maybe Andrew won’t need to; he generally doesn’t these days, but Neil can’t forget that, as much as he loves this house, as safe as he feels, It’s an unfamiliar place for Andrew, and not his home yet.

Andrew pushes up against Neil, resulting in the grossest squishy-sticky feeling on his stomach that Neil has ever experienced, but even as Neil makes a noise of disgust he wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders. Andrew wraps his arms around Neil—nope, no, Neil was wrong, Andrew isn’t going for a hug, he’s reaching around Neil to wash his hands in the sink.

For reasons Neil doesn’t quite understand, this strikes him as funny, and he grins, kisses Andrew’s cheek.

“Talk to me,” Andrew says, voice flat.

“About anything in particular?”

“Anything but exy.”

Neil’s mind has never been more blank. But—gotta think of something—“There _must_ be a more adult way of doing this. I mean, some way that doesn’t end with us having to wash half our clothes and also ourselves. Condoms? Do condoms help? I—”

“I still have the box Allison gave us,” Andrew says, already sounding a little better. “When we got married.”

“Really? Jesus, for what? Don’t condoms expire?”

“Don’t feel like throwing them out. And yeah, they do.”

“Well, still—maybe towels? Could we get towels involved? What if at the last moment you just turned me around and let me shoot into the sink? I guess the sink is too high. Maybe we just do this in the bathroom next to the toilet from now on.”

“You are exceptionally senseless today.”

“Is it possible to be _exceptionally_ senseless? It feels like either you are or you aren’t. Have we had this conversation before?”

“I am getting a _distinct_ sense of deja vu. I need a nap,” Andrew says, pulling away, heading for the stairs.

“Seconded,” Neil says, following him. They’ll need to make the bed—or just sleep on the couch, because sleeping on the bed requires— “Oh. Is the rest of what’s in the dryer the sheets?”

“Yeah.”

“Love that forethought. Extremely impressive.”

“Senseless.”

“It makes sense, I don’t think you’re using that word right.”

“That’s fair. Maybe it’s more accurate to call it _blather_?”

“I could do blather.”

“I know you could. You _can_. You’re doing it right now.”

“Oh, ha ha, very funny.”

“I am known for my sense of humor.”

“By who?”

“ _Whom_.”

“Who’s that?”

Andrew stops in the doorway of the laundry room, turns to give Neil a look that could be best described as the look a teenager gives a parent when that parent makes an off-color joke, and says, “Not funny.”

“I am not known for my sense of humor.”

Andrew just empties the dryer into a laundry basket—sheets, towels, pillowcases, a blanket—grabs a towel, leaves the rest of it, and pulls Neil into their bedroom, where their suitcases await them.

The bed doesn’t look any smaller, set up in their room.

But Andrew wipes Neil down, in spite of Neil’s protests that he is fully capable of taking care of himself, and then kicks Neil out of the bathroom so Andrew can change his shirt in peace.

Neil doesn’t bother putting a new shirt on. Instead, he changes into sweatpants. He’s not going to nap in jeans.

And then he goes back for the bedding, hauls the ocean of cloth into the bedroom, locks the door behind him—the house is empty, he knows it, all the doors are locked, he knows that, but there’s no harm in locking this door, too—and then he starts trying to put the sheets on the bed.

And, oh, this bed is going to be their marriage counselor. If they ever get into a fight while the sheets are off the bed, they’ll either have to resolve it or sleep directly on the mattress, because Neil can’t do this on his own.

Andrew emerges from the bathroom and stops. Stands there, expressionless and still, staring at Neil as he clambers around the bed, trying and failing to get the fitted sheet to stay on. He hasn’t even gotten to the flat sheet yet, let alone the blankets.

“Oh, no,” Neil says. “You get your ass over here and help me with this, these sheets are big enough to suffocate me in.”

“I’m having a good time watching,” Andrew says, apparently perfectly content to watch Neil struggle.

“Too bad, jackass, you wanted the bed, you can help me put the sheets on.”

Andrew stares at Neil for a couple more seconds, and then gives up and wanders over. “Maybe I don’t have to take you clothes shopping,” he says, from across the bed, eighteen miles away, pulling the fitted sheet down. “Shirtless with grey sweatpants is a good fashion choice.”

“I won’t fight the shopping if you promise never to make me put the sheets on by myself,” Neil suggests.

Andrew gives Neil a look Neil doesn’t quite understand. “I promise,” he says, low and serious, and Neil grins. Andrew doesn’t lie. He doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t break promises.

Eventually, they have the sheets on, the blanket on, and Andrew climbs into bed with Neil, tugs him into the center of the bed, climbs on top of him, sticks a knee between his legs, pushes him into the mattress. Neil waits for kisses, but Andrew bypasses his mouth—Neil feels Andrew’s lips on his ear—and then Andrew starts speaking, and Neil almost doesn’t understand what he’s saying, coming out of nowhere as it is, but then he understands, with a heady rush, that it’s _love poems._

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks—” Andrew’s hands move, and Neil gasps, but he can’t pay attention to that—can only listen as Andrew speaks—“I fear no fate, for you are my fate—” Neil tangles his hands in Andrew’s hair, pulls him in for a kiss when he finishes one poem, blinks his eyes open to drink in the sight of Andrew hovering above him, never leaving again, here to stay, and then Andrew dips his head again—“I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you—”

Until Neil can’t breathe, can’t think, knows nothing but Andrew’s voice, so dizzy with it he almost misses when Andrew whispers—

“Because, Neil Josten, I may not say it every time it’s true, but I love you—”

“Drew—stay with me—”

“I’m not going anywhere, Neil, I’m not leaving anymore—”

Until, eventually, Neil falls asleep, arms wrapped around Andrew, Andrew’s weight on top of Neil a familiar comfort.

And then Neil is awake.

It’s not a troubled process.

Usually, it’s a troubled process. But Neil is awake, and he isn’t tense. He takes stock of his situation—but he knows where he is, why he’s awake, why there’s a weight on top of him.

And then Andrew is awake, and that, too, is an instantaneous thing—Andrew grabs Neil’s wrist, a sharp movement, and Neil shuts down his reaction. Without that input, Andrew will wake up easier—and sure enough, Andrew’s grip loosens half a second later, but he doesn’t let go.

Neil is okay with that.

They have a lot to do. They’ve barely unpacked—the necessities are there, the bathrooms are stocked, their clothes are in their room, but the dishes will need to be washed and put away, their small-but-growing book collection will need to find a home, the clothes will need to actually be put in the drawers—

Actually, that’s all doable. They don’t have much stuff, if Neil is thinking about it logically.

Andrew looks up at Neil. “I’m hungry.”

“Pizza?” Neil suggests. “Or—there’s a Dairy Queen ten minutes away.”

“Dairy Queen,” Andrew decides. “Ice cream.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

Andrew doesn’t move. Just stares at Neil.

Neil is cozy. It’s dark. Andrew is here, and there’s no rush—the season is over, Andrew’s not leaving, they _live_ here. Neil closes his eyes again, brushing his fingers through Andrew’s hair, soft, comforting—

“I thought we were going to get food?” Andrew says.

Neil cracks an eye open. “I can’t get up until you do, and you showed no inclination to move.”

“What’s the password?”

“What?”

“Give me the password and I’ll get up.”

“I don’t care, I can be hungry a little while longer. We can just lie here.”

“I don’t want to.”

Neil sighs. Andrew wants to get up, but wants Neil to say something first. What does Andrew want him to say? Neil considers and discards possibilities. “Abracadabra? Supercalifra—”

“No. That’s not it.”

Neil grins. “Um. Okay. Uh—” What does Andrew want to hear? What is it that Neil hasn’t said? Does he need to say he’s hungry too? He already has. Does he need to say he wants to go to DQ? He suggested it.

And then it strikes him that, maybe—

It’s a long shot, but—

“I love you?”

“You said it like a question,” Andrew objects.

“I love you, Drew,” Neil says, placing a kiss on Andrew’s forehead.

Andrew grabs Neil’s chin and pulls him in for a kiss before he finally rolls off Neil, scoots to the edge of the bed, and holds a hand back to help haul Neil out of bed.

They get dressed, in their room, in their house, and Neil loves it more every second. Permanent. No more moving around. No more apartments, hotels, abandoned houses. No more waiting to pack up at a moments notice, no more waiting until the next time he needed to move. He doesn’t even know what to _do_ with this, with this house that he owns. Well, part-owns. Andrew owns the other half. Somehow, that only makes it better—Neil is practically giddy about it. He takes Andrew’s hand as they head out into the hallway. He can’t stop grinning. Maybe he never will. Maybe he’ll spend the rest of his life happy—is that possible? Is it _possible_ to be happy like this, to have a place that’s _his_ , shared with Andrew—Andrew Minyard, Andrew Joseph Minyard—“Hey, Andrew?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” Neil says as they head out the front door of their house. Neil locks it behind them, presses the key into his palm, turns around to find Andrew, waiting for him, nearly splits in half—he’s not big enough to contain all of this. “I love you,” he says again. “And I love that you’re here with me, and I love that we have our own house, and I love that this is ours and you’re with me and we’re here—”

Andrew pulls him in for another kiss, one that can’t last, Neil is smiling too hard, can’t stop. “You didn’t say it back,” Andrew says.

And then Neil understands.

He could point out the hypocrisy—Neil says _I love you_ often enough, and Andrew almost never says it back. He could point out that Andrew hardly says it, at all, and generally only says it when he’s mostly certain Neil is only semi paying attention, too distracted by sleep or by Andrew’s hands or by anything else to give it its due. Neil could point out that while he hadn’t said it back, he’d lain there and begged Andrew to stay with him. Neil could point all this out—but this is Andrew, trying. Trying to meet Neil in the middle. And instead of affirming that Neil had heard it, that it meant something, that Andrew wasn’t in this alone, Neil had—not said it. “I’m sorry,” Neil says. “Next time, I’ll say it back. But I love you, Drew, I love you so much.”

“I know,” Andrew says.

“Star Wars!” Neil says. “I got that one.”

“Star Wars,” Andrew agrees, getting in the car.

“You could also just ask,” Neil says. “You could just ask me to say it.”

“I suppose,” Andrew agrees, but that’s as far as he’s willing to go.

Neil takes his hand when they pull out of the driveway. He’ll take an _I suppose_. He’s shocked Andrew cares so much, at all. Andrew had been trying, Neil knows he had, trying to find a way to make it work—to make _love_ a thing he cared about, a thing he could have—but last he’d checked, Andrew had insisted the concept was largely irrelevant, was nothing worth speaking aloud. Something to show, not something to say.

As far as Neil is concerned, once it’s _shown_ , then _saying_ it should be easy. Andrew had once objected to the _concept_ of love—to the idea that there _was_ an idea that could capture anything worth having. That there _was_ something worth having, and that it could be in the form of a person, and that—

He’d talked in circles, not drunk but not sober, furious. He couldn’t very well look Neil in the eye and say that relationships were meaningless; besides the fact that he’d agreed they were _in_ a relationship, the very fact that they were sitting there, watching the sun set over the beach, Neil in the driver’s seat of the maserati while Andrew talked as much as he ever had while on drugs, would’ve proven the statement a lie. He settled for saying that love was more about actions than words. Neil had agreed, and had promptly informed Andrew that he would be saying _I love you_ nonetheless, so that some day, Andrew would be able to look back on all the times Neil had said it and would know he’d been telling the truth.

 _That_ had sent Andrew on a longer rant about truth and emotions, but Neil had stuck to it.

He’d wanted to be someone Andrew could trust. Sunrise, Abram, death—and Neil, too, maybe. Someone Andrew could lean on as much as Neil leaned on Andrew. Wanted to stay, so that Andrew would know he had a home, too. Wanted to put Andrew’s memory to good use, logging all the times Neil had told Andrew the truth, every time he had made the promise of _I love you_ and kept it.

Andrew potentially returning that particular sentiment had struck Neil as much less likely, and much less important—Neil knows Andrew loves him, knows it down to his bones, regardless of whether or not Andrew feels the need to say it.

But if Andrew is _going_ to say it? If Andrew thinks it’s important?

Neil pledges to himself that, next time, he’ll say it back.

Neil gives Andrew directions. He tries not to let himself be distracted by the fact that in one hand, he’s holding Andrew’s, and in the other, he’s got the key to his _house_. In two hands, he’s got everything he ever wanted, everything he never bothered wanting, and that’s—it’s a lot. It’s just a lot.

They get chicken fingers. Fries. That, they eat in the store—it’s 8 in the evening on a Monday night in October, it’s not exactly busy.

They don’t bother talking. Too busy eating. Too tired. Too in-public. And—there’s no rush. Andrew isn’t leaving; they’re not going to go back to their respective sides of the country in the morning.

Although, speaking of the morning—“Wymack, Abby, and Bee are coming over tomorrow,” Neil tells Andrew. “We should probably wash the dishes before we go to bed.”

“Again.”

Neil raises an eyebrow at him.

“Before we go to bed, again,” Andrew clarifies. “We just slept for a solid five hours.”

“True.”

“But yes. We should. So we can serve them—lunch? Dinner?—in our house. Like adults.”

And, oh, it’s not loud, it’s not blatant, but that hint of pride in Andrew’s voice has Neil grinning again. His face is starting to hurt. Andrew is as happy about this as Neil is.

Neil had no idea. He had no idea this could happen, for him. For them. He wants to fly to California, find his mother’s bones, tell them what he has, tell them that he’s not dead, that he’s mostly free, that he’s married and in love and has a house that’s going to be a home where his and Andrew’s near-surrogate parents can come visit.

“They’re coming over around 4,” Neil says. “So, dinner. We’ll have to go grocery shopping, in the morning.”

Andrew stops eating, for a minute, and then resumes. Neil spends thirty seconds considering, and can’t figure out why. “What?”

“We’re gonna go grocery shopping,” Andrew says, and Neil realizes he’s _happy_ about it. “We haven’t done that—since—the summer before my senior year.”

Andrew’s right, of course he is, but that doesn’t stop Neil from running through his memory, too, just in case, but—he’s _right_. And even then, they’d only gone shopping for weekends spent at Nicky’s house, never for a whole week or two, never for their own house.

Neil feels _giddy_. Over _grocery shopping_. Maybe he should go murder someone or get himself kidnapped to remind himself who he really is—what he really is—because this feels like he’s lying.

He stretches out a hand, and Andrew links their pinkies, and Neil decides that there’s no harm in lying, really.

And then they order ice cream—chocolate with sprinkles for Neil, and what could best be described as a _concoction_ for Andrew—and that, they take outside. Is it cold? Yes. Are they going to wait until they get home to eat it? No. They hop up on the trunk of the maserati, and when Neil kisses Andrew, it tastes like chocolate chip cookies.

When Neil hears the meow, he thinks he’s hallucinating.

But Andrew looks up, and there’s another meow, and Neil isn’t in the habit of hallucinating.

Andrew sighs, and sets down his ice cream, so Neil follows suit. He supposes they should make sure the cat isn’t stuck on something, or dying, or something.

They follow the sound, and sure enough—the cat is stuck in some branches, its mass of fur tangled up, and it’s not a cat, it’s a kitten, and it has a friend—Neil sees a pair of eyes in the bush next to it.

Andrew sighs, again.

Instead of going for the one that’s stuck—its fur is such a bright orange Neil can see it in the distant glow of one of the parking lot lights—Andrew goes for its friend, moving slow, silent, extending a hand at a speed that could be considered stillness.

And then Andrew is holding a kitten.

He passes it to Neil.

“What am I doing with this?” Neil asks, keeping his voice low, as the kitten attempts to scale his torso. He grabs it, holds it down, and it sticks its claws into his sweatshirt. He grimaces at it. How much blood can a kitten draw?

“Holding it,” Andrew says, voice flat and calm as he pulls out his knife.

“If you kill that cat, I am _not_ eating it,” Neil says, watching Andrew approach the trapped kitten. Neil’s cat seems to be settling down—not happy, per se, but it’s not trying to gut Neil, which is good.

Andrew doesn’t bother answering—he’s too busy carefully, oh-so-carefully, cutting the cat’s fur where it’s tangled. Neil holds his breath—the cat is squirming, clawing at everything around it, and Neil keeps waiting to see blood, either Andrew’s or the cat’s, but—

But then the cat is squirming in Andrew’s hands, and the knife has disappeared back into its sheath, and the sheaths and the knives inside them are protecting Andrew’s wrists from the cat’s claws.

Andrew hugs the thing to his chest, but he doesn’t get up—he’s looking around. Neil takes a good look, too—where’s the mother? Are there any other kittens?

Andrew sticks his hand into the surrounding bushes, but nothing moves.

“I think it’s just the two of them,” Neil says.

Andrew straightens, apparently in agreement. He brushes past Neil, grabs his ice cream, and gets in the car.

He’s still holding the cat.

Neil holds back a sigh. If Andrew thinks they need to personally drive the cats to the shelter, or the vet, or wherever you take kittens, so be it. They’ve been plenty nice, getting the orange cat out of its trap—Neil doesn’t think they really need to do all this, too, is fairly certain that they could just turn the cats away from the parking lot and let them go back to wherever the cats consider home, but whatever makes Andrew happy. He grabs his ice cream and gets in the car.

The orange cat looks like it’s trying to kill Andrew—it’s got claws, and it’s making shrill noises, and it has Andrew’s thumb in its mouth.

“Best get them to the shelter fast, huh,” Neil says, holding out a hand.

Andrew looks at Neil’s hand.

“Can’t drive while holding that.”

Andrew looks up at Neil.

Oh, no.

Oh no.

“Andrew, do you—do you want to _keep them_?”

Andrew keeps looking at Neil.

“We don’t—we don’t even have _human_ food at the house, let alone _cat_ food, let alone a litter box, let alone any experience with pets—unless you’ve had a pet I don’t know about—”

“One of my foster homes had cats,” Andrew says. “I know what we need to buy for them.”

“Drew, it’s—they’re—they’re not just _cats_ , they’re _kittens_ , they need attention and time—”

“We’re off of work for a few months, we’ve got time.”

Neil makes some noises that aren’t words and waves a hand at the orange creature trying to eviscerate Andrew’s arm.

Andrew shrugs. “It’s just showing me that it has claws, too.”

“Yeah. I know. Sharp ones.”

“The _other_ cat doesn’t seem to be having any issues.”

Neil glances down at the other cat, which is clinging, sloth-like, to Neil’s sweatshirt. “And? Are we just gonna keep this one?”

“We can’t _split them up_ ,” Andrew says, aghast.

Neil holds in the _why not_. He knows why not.

“You can name them,” Andrew says. “If you want.”

Fuck. They’re keeping these cats, aren’t they. Neil looks at Andrew, and Andrew is looking at Neil, practically begging for the cats, and Neil really should’ve expected this, when they’d heard the first meow. Adopting is what Andrew _does_. He’d adopted Aaron, and Nicky, and Kevin, and eventually Neil—albeit temporarily—and two little kittens? One crying for help?

Neil gives up. Gives in.

“Room to grow,” Andrew says.

“Fuck. King Fluffikins,” Neil says, glancing at the orange puffball kicking at Andrew’s stomach. “The orange one is King Fluffikins.”

“King Fluffikins,” Andrew repeats, looking down at the murderer-in-training. “King Fluffikins?”

“You can name the other one,” Neil decides. “Something sensible. John. Spot.”

Andrew gives Neil a look that says that that was the wildest suggestion he’s ever heard.

The kitten in Neil’s arms starts purring.

God. Fine. Okay. They can keep the cats.

They sit there, King trying to eat Andrew while the other one purrs, for five minutes while Andrew stares at Neil, a tiny little crease in his brow that Neil wants to smooth out. Can’t, though. If he moves he risks disturbing the kitten.

“Sir Fat Cat McCatterson,” Andrew says, and the noise Neil makes disturbs the cat anyway.

“ _What_?”

“ _Something sensible_ ,” Andrew mutters. “Where’s the closest pet store?”

“Uh—the mall. _Sir Fat Cat McCatterson_?”

“King and Sir. Where’s the mall?”

Neil directs him to the mall. Andrew doesn’t bother handing over the cat—just sticks him in the front pocket of his hoodie and lets the thing fuss.

They have cats now. That’s a lot.

Well, fuck it. Neil can be a person who owns cats. That’s fine.

They walk into the pet store, Neil keeping a firm hold on Sir, Andrew pushing King back into his pocket anytime the cat pokes his head out. It looks like he’s got some weird alien in his stomach, kicking and pushing around. Andrew grabs a cart, tosses stuff into it almost haphazardly—litter, a litter box, toys, a brush, claw trimmers, a metal gate—Neil hands Andrew Sir so Neil has both hands free for picking up bags and cans of food. Neil takes Sir back, Andrew wraps a hand around King’s collarbone to keep him from jumping out, and they head for checkout.

The cashier blinks at King. Says nothing. Rings them up and says nothing about King trying to bite off Andrew’s finger.

“We’ll have to get them a vet appointment,” Andrew says when they get in the car.

“We’ll have to find a good vet.”

“That too.”

Neil feels warmth spread across his chest—his sweatshirt is wet.

“Why does it smell like piss?”

“Because your cat just peed on me,” Neil says.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

Andrew rolls the windows down.

“Not worried about the cats jumping out the window?”

“Don’t want my car to smell like cat pee.”

“Ah.”

They make it home five minutes later, and Neil hands Sir off to Andrew.

“You can go get changed,” Andrew says, watching Neil try to figure out if he can carry all the cat food in in one go. “I can handle the cats.”

“I know you can,” Neil agrees, hefting the bag over his shoulder. The box of cans, he holds under his other arm, and he puts his fingers to use carrying the box of kitty litter.

“I got it, Neil.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t even want them. They’re my cats, I’ll carry the heavy shit.”

The worst part about having a bag of cat food on his shoulder, Neil decides as he unlocks the door to their house, is that he can’t shrug. “Too late.” He holds the door open with a spare finger. “And anyway. They’re not _just_ your cats. They’re my cats, too.”

Andrew has nothing to say to that.

Neil makes his way to the sink. The cat food bowls will need to be washed, and preferably soon—who knows when they last ate? Neil doesn’t want them to _starve_.

“You can get changed,” Andrew says, unfolding the metal gate and barricading the kitchen doorway. “I can get them set up.”

“Set up the litter box,” Neil says. “I got the food.”

“They can wait.”

“What, do I smell that bad? Shouldn’t have gotten cats, then.”

“No, it’s just—well, I mean, yeah, but regardless, it can’t be _comfortable_ , wearing pee-clothes. The cats can hold out until I’ve got a minute.”

Neil shrugs. “Them being hungry is more important than me being comfortable.”

He turns, puts the bowls on the floor, and steps back. The cats approach, slowly—and then, perhaps understanding that Neil isn’t a threat, they dive on the food.

Neil watches them eat, sighs, smiles. They _are_ kinda cute.

Well, a few years ago he hadn’t known he’d wanted Andrew, hadn’t known a house was something he’d been allowed to want. Adding a couple cats to the roster of _things Neil has he never knew he wanted_ isn’t that big a deal.

When he glances up, Andrew is staring at him.

“Right, sorry, I smell,” Neil says. And, more importantly, his shirt is soaked in cat piss, and so is his stomach, and it’s disgusting.

“No, I—Neil?”

Neil pulls his sweatshirt off—he can just rinse his clothes in the sink, wipe himself down with a paper towel. He doesn’t want to leave Andrew alone with two kittens. Not yet. He raises an eyebrow at Andrew. “Hmm?”

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil waits. He won’t wait forever—for cat piss reasons—but he also doesn’t mind taking a break to stare at Andrew’s eyes.

“I love you,” Andrew says.

Neil grins. He feels warm again, but he’s reasonably certain it’s not because of the cat pee anymore. “I love you too, Drew. I also love that you have seen me in makeup, you have seen me dressed up, you have seen me at my absolute best—however good that is—and we have had sex, and the first time you’re going to look me in the eyes and tell me you love me is when I am _drenched_ in cat pee.”

Andrew comes to Neil, grabs his waist, turns him to face the sink.

Neil gets the hint. He isn’t going to stop smiling, but he gets the hint. Wipes himself down.

He feels Andrew’s fingertips, first, sending goosebumps up and down his back, but the fingertips are a warning—Andrew slides his arms around Neil’s back, presses his lips to the back of Neil’s neck.

“Thank you,” Andrew says quietly. “For letting me have them.”

Neil takes Andrew’s hand. “Don’t let me stop you. Don’t ever let me stop you.”

“I’d have given them to a shelter, if you really didn’t want them. Still will. We don’t have to have them.”

“Don’t let me do that,” Neil says. “And anyway, they make you happy, you want them—fuck it, so do I. I can learn to love them. Already kind of do. They’re cute.”

Neil feels Andrew take a deep breath.

Neil hears the sound of liquid hitting tile.

He closes his eyes.

“Wanna bet that King just peed on the floor?”

“I don’t bet. But yes.”

Andrew lets go of Neil, and they turn, and sure enough. Pee on the floor.

“I’ll clean it up while you set up the litter box?” Neil suggests.

“Yup.”

Eventually, the kitchen smells like windex and kitty litter, and Neil and Andrew are stuck staring at the kittens as they wander—exploring the kitchen, not that there’s much there, and tripping over their own tiny feet, and play-fighting each other, and attacking Andrew and Neil’s feet.

“Do we—do we have to leave them down here? All night?” Neil asks.

“Do you not want to?”

“It feels mean. They’re _babies_ , we can’t just leave them in the kitchen while we have our whole _bed_.”

“Would you be okay with having them in the room?”

“Sure. Don’t want them to pee on the carpet, though, I guess.”

“Cats don’t usually just pee like that—they prefer to pee in the litter box. They must’ve really had to go. We could put the litter box in our bathroom. As long as they know where it is, they should use it.”

“What if we crush them in our sleep?”

“That’s assuming they’ll be comfy enough to sleep right next to us.”

“Do we—oh, we got those cat beds, huh.”

“Yeah. Could just set them up at the foot of our bed.”

“We should put a water bowl in the bathroom, too.”

Andrew takes Neil’s hand.

“It’s like having kids.”

“I’m fairly certain kittens aren’t kids.”

“Well, sure, kittens are cats and kids are goats.”

Andrew rolls his eyes, huffs, kisses Neil on the cheek. “How do we want to do this? We’ll have to move our whole setup upstairs.”

“Water bowl, food, and beds first, then come back for the litter box and cats.”

Andrew nods.

Ten minutes later, Neil’s pee-clothes are in the washing machine, and the cats have been shown the litter box and introduced to their beds.

They’ve gotten nothing done. They haven’t unpacked anything, washed anything, put anything away. They have cat food but no human food. Neil has gone through two shirts and a sweatshirt in under 10 hours. This isn’t how Neil wanted to end the day. They should really _do_ something. And it’s not even that late. And they’d already taken a five hour nap.

“Want to sleep?” Andrew asks.

“ _God_ yes,” Neil agrees gratefully.

A few minutes later, Neil is sliding right back into bed, and it’s almost a relief to be horizontal again. Neil considers sliding back over to Andrew’s side, but—Neil may not be known for his people skills, but contrary to popular belief, he _can_ take a hint, and this bed is a flashing sign that says _we don’t have to sleep in the same two square feet anymore._

Still, there’s no law preventing him from looking at his husband, so he rolls over. Finds Andrew facing him. “How are you, Drew?” He whispers.

“You’ve been with me all day, you know how I am.”

“I just wanna know.”

“A useless sentiment.”

Neil shrugs. Closes his eyes. All he can do is try.

“Are you over there for a reason?”

Neil opens his eyes again. “Big bed. You got it for a reason.”

“And what reason was that?”

“Space to spread out.”

“Do you _want_ to spread out?”

“I mean, I’d rather be over there with you. But I’m not going to invade your space.”

“What if we compromise?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“The center.”

It takes Neil a second, but he catches on and scoots towards the center of the bed. Andrew meets him there, wraps a hand around Neil’s neck, pulls him closer.

“And I’m doing well, Neil,” Andrew breathes as Neil slips off. “I’m doing just fine.”

Neil wakes up to sunlight.

He’s fairly certain they’d closed the curtains last night, but—King is on the windowsill, and then King is sliding down the curtain, and the curtain is opening a little bit more. There’s a hiss, and then tiny footsteps, and Andrew is awake, hand tightening around Neil’s wrist, face tense, and then—he relaxes.

“I told you the sun would hit you in the eyes,” Andrew murmurs.

Neil brushes his hand through Andrew’s hair, watching the way the sunlight outlines every strand. “You look like you’ve got a halo. You look like an angel.”

“Don’t say stupid shit.”

Neil shrugs.

They both jump as a kitten lands on Neil’s shoulder—King, who screams and then jumps away.

“We should check to see if they finished their food,” Andrew says. “They’re kittens, they’ll probably need more.”

“We should,” Neil agrees. He hears noises indicating that someone is being chased, and then Sir scrambles over them and disappears on the other side of the bed, King close behind.

“Ten more minutes?” Andrew suggests, curling up again, throwing an arm around Neil’s head to block the sun from his eyes.

“Ten more minutes,” Neil agrees, cuddling in closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew says three different lines from three different poems, which are:
> 
> [Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45106/sonnet-116-let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds) [i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) by ee cummings](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in)
> 
> [To a Stranger by Walt Whitman](https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1867/poems/39)


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil has A Morning. 
> 
> And then the kids have a doctor's appointment. They go grocery shopping. Neil does some Twilight-level googling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't responded to everyone's comments--my laptop is getting repaired, so I'm working without it for a little while. I'll get to everyone soon, though!! and in the meantime--thank you, i love you

Neil is experiencing a bad case of deja vu. 

He’s awake; the sun is rising. And Andrew is waking up, clutching at Neil’s shirt. And then Andrew gives up on that, scoots upwards, sticks his face in Neil’s neck, takes a deep breath, and goes still again.

It’s a picture-perfect repeat of yesterday. 

Maybe Neil is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario. Reliving the same day, over and over again, until he gets it right. Maybe he can just go commit some murders real quick; if he does it right, he should be able to get in and out without anyone knowing and then make it to the jewelry store with time to spare. The recording never airs. Neil never terrifies his family. Andrew never talks him into going to therapy. Maybe this is Neil’s second chance.

The front door opens and closes. 

Well, _that_ didn’t happen yesterday.

Maybe it’s someone coming in; maybe Neil should be worried. But—he glances at the clock, and it’s the right time for the kids to be heading out for school. Maybe he should ask them to text when they leave, so Neil knows for sure. Is that overly paranoid? Or is it just parenting? Neil wouldn’t leave without letting Andrew know he was going somewhere—that’s just manners, right? Neil has scraped a few of those together over the course of the past several years, and he’s fairly certain that _telling members of the household you’re going out_ is considered polite, and not paranoid, and so what if it serves the double purpose of reassuring Neil that the sound of the door is the kids heading out and not the Moriyamas coming in?

Is this overthinking?

Well, regardless, Neil decides he can definitively say that this is a new day, and _not_ yesterday, and Andrew is still here. 

Neil tangles his hand in Andrew’s hair.

Andrew is still here. 

This is such a relief to Neil that the sun seems to get brighter. He turns his head a little so he can breathe in the smell of Andrew’s shampoo, so familiar Neil could pick it out in the middle of a Yankee Candle store. The weight of Andrew’s body has never been more comforting than it is now. Of course Andrew is still here; he’d _said_ he wouldn’t leave; he’d said he was staying. But Neil is falling apart, and he’s becoming dangerous, and he’d been nothing short of cruel to Andrew, and—and yet—and yet. Neil can feel Andrew’s breath on his neck. 

Neil wants to apologize. 

He doesn’t know how, though.

Or maybe it just—maybe it’s just—maybe he just can’t admit it yet, precisely what he’s done wrong. Precisely where he’s failed. Can’t replay yesterday in his head without wanting to take it all back. Prevent it from happening, at all. 

Maybe therapy _is_ necessary. He doesn’t want to do that again, not to Andrew, not to the kids, not ever. 

He’s been such a fucking idiot. He’d questioned Andrew’s ability to handle having kids in the house, when apparently the person they should’ve been worried about was Neil himself. 

“Stop it,” Andrew mumbles.

It’s not the right tone—not his usual tone, when he’s talking in his sleep, when he’s stuck in his head. Neil pulls his head back to look at Andrew and realizes—he’s talking to Neil, not himself. “Stop what?”

“Don’t know, but you’re so tense you’re about to squash my head between your shoulder and your neck, and while there are worse places to die, I don’t want to die here, either.”

Neil forcibly relaxes himself. “I’m sorry for being such an asshole about whether or not you could handle kids, when clearly I’m the one who can’t. And I’m sorry for—for—”

Andrew picks his head up and puts a hand over Neil’s mouth. “First off, you don’t even know what you’re sorry for yet. Apologize to me after therapy has helped you figure it out—”

“Wait, why haven’t you asked me to apologize—”

Andrew replaces his hand over Neil’s mouth. “I wasn’t done talking, stop interrupting, it’s rude. Second of all, I _also_ couldn’t handle kids alone, remember the three-day-period where I barely left this bed? It’s almost like there’s two of us for a reason, and that reason is that neither one of us is any good at this, and neither one of us is particularly healthy. That’s also why we have family. So that if we need a night off, we can send them to their grandma’s house—”

“Have you told Abby she’s a grandma yet?”

“She’s been a grandma since John was born, she has a mug in her cabinet that says _World’s Best Grandma_ that I haven’t seen her use yet. Also, interrupting. Stop that. Anyway, you don’t have to raise them alone, that’s the whole _point_ , so stop trying to be the perfect mentally healthy dad and get down here in mentally-unhealthy-dad-kingdom with me, fucker. _Third_ of all, you stole yesterday morning from me and promised I’d get _that_ morning _this_ morning, so stop thinking, let me play vampire, and go the fuck back to sleep. Yes?”

Neil cups his hand around Andrew’s cheek. “I love you a lot.”

Andrew lets himself back down, pressing his forehead to Neil’s, pressing his lips to Neil’s cheek. “I love you, too,” he says, snuggling back down, putting his face back in Neil’s neck. 

Neil puts his hand in Andrew’s hair and tries to be happy. 

He shouldn’t _have_ to try to be happy. He should _be_ happy. They won championships. Everyone’s alive. He’s here, in bed, with Andrew. 

It’s been happening more often, he realizes, searching back through the past couple weeks. Waking up stressed, anxious, instead of happy. Which makes sense—there have been several stressful events, in the past few weeks. But, then, if stressful things stop happening, won’t he get better anyway? What’s the point of therapy? How _else_ is he supposed to respond to—

“Neil?” Andrew mumbles.

“Mm?”

“Will you rub my back?”

Oh. 

Neil wraps his arm around Andrew, lets his fingertips walk across whatever parts of Andrew’s back he can reach. Writes the pythagorean theorem. 

What else can he write? If Andrew’s going to be thinking about this for a while, he may as well write _something_. Neil writes _I love you_ three times before that gets boring—Andrew will figure that out. 

He draws some triangles, mentally marks out the angles, and starts working through some proofs, straightening out Andrew’s shirt any time it gets too wrinkled for him to continue writing. The transitive property, corresponding angles, angle-angle-side congruence—whenever Neil missed class time, the first thing he did on getting back into school was steal math books. Figure out what he’d missed. Geometry was always a good time—don’t just _accept_ that things are true, _prove_ it. Neil is what Nicky would call a slut for geometry. He tips his head to the side to press his nose against Andrew’s hair.

Andrew’s breath is soft, slow, deep. His hand, tucked up under Neil’s head, is relaxed. Asleep. He’s asleep, lulled there by Neil’s hand on his back. 

Neil takes the tension he wants so badly to feel and shoves it down, deep, _way_ down, down where it can’t do anything. He can’t act on his worries; they can go away. He writes _I love you_ again, just for good measure, just in case, closes his eyes, and counts until he falls asleep again.

Andrew is awake before Neil is. 

Neil remembers what he was doing before he opens his eyes—he was rubbing Andrew’s back. He picks it up again, tracing circles and spirals in the absence of the brainpower required to think of anything more complicated, and hears a sigh. Doesn’t feel it, though. Where is Andrew’s face, that Neil can’t feel it? 

Half a second later, Neil forgets what he was wondering. 

An indeterminate amount of time later, he picks up again, remembering anew that he’s rubbing Andrew’s back, and then he realizes he has to go to the bathroom. 

He gives in and forces his eyes open. 

The first thing he sees is the sunlight on the wall—a _lot_ farther along than he’s used to. The second thing he sees, though, is Andrew, wide awake, chin on his hands on Neil’s chest, and distressingly beautiful. Calm. Happy. Open. Twinkling at Neil. Haloed in sunlight and gold.

Neil can’t speak for a second. 

He really has no choice, though. “In thirty seconds, I’m going to kiss you until we both forget to breathe, but first, I _really_ have to pee.”

Andrew almost-smiles, dips to kiss Neil too-quick, and then rolls off him so he can get up. 

_God_ , what time is it? 

“Brush your teeth, too,” Andrew calls into the bathroom. 

Neil frowns. Andrew had tasted like—chocolate. Forget what _time_ is it—what _day_ is it?

He brushes his teeth. Washes his face, too, for good measure. 

When he emerges from the bathroom, Andrew is sitting on the edge of the bed. 

“Hungry?”

“Yeah,” Neil agrees. It’s true. He is. Starving, actually. He glances at the clock, does a double take, and shakes his head. “Did you—did you change the clock?” He asks, but—he knows Andrew didn’t do shit. Where the sunlight is makes sense, now that he knows it’s 1 in the afternoon. 

“Nope.”

“Have I been _sleeping_?”

Andrew gets out of bed, comes to stand in front of Neil, and then gives Neil a look that indicates that that is the stupidest possible question Neil could have asked. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah,” Neil agrees, lost. “Or lunch.” He takes Andrew’s hand. “It _is_ still Monday, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you—did you get up? Already?”

“At, like, 9. Peed, brushed teeth, the whole shebang, and you didn’t budge. Went downstairs and had a granola bar and three oreos. Did my best to rip the plastic _very_ loudly, so you’d know where I was if you woke up, fed the cats, and then came back up and you were still knocked out. Crawled over to find out if you were still breathing, and you pulled me down with you, so—”

“So you just _let me sleep_?”

“What was I supposed to do, wake you up? You didn’t sleep that long by accident, you needed that.”

“And you just—stayed? The whole goddamn time? You could’ve done—other stuff. Read a book,” Neil suggests lamely. It’s the _afternoon_. It’s the afternoon, and he feels absolutely disoriented. 

“You don’t get it. I got within, like, three feet of you, and you reached out for me and pulled me down. Did you even wake up? Do you even remember that?”

“No and no. I remember waking up. I remember rubbing your back again.”

Andrew looks ridiculously smug, although that might be because he’d just successfully cracked four eggs one-handed. Neil should probably help. It’s _one in the afternoon._ It’s not like they’d gone to sleep _late_. It’s just that his brain feels more scrambled than those eggs. “I mean, it worked out for _me_. When you meditate, you’re supposed to either close your eyes or let your eyes rest, half-closed, focused on a point ahead of you, so anyway, meditated watching your face for a solid half hour before you started rubbing my back again, which was nice. Went back to sleep for a couple hours, and then just kinda—sat there. What?”

“It’s—it’s the afternoon.”

“Yeah. Are you sure you’re awake?”

“I’d better be, I just slept—for— _15 hours._ ” Jesus _christ._ “You stayed.”

“What, are you kidding? I had a _great_ morning. It would’ve been nice to talk to you, sure, but I don’t usually get to watch you sleep for several hours on end. Which sounds creepy, now that I say it, but oh well.”

Neil taps Andrew’s spine, a warning, before he wraps his arms around Andrew’s waist, sticks his face in Andrew’s neck. Andrew had stayed, the whole time. “You stayed,” he mumbles, still shocked by it. _Did my best to rip the plastic very loudly, so you’d know where I was—_ Neil doesn’t deserve this. Doesn’t deserve Andrew. 

“Where would I have gone?” Andrew asks, as the eggs cook. Scrambled in oil and butter. Salted, peppered. Nothing special, nothing fancy, and Neil could cry over them. 

Fuck, he’s hungry. “Anywhere else,” he says, still talking to Andrew’s neck. “Gone.”

Andrew pauses for a second. “Are you—are you saying that I stayed, as in, in bed with you? Or stayed, as in, _with_ you, at all?”

“Both,” Neil says. It’s not a lie. 

Andrew nudges Neil—eggs are almost ready. Neil grabs plates, sets them on the counter where Andrew needs them to be, and collects his brain off the floor. They have orange juice. They’re out of fruit, of any kind—need to go grocery shopping, today. The girls have their doctor’s appointment. They can go shopping after the appointment. 

Andrew passes Neil his plate, and Neil passes Andrew a fork, and they sit down. 

They eat in silence, largely because Neil hasn’t been this hungry in years. He’s not supposed to shove the food down his face, he remembers, or he’ll be sick and waste it. He tries to go slow. 

Andrew gets up and gets Neil a glass of water. Neil raises an eyebrow at Andrew, but he shrugs, so Neil drinks it, and—

Oh. 

It’s been _hours_ since he had anything to drink. Water is the best thing he’s ever tasted. 

Not supposed to guzzle that, either, though, he knows that, too. 

“So why do you think _I’m_ going to leave _you_?” Andrew asks. 

“Why the fuck did you say it like _that_?” Neil asks immediately. “Like _you_ think _I’m_ going to leave _you_?”

“I’m asking the questions, here.”

“So am I.”

“Neil.”

“Andrew.”

“Neil.”

Neil knows a battle when he’s lost it. “Wreck.”

“What, _you?_ ”

“That, and also, this was _your_ time to have a breakdown, and I really did steal it from you.”

“No, _I’m_ the wreck. You were really _waiting_ for me to have a mental breakdown? Just—and you just— _stayed_?”

“Hey, I just slept for fifteen hours and you only left for fifteen minutes. I’m not—I’m not _leaving_ you, Andrew, I’m not a pipe dream.”

“Then why the fuck do you expect me to do any less?” Andrew asks, like it’s obvious, like it’s a ridiculous question. “You’re making it _really_ hard to talk to you. I have serious shit to talk to you about, you know, and I’ve been waiting for hours.”

“What?” Neil asks. _Serious shit to talk about?_ He won’t be scared. He won’t be. _Why the fuck do you expect me to do any less?_ Neil hangs onto that. Not leaving. Andrew’s not leaving. He can feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Andrew had stayed in bed with him for 15 hours. That’s a lot of sap, right there. More mush than a pound of instant mashed potatoes. 

Andrew considers him.

“Just say it,” Neil says, feeling more like himself by the minute. “As long as you’re staying, I can handle anything else.”

“If you want me to ask for something else,” Andrew says slowly, “I will.”

It takes Neil a second, and then he understands. “No, I already agreed.”

“Yes, but you weren’t exactly—you weren’t in the right headspace, for something like that.”

“And what headspace should I be in, when I decide to go to therapy? I won’t make that decision when I’m happy, I’ll tell you that.”

“I don’t want to have taken advantage of a mental breakdown on your part to make you agree to therapy.”

“You didn’t,” Neil says calmly. “You’ve been telling me to go to therapy for years, it’s just that yesterday was the first time I realized you might be right. I’m more worried about the fact that—I mean, you didn’t exactly _sign up_ for this.”

“I—this is _explicitly_ what I signed up for, actually, I fully expected you to lose it at some point. I _did_ expect that point to be a solid, oh, nine years ago, but that’s neither here nor there. But yesterday was the _first_ time you thought that therapy might be useful to you?”

“I mean, I was worried that maybe I’d hit the kids and that I should go to therapy to prevent that, but it didn’t seem very likely. Which, now that I say that, it was probably a bad risk to take.”

“A bad—yes, Neil, it was, but really you should’ve gone to therapy for—you know what—never mind. We’ll see how it goes.”

Neil keeps his mouth shut. They could keep going, but—well, the problem will resolve itself, won’t it? He’s going to therapy, now. Or, well, not _now,_ but—he has committed. 

He should start looking for a therapist today, before he chickens out. 

“We have to go grocery shopping today,” Neil says. “And we have to clean.”

“We can do that when the kids come home. We’ve got time.”

Neil looks at Andrew—no longer calm, happy, open. “I really destroyed your mood, didn’t I.”

Andrew studies Neil for a minute, and then he holds a hand out.

Neil takes it, but that doesn’t feel like enough. He gets up, stands in front of Andrew. “Can I?”

Andrew nods, and Neil straddles him, sits down, wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders, hugs him. Andrew wraps his arms around Neil, and Neil takes a deep breath. 

Safe. 

“I could stay like this forever,” Neil says. “We could just—never move.”

“Who says we have to?” Andrew asks.

“Grocery shopping.”

“Eh, we could go like this.”

Neil snorts. “Rocket-propelled chair?”

“Then we’d have to attach a rocket. I was thinking we could just scooch.”

“It would be slow going. My feet can’t touch the floor like this. You’d be moving us both.”

“I never said we’d be _fast._ ”

“We’d burn more calories getting there than we’d be able to buy.”

“Hey, look, I’m sitting here trying to problem solve, you don’t have to be so negative.”

“I’m just pointing out more problems that need to be solved.”

“So what are _your_ ideas, genius?”

“Get up and run.”

“Now, I have no idea why you think _I_ would run. Running is, explicitly, a thing I only do when necessary. I play a whole sport centered around running at other people, and play the only position that doesn’t involve running.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“While running?”

“Stick you over my shoulders and go at it, I could probably manage it.”

“If you’re worried about burning calories, that’s probably worse than me scooting my chair around.”

“Okay, scoot us across the kitchen.”

Andrew moves his legs, trying to pull them. “Hang on, I can’t get momentum—” Neil leans back so Andrew can rock, trying to move them, at all, anywhere, eventually succeeding in moving them two inches before he gives up, leaning back in the chair and tipping his head backwards. He groans. “Are we there yet?”

Neil dips in to kiss Andrew’s jaw. “Well, we’re somewhere for sure.”

“You know,” Andrew says, lifting his head back up, “ _get up and run_ was a terrible solution to the problem, given that the problem was _how do we grocery shop while staying like this.”_

“That’s a fair point,” Neil concedes. “Now, what I _should_ do is some muscle training, and then we get a shorter chair. You hold your legs out straight, I put my feet on the ground and pick up you and the chair, and we run like that—”

“Until we overbalance and fall, which I’m assuming would happen within milliseconds.”

“No faith.”

“Just an understanding of basic laws of physics, which I’d really expect you to also possess.”

“Ah. Maybe the problem, then, is too _much_ faith.”

“Having faith in you has never been a bad decision.”

Neil weaves his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “I’m only just now agreeing to go to therapy.”

“But you _are_ agreeing to go. My faith was never misplaced. And anyway, that was never it, specifically. I had faith that you’d figure it out.”

“Wouldn’t have, on my own.”

Andrew shrugs. “So what? We’re a team, that’s the whole point. You don’t _have_ to do everything on your own.”

“I know,” Neil lies. “I love you.”

“No, you don’t. Not that you don’t love me,” Andrew says, overriding Neil’s protest, “that part’s true—but you still haven’t figured out that you get to be helped, here, too. You’re not supposed to be married alone. And you’re not. And maybe therapy will help you get there—”

“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” Neil says quietly.

“There is a difference between me fighting them for you and me helping you fight them, Neil.”

Neil runs his hand through Andrew’s hair. “All right.”

“You’re such a mess. None of this is making it through, huh.”

“Nothing new there,” Neil says with a shrug. He can’t ask Andrew to do anymore than he already is. And Neil’s _battles_ are often _yakuza_ , and Neil can’t ask Andrew to deal with that. He tried, once. He’d let Andrew promise that. He won’t do it again. 

“I’m trying to figure out how to put fruit in cake without it turning into a fruit cake,” Andrew says, clearly ready for a change in topic. “Because if I put in fruit, regular fruit, I’m worried it’ll—juice into the cake mix, mess up the amount of liquid, but if I put in dry fruit, by the time it’s done cooking it’ll be leather.”

“What kind of fruit, though?” Neil asks. Sure, Andrew could just look this up, could watch a baking show, could google it. But where would the fun be then? “If it’s something contained, like a blueberry or something, it would probably be fine, right? Or—something not particularly juicy, like an apple.” He puts his head down on Andrew’s shoulder, eyes turned towards Andrew’s neck, and watches his adam’s apple bob. 

“Not sure, but also, I’m thinking mangoes, or peaches—”

“Oh, that sounds _good._ ”

“Right? And I don’t just want the fruit in between the layers, that’s boring, I want it in the _cake_.”

“Cupcakes,” Neil says happily. When Andrew doesn’t know how to bake something, he makes cupcakes, in all different ways, to avoid wasting too much if it goes wrong. 

“Cupcakes,” Andrew agrees, and Neil can hear the smile in his voice. “Vanilla peach cake with almonds.”

“And honey.”

“Honey drizzle. And whipped cream. Maybe sprinkles.”

“This is quickly going from _delicious tea-time cake in a fancy home_ to _child trapped in bakery overnight_.”

“Well, we don’t live in a fancy home.”

“Have you _seen_ our appliances?”

“No.”

“Open your eyes, love, they’re all around you.”

“Eyes are open, but love is blind.”

“Oh, okay, _that_ was good,” Neil admits, grinning. “That was pretty good.”

“Very Odysseus of me.”

“Odysseus?”

“Nobody?”

Nobody? “I never read that one.”

“ _How?_ ”

“Moved to a different country. Explain the joke.”

“Odysseus ended up trapped with a cyclops named Polyphemus, tells Polyphemus his name is Nobody, and then blinds the guy. Polyphemus starts yelling, of course, which brings other cyclops running, but Polyphemus yells _Nobody is killing me_ and they all go away again.”

“Smart guy. Thought pretty far ahead.”

“I mean, the whole thing is about how he failed to think very far ahead and it takes him a solid ten years to get back home after the Trojan war.”

“Still went home, though.”

“Still went home,” Andrew agrees.

Neil glances at the clock. They’ve still got time before the kids get home. “So tell me more about these non-fruitcake-fruit cakes. How are you going to measure the amount of liquid that comes out of a given fruit? Small chunks or big chunks? How are you gonna keep the fruit from settling at the bottom?”

Andrew takes Neil’s hand, kisses it, puts it back on Andrew’s shoulder, and then opens his mouth and starts talking. Neil contributes where he can—although that is, to be fair, not often—and the time flies by until they hear keys jingling in the door, and Neil stands, discovering that probably, straddling Andrew’s lap for two hours straight was probably a bad idea. He’s _sore._ God, he’s old. He lets himself fall into his chair, sticking his tongue out at Andrew, who’s laughing at him. 

“What?” Natalie asks, walking in. 

“I’m old,” Neil says. 

“Yeah,” Natalie agrees, like it’s not something that needs to be said, in spite of the fact that she says it the most. “We have our doctor’s appointment today, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Do we have time for a run first?”

Neil shrugs. “We don’t have time for food _and_ a run, so you’ll have to choose. You could eat a granola bar in the car or something, though.”

“Okay,” Natalie agrees. “Go get—dressed? Are you still in your pajamas?”

“Slept in today,” Neil says defensively. “You need to get changed, too.”

“Yeah, out of my school uniform, though,” she says, jabbing him in the ribs as he passes her. “Not out of my pajamas.”

“Hey, pick on someone your own size.”

“Paige, come here, I need to pick on you—”

“You can pick my _nose_ —”

“Ew, no, ew, get away from me, fucking gross-ass—”

“No nose-picking in the kitchen,” Andrew decrees, herding all involved out of the kitchen. “I have to get changed, too, and then Paige, an episode of _The Office?_ ”

“Yeah,” Paige agrees, jumping out of the way as Natalie tries to grab her. Paige sticks out a foot to trip Natalie, which Natalie dexterously avoids. 

“No bullshit on the stairs,” Neil says, and they meekly fall into line. 

He and Andrew change, and Andrew reaches out, wraps a hand around the back of Neil’s neck, pulls Neil’s forehead down to Andrew’s. 

Neil stands there for a minute. 

Life is better, here, than it is elsewhere.

He can feel the warmth of Andrew’s hand, fingertips pressing gently into his skin. Can feel Andrew’s forehead pressed against his own. Their noses are brushing.

Eventually, Andrew pulls back, but Neil takes Andrew’s hand as it drops off his neck. “And how are you?” Neil asks. 

“Me?” Andrew asks, sounding, surprisingly, surprised. 

“You’re the only other person in the room,” Neil says lightly. 

“ _Thrilled_ that you’re going to therapy.”

“No. About people thinking—thinking that you’re a bad person.”

For a split second, Andrew looks infinitely fragile. And then—

He’s back. He shrugs. “It’s not really a surprise. I never did anything to make people think I wasn’t a monster.”

Neil feels like he’s sitting on Roland again, a Roland trying to buck Neil off, but instead it’s Neil’s own rage, and for a second, it very nearly wins.

But Andrew doesn’t need that right now. Won’t benefit from it. Won’t be helped by it. So Neil sits on it, subdues it, and dips down to kiss Andrew’s forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. “You did everything there was to do,” he says. “It’s not your fault no one paid attention.”

Andrew is perfectly still for a minute, and then he grabs Neil’s chin and pulls him down for a kiss. “Well, you did, and that’s what matters. Go get your exercise.”

Neil kisses Andrew one more time for good measure. “I _will_ kiss you breathless at some point,” he says. “I promised.”

Andrew taps a finger to the base of Neil’s throat. “Looking forward to it.”

Neil meets Natalie at the door. “Shorter route today?” He suggests. “If you want to shower afterwards.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, leading the way out the door. 

They walk down the front walkway, but Natalie reaches out and grabs Neil’s sleeve before he gets going. 

Neil waits.

“Are you gonna be okay?” She asks a few seconds later. “Like. With everything.”

“What do you mean, with everything?”

“Like, are you gonna lose it?” She says bluntly. 

“No,” Neil reassures her. “I’m not. I’m going to get help, so I won’t lose it again.”

“See, but that’s what’s—that’s what I don’t like,” she says. “I don’t think you’ve lost it, yet. Probably, I think things could get a lot worse. But _you_ think you’ve hit rock bottom. But, like, will you?”

Neil stares up at her. 

Oh, he’s done a bad thing. He _has_ lost it, wherein _it_ is _control_. Control over himself. And he’s scared Natalie. Probably Paige, too. “I won’t,” he says, promising himself. Therapy. Therapy is, in fact, vital. He has to go. Can he go multiple times per week? He can’t fuck this one up. “I won’t. It’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Natalie agrees, and she takes off. 

He lets her set the speed; she lets him set the course, adjusting as he judges her speed and the amount of time she’ll need to shower. He gives them a two minute walk to cool down, and then she marches into the house and runs up the stairs. Neil considers himself; is it worth changing? 

Yes, he decides. He’s spent most of the day in bed; he should at least put on jeans. Pretend he’s a functional adult. 

He does that, grabs some granola bars from the kitchen, and joins Andrew and Paige for the last five minutes of their episode, and then Natalie comes running down the stairs, hair soaking wet and holding a hair brush, ready to jog them all into the car. 

So they go.

“Sandy wants us to come over next week,” Natalie announces, once they’re on their way and they’ve all eaten their granola bars. “Also, we’re probably gonna invite her over, at some point.”

“Sure,” Neil agrees. “What day? The Sunday after this one is the first Sunday of the month. And the day after that is Andrew’s birthday. To be fair, I’m probably gonna drag Andrew to the beach that night, so it’s not like you have to be home all day.”

“Probably during the week. Maybe you should drop us off,” Paige suggests. “Or pick us up. Or something.”

“We can do that,” Neil agrees. “When do you want Sandy to come over?”

“I don’t know, whenever.”

“So have you actually planned anything yet? Or is this just a forewarning?”

“Just kind of a forewarning, I guess,” Paige lies. 

Well, maybe not lies. She’s not _lying_. “And?” Neil asks.

“And what? Oh, sorry. _Ple_ —no, hang on, you wouldn’t ask us to say that. Okay, hang on—and—nope, I don’t know what you’re asking about. And what?”

“You tell me. There was an _and_ at the end of that statement.”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“We’re trying to get you out of the house,” Natalie says. 

Neil raises an eyebrow at the rearview mirror. 

Natalie looks back at him defiantly. “Might help you.”

“And so the child becomes the parent.”

“You can call me superdad.”

“Dad-in-charge,” Neil suggests. 

“Dad-in-charge-of-dads,” Andrew says. 

“Dad-in-charge-of-the-dad’s-dads,” Neil tries. 

“I hate you both,” Natalie says before Andrew can try something new. 

“I’ll get out of the house,” Neil tells her. “I promise.”

“That’s a very vague promise,” Natalie shoots back.

“On Friday we’re going to a concert,” Andrew says. “Maria and Riley are coming with us.”

Oh yeah. Neil had forgotten about that. “How’s _that_ for a promise?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Natalie says. 

“All right,” Neil agrees. “Also, what do you guys want to do for Halloween?”

“Halloween?” Paige asks. 

“Yeah. It’s not far out. Did you guys want to trick-or-treat? Hang out with a friend? Give out candy? Hide by the door and scare little kids? Ignore the whole thing? We’ll be handing out candy, we always do.”

Natalie drums her fingers against her thigh and looks at Paige.

“You can also do different things,” Andrew says. “You don’t have to stick together.” 

“I feel like… like we’re a bit…”

“ _Old,_ ” Paige says. 

“Yeah. Teenagers are too old to trick-or-treat.”

“Eh, you don’t go to public school, it’s not like anyone here _knows_ you,” Neil says. “Give me one shopping trip and I can make you look like young enough no one’ll question it. 15 is really the point where it gets tough to make someone look like a kid—that’s when I had to start pretending to be older than I was, instead of younger. And if anyone asks how old you are, tell them to fuck off.”

“That’s weird, pops,” Paige says immediately.

“No, I’m serious, I can,” Neil says.

“Yeah, which is weird. I don’t _want_ to look like a little girl.”

“I don’t know that I could make you look quite that young, but you only need to lose two years to be under the teenager cutoff. I could also make you look like a boy. You’ll either have to cut your hair or we’ll have to take an extra shopping trip to buy a wig. Although I guess I could order those, huh. Alternatively, you could probably just say you’re in college, and say that trick-or-treating is ironic. Adults don’t know what college kids are doing, you could get away with it.”

“Anyway,” Natalie says, apparently done with him, “We’re too old.”

Neil drops it. It’s occurring to him that there might be a reason why they don’t want to be thought of as younger than they are. Losing trick-or-treat rights might be worth it. “All right. Do you want to dress up anyway? This year I’m going to wear a vampire cape and Andrew’s gonna wear cat ears.”

“You are?” Andrew asks. “I am?”

“Yep,” Neil says. 

“Okay,” Andrew agrees. 

“I think we’re too old to dress up, too,” Natalie says firmly. 

“ _We’re_ dressing up,” Neil says. 

“Well, you’re old,” Natalie points out, like the things she’s just said make perfect logical sense. 

“How are you too old but it’s okay because we’re old?” Neil asks. 

“Like a bell curve,” Paige explains. “At the beginning and end, you’re young enough or old enough to dress up on Halloween. In the middle, you’re too old, and it’s weird.”

“Giving into peer pressure?” Andrew asks.

“Living in an age-appropriate manner isn’t peer-pressure,” Natalie scoffs. 

“Who decides what’s age-appropriate?”

“Usually, people outside our age group,” Paige says. “Adults. Sometimes our peers, too, I guess. But mostly adults. And it’s usually nonsense. Well, okay, our peers, too, a lot of the time. I don’t know, why am I supposed to know?”

“You’re not,” Neil agrees. “But it’s probably not a bad thing to think about.”

“Well, how do _you_ know what’s age-appropriate?” Natalie asks. 

Neil shrugs. “I don’t. Maria yelled at me a little while ago for wearing light-wash jeans.”

“Light-wash jeans are fine,” Natalie says. “As long as you wear them with a dark shirt. If you wear them with a light shirt you look weird.”

“Me, personally? Or was that the plural _you?_ ”

“Either or,” she snipes.

“That’s a little rude.”

Natalie rolls her eyes. “Sorry.”

“No worries.”

Natalie goes silent. 

Paige doesn’t pick up the thread of the conversation. 

Neil suppresses a sigh. He doesn’t want to let the conversation end like that. He also doesn’t have the brain power required to think up a new conversation topic. He _should_. It’s not like he didn’t get enough sleep last night. And he just went for a run. But his brain still feels like swiss cheese. He wants to go home and crawl back into bed with Andrew. 

He pulls himself together. Conversation topic. 

“How was school?” Andrew asks. 

Neil gives Andrew the strongest look of relief he’s physically capable of giving, without the kids seeing. He forgot about _school._ Jesus.

“It was okay,” Paige says, latching on. “Um—we had—we had math class. And that was—we’re learning. Right, Nat?”

Neil glances in the rearview mirror in time to see Natalie turn laser eyes on Paige, before she groans loudly and starts talking about people—the kid who got extra homework because he’d been cursing and hadn’t realized the teacher was there, about Mrs. Tanning giving a signed hall pass to some other kid who was having problems so if she got caught in the hall during class time she could hand over the hall pass and get out of trouble. Paige chips in there—possibly the problems involve parents? or school? or a boyfriend? maybe friends? there are many theories and all of them are largely unsubstantiated—and then they make it to Aaron’s office, and Neil checks them in, already waiting for it to be over. There are people in here, just sitting, and Neil doesn’t know them, and, oh boy, okay, maybe he does need therapy. Well, yes, he does, he’s already agreed to that, but—fine. And then five minutes later—which, judging by Andrew’s raised eyebrows, is a remarkably short amount of time—the four of them are ushered into the back. 

A nurse takes their measurements, Neil watching like a hawk. How many of these are necessary? Do they _have_ to be weighed? _Is_ their blood pressure high—are they nervous? Neil doesn’t go to the doctor. He doesn’t want them to be scared, too. If they can’t be comfortable here, they should at least not be _scared._

Andrew, shockingly, looks at peace. He’d visited, when Aaron had started up his own practice. Neil should’ve come with him. Maybe Neil would be comfortable here, too, if he had. 

And then Aaron comes in, and Neil slaughters a laugh before it can come out. It’s not that there’s anything _funny,_ about this. It’s just—Neil isn’t used to Aaron looking so—professional. So _medical._ It’s oddly incongruous with Neil’s understanding of Aaron, as someone whom Andrew enjoys bothering and also someone with whom Neil has an understanding, consisting of the knowledge that neither one of them will hurt Andrew. 

Paige, on the other hand, has clearly formed a different conceptualization of Aaron, and she brightens when he walks in. “What are we doing?” she asks before he can even say hello.

Aaron shrugs apologetically in Neil and Andrew’s direction, but neither of them have ever been particularly concerned about manners. They wave him onwards. “As in, what are we doing today, as part of your checkup?”

“Yeah.”

He gives them a rundown, which Paige has questions about, which Aaron answers. And then Paige has questions about the answers. 

“I’d like to do other things today,” Natalie says loudly. 

Paige looks absolutely betrayed. “I have _questions_!”

“What if we write them down?” Neil suggests. “Aaron’s coming over in a couple days. Although it’ll mean work talk at dinner.”

Aaron shrugs. “I don’t mind,” he says, and that’s not a lie, he means that. “I like answering questions. Especially questions that are not about stabbing people.”

Paige looks like she’s been given a gift. 

She sits there on her phone straight through the visit, typing away, anytime she’s not occupied with the actual checkup. There’s a gleam in her eye that tells Neil he won’t have to worry about conversation, the first Sunday in November. 

“Can I ask Katelyn questions, too?”

“Sure,” Aaron says, a gleam in his eyes that says he’s happy to build some breaks for himself into that conversation. 

Aaron declares the two of them healthy, reassures all involved that he’ll get that information to the foster agency, and walks them out the door before heading in for his next appointment. 

“Grocery shopping?” Neil says when they get in the car. 

“Yeah,” the kids agree, and Andrew points the car towards the grocery store.

It’s a much easier trip, these days. The kids know what they like and what they don’t, mostly, and they only get caught up in the produce section. They pick up some pre-made Chinese food for dinner—not the best, but good enough. Natalie and Paige won’t say anything, but Neil is reasonably certain they’re starving. They head for the checkout line at top speed. There’s food to be eaten.

Something catches Neil’s eye, a couple lanes over. 

Is that—

It _is._

Oh, that can’t be good. 

Maybe he should just let it pass. Ignore it. Andrew and the kids don’t seem to have seen it; they could just walk out without ever addressing it. And Neil isn’t going to be able to handle it alone. If he picks it up, he’s going to show it to Andrew, he knows that. 

And he doesn’t care about it. Really, sincerely, he doesn’t. Doesn’t care at all. Doesn’t need it, doesn’t need to read it, doesn’t need to make himself angry about it, doesn’t need to show it to Andrew. Could just ignore it. 

But—

Now, he knows it exists. It’s crawling up his throat, scratching at the insides of his stomach. He needs to know just how furious he should be. Or he needs to sit down with Andrew and laugh about it. He needs _something,_ anyway, and if he just lets it sit there, he’ll wake up screaming in the middle of the night next week. 

He brushes his fingers over Andrew’s back—a warning that he’s walking away—and excuses himself as he pushes through a line of people to grab it. He slides the magazine onto the conveyor belt, catching Andrew’s raised eyebrows. “Sorry. This isn’t how I wanted to tell you. I think? Unless—this isn’t how I was supposed to find out?”

The cover is a picture of their faces—post-game, for Neil; any old picture will do, for a picture where Andrew looks crabby. In big letters, the cover says: “From Winning the Championships to—DIVORCE?” and then, smaller: “The explosive fight overheard by one reporter. Years of abuse. Is it finally too much?”

Andrew taps a finger on the picture of Neil’s face. “Ah.”

“I think, probably, one of us is supposed to be angry and the other one is supposed to be crying right about now,” Neil suggests as they shuffle forward with the conveyor belt. “I can do angry? I’m pretty good at angry.”

“I’m really bad at crying, though,” Andrew says, sounding quite sincerely disappointed. “Now, what I _could_ do is pull off my ring and throw it in your face. Might have to wait until we get home, though, because I’m going to have to scramble around on the floor to find it, and god knows how long it’s been since this place was properly mopped.” He points at the magazine. “Are we getting that?”

“Well, yeah, I want to know what I’m getting in the divorce.”

“You can have one half of the bed.”

Neil mulls that over. “Well, you like the pillows, so I’ll give you the top half.”

“That’s not—” Andrew shuts his eyes for a second, laughing to the extent to which he’s willing to do that, and shakes his head. 

“Although if it’s only on two legs, it won’t stand very well. Maybe a diagonal cut? Cut through two of the legs, on opposite angles? Then it’ll be a triangle, which isn’t great, but if you give me a minute to work out the math I could figure out if the triangles would still be big enough for us to sleep on.”

“Why bother cutting it in half? Then it’s useless. I want a _functional_ half of my bed.”

“I call the side farthest from the window, then,” Neil decides. 

“If we’re divorced, does that mean I have to face the window in the morning?” Andrew asks.

“Nah. It’s your half of the bed, you can do what you want on it.”

“I’m going to eat cheetos.”

Neil gasps. “The crumbs go _everywhere_ , jackass, you won’t be able to keep them on your half. You know what? Fine. I’m going to sleep right on the centerline.”

“Fine,” Andrew says. “So will I.”

“Just let me get in first, otherwise I’ll end up sleeping on top of you, which, I mean, sure, but then we’ll need to buy a weighted blanket, and that’ll be a whole thing.”

“Where are we going?” Paige asks, getting into the spirit of the thing, sounding a little like she’s forcing down panic. “In the divorce.”

Neil and Andrew consider. “Well, I guess it depends on who gets your bedroom in the divorce,” Neil says. 

“Does that mean that visiting the other parent will mean switching bedrooms?” Natalie asks. 

“Yes,” Neil says immediately. 

“So moving in with the other parent will require you both to work together to rearrange the rooms?”

“Yes,” Andrew agrees. 

“Have you ever seen the movie _Parent Trap?”_ Paige asks.

“Yes, and it is _not_ what you are describing,” Andrew says. 

“Hi, how are you, do you have a rewards card?” The cashier asks.

Andrew gives her their number, and he and Neil start packing. 

“Oh, hey,” she says, surprised, glancing at the magazine. “Thats—so _you’re_ the kids who are trying to run away?” She asks Natalie and Paige.

“We are?” Paige asks.

“Clearly not trying very hard,” Natalie scoffs. 

“Why are we trying to run away?” Paige asks. 

The cashier sends the magazine down to Andrew to be bagged. “I mean, your dad is all over Twitter talking about how you guys wanna get out so bad.”

Natalie and Paige give her precisely the same bewildered facial expression, and then the glow of understanding sets in.

“Wait,” Paige says. “You mean _Patrick?_ Like, our bio father?”

“Yeah. He’s been tweeting about how dangerous it is for you to be in that house since that audio came out yesterday,” she says, casting a belatedly nervous glance at Neil and Andrew, “and how you guys want out, but he hasn’t been able to get in contact with you or figure out how to get you help. He says he’s talking to the foster agency. He did a whole interview with CNN about it.”

Neil feels cold. It’s like the blood in his veins has stopped moving. Paige and Natalie look—gutted. 

“He’s gonna take us away,” Paige says, horribly blank. 

“No he’s not,” Natalie says, blazingly furious. She looks directly at Andrew and Neil. “You promised.”

“We did,” Andrew agrees. He resumes bagging, his pause registering to no one but Neil. “And you’re not going anywhere unless you want to.” 

Neil, mechanically, moves bags into the cart. Stands back while Andrew pays. 

Andrew had paused.

If Andrew hadn’t cared, Neil might be able to tell himself that this isn’t an issue. Would at least have a leg to stand on in that argument with himself. But—

But Andrew had paused. 

Andrew is _concerned._

Natalie is already on her phone, before they’re even out the door. “CNN… CNN… oh, found it. Okay. Um… there’s some background on you, dad, pops… blah blah blah, rivalry and then _married_ what a shock and then _constant drama_ because you guys refuse to talk about your relationship and dad refuses to talk to the press… and then some bullshit about the audio clip… oh. Here it is. Okay. Our least favorite father says, and I quote: ‘I did manage to see them, and they were clearly not being cared for properly—violence and the use of weapons seemed to be actively encouraged, there was clear psychological damage—’ hey, Paige, we’re psychologically damaged—”

“I mean, he’s not wrong,” Paige says, sounding more depressed by the minute. 

“I mean he _is_ though,” Natalie says, distracted. “Anyway, moving on, we seemed unhappy—fucking _yeah_ —and distressed—pops, you should’ve let me stab him when I had the chance—and he was unable to get our contact information and is scared to come get us due to the backgrounds of our foster parents, which only makes it more vital that we be removed as quickly as possible, and he’s in talks with the whole ass foster system about getting us out, for sure he’s made some mistakes but he’s grown as a human being and nothing will keep him from his beloved children. Anyway, if he takes us I’m going to stab him in the face.”

“Not the fastest way to the heart,” Paige says. “Also, you’ll go to jail over that, for _sure.”_

“I mean, no, but I’ll be too angry to care about that. And even if I _do_ go, _you_ won’t, and that’s what’s important, so—”

“You’re not going to jail,” Neil says. “Don’t worry about that. And you’re not leaving. No one’s taking you away, and no one’s giving you to him, you don’t have to worry about that. It’ll be okay.”

“Twitter has a whole goddamn hashtag for us,” Paige says, unheeding. “#SavetheGrayGirls. Hey, where was this at literally any other point in our life? We should’ve gotten on Twitter and started posting, we’d have been saved.”

“We _got_ saved,” Natalie says, irritated. “That’s the problem, we got saved and now they’re trying to—un-save us. Endanger us.”

“He’s probably not _dangerous,”_ Neil says, although he doesn’t know why he’s arguing the matter. He seems incapable of insulting Patrick Gray, however much the man deserves it. Now, though—now, it makes sense to reassure the girls, to give them some hope that it won’t all go downhill if they have to move back in with Patrick. That it won’t be _bad,_ probably, just not _good._ Not their chosen parents. Neil and Andrew half a country away, and incapable of moving, incapable of retiring—Ichirou may as well be in the car with them, strangling Neil from the back seat, because Neil can feel Ichirou’s hands wrapped around his throat. Neil feels a vicious surge of rage towards Nathan—Nathan was horrible, was Ichirou’s right hand, beat Neil, forced Neil to run, was the reason Neil ever got into exy in the first place, the reason Neil is trapped, caged, head underwater. Stuck in South Carolina even if his children are dragged to Colorado. Stuck in this job, with this team, even if his children are gone. 

Andrew could go. 

Neil picks up his heart and shreds it. Andrew in Colorado wouldn’t be ideal—but he wouldn’t be dead, he wouldn’t have _left_ Neil, he’d just be—how much of a difference could he make? How much would it help, if he were there? More than it would help if he were in South Carolina, Neil reasons. 

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand. “Stop it,” he says, the Russian sweetly familiar. Neil misses it already. 

“I’m fine,” Neil says. 

“I’m helping the girls with their homework this afternoon,” Andrew says. “You’re going to start looking for a therapist.”

“You’re going to teach them math?”

“Yes,” Andrew says firmly. “I am.”

Neil opens his mouth to argue, but—

He’d promised. 

He can’t put it off. 

And he has to do it. He’d decided that. Promised Natalie that.

“Okay.”

“Thank you, Neil.”

Neil feels—oddly ashamed of himself. That Andrew should have to thank him for this. That Andrew should have to keep pushing Neil on something he knows he has to do. “Don’t thank me.”

“Already did.”

Neil has so little to say in response, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “I love you.” 

“I love you, too,” Andrew says. 

The kids are quiet, and playing it back in his head, Neil realizes he’s done it again. He’s missed a whole conversation. Left Andrew to reassure the kids on his own. That’s how Andrew knew Neil was thinking too much—not because he’d tensed up, but because he’d vanished. He’d been thinking so much about Andrew and the kids leaving for Colorado that he’d left them behind. 

And he’s doing it again. Now. Jesus. They’re on a whole different road now, and Neil hasn’t been paying attention at all. They could’ve sped past 18 cops and Neil would have been useless. 

Meditation? Will meditation help with this? The whole point of that is staying in the present, right? How fast can he get good at that? If he does it well enough, can he get away with only the five weeks of therapy he promised Andrew? He can’t get out of it altogether—he promised, after all—but he only promised a certain number of weeks. It doesn’t have to be forever. 

And then they’re home, and Neil has missed half the car ride.

A wreck. He’s a wreck. 

But they eat dinner, which is passably good, Natalie and Paige trying not to shove it down, and they’re all too hungry to bother talking, which Neil is oddly grateful for. If no one talks, he can’t miss a conversation. 

Bad. That’s bad. He has enough self-awareness to know that that’s bad. 

While the girls gather their schoolwork, Neil grabs his laptop. He sets up with them in the kitchen, feeling precisely the same way he had when his mom had told him that even if they _were_ planning to vanish as soon as he got out of school, he did have to do his homework and he did have to go to school—they couldn’t risk anyone asking questions, couldn’t risk raising any concerns that they were about to flee. This is the same feeling. He understands, in a vague way, that this is necessary and important, but he doesn’t particularly care, and he certainly doesn’t want to do it, and it feels like there are vastly more important things for him to be doing right now, like resuming his previous attempts at figuring out how to get to Colorado, murder a man—albeit a different man, now—and get back home without creating a paper trail or raising any suspicions, and then burn down a news station without it being terrorism, and then take his family and vanish to where no one—not the FBI, not Ichirou, no one—will ever be able to find them. 

Maybe not that last step. He will not give his children his childhood. 

He stares at the blank computer screen. 

Doing his homework as a kid _had_ served a point, though. It had allowed them to vanish without tipping anyone off ahead of time that they were leaving, had given them a headstart more than once. The element of surprise is an important one, even if it’s just surprising the people trying to kill him. Even if he hadn’t understood it. Even if he’d hated it. It had been necessary and useful, long-term. 

He googles _therapists South Carolina._

He’s never felt so stupid in his life. 

But he gets a database of therapists nonetheless, and that’s good. 

He has no idea what he’s looking for. He barely knows what he _needs_ , let alone what he _wants._

Half an hour in, he has no fewer than 15 tabs open, each one a different therapist, and he’s still scrolling through the database, just in case. He’s getting much farther afield than he’s really willing to travel. He should just start looking through the ones he’s opened. He should stop making this harder than it needs to be. 

“How are you doing?” Andrew asks him. 

Neil swings his feet up into Andrew’s lap. “Horrible. What the fuck am I looking for? How do I tell which ones are good and which ones are bad? How do I know who I’ll like? How do I even know what they need to specialize in?” He cuts himself off before he can say _I want a kiss._ He’s getting into whining territory, and also he just put his feet in Andrew’s lap, Andrew can’t get up. And, also, the kids are right there, and they’ll put up a din. 

“I mean, did you narrow it down a little?” Paige asks. 

“I have 15 therapists to choose from. You’re supposed to be doing homework.”

“We can take a break,” Natalie says. 

“Well, first off, probably cognitive behavioral therapy,” Andrew says. “Someone who’s worked with trauma before. PTSD, depression, anxiety, paranoia, child abuse—”

“I am 29 years old, I don’t think I need help with child abuse.”

“You do,” Andrew says firmly. “You absolutely, definitely, 100% do. Don’t tell me you don’t, you’ve got a brand on your shoulder and I _know_ you never got anything even _resembling_ therapy for that. I don’t give a shit how old you are, and if a therapist is any good, they won’t either.”

“What am I gonna do, get therapy for every aspect of my whole life for nearly 30 years?”

Andrew stares at him for a second. And then, leveraging every dramatic bone in his body, he swivels to face Neil—heedless of Neil’s feet—steeples his fingers, looks Neil in the eyes, and says: “Yee _ee_ ees.”

“That’s gonna take a long goddamn time.”

“Uh- _huuuu_ uh.”

“Okay, no need for the sass, I feel like.”

“Much need for the sass,” Paige decrees. “Give him more sass.”

“You don’t get to sit there for a month and a half telling us to go to therapy and then get annoyed because you have to go to therapy,” Natalie says. 

“Well, I’m going now,” Neil objects, “so I think it’s fine.”

“Anyway, who are you looking at?” Natalie asks, coming to stand behind Neil. 

“Oh, good,” Neil says. “I’ll do your homework if you pick my therapist.”

“ _Pops,_ ” Paige says. 

“Yeah,” Andrew says. “ _Pops_.”

Neil flips him off. Andrew flips him off right back.

“Okay, so like, woman or a man?” Natalie asks. “Easiest way to knock a few people off the list. Any preference?”

Neil shrugs. 

“Literally that’s like nothing,” Paige says. “Yes or no?”

“I mean, I guess I’d prefer a woman, but that’s probably something I should get over.”

“Your therapist isn’t supposed to be inherent exposure therapy,” Natalie says.

“You’re very confident about that, for someone who’s never been to therapy.”

“Shut up. Okay, so that brings you down to ten. Hang on… okay, _she_ doesn’t have shit to do with PTSD… _she’s_ more focused on autism… _she_ specializes in sexual abuse… unless that’s one of your things?”

“That is not one of my things,” Neil says, letting Natalie close that tab. He should be doing more of this. Working through more of this. Shouldn’t need his 14-year-old daughter’s help. 

“She looks friendly,” Paige says, joining in. “Maura. That’s a cool name. Right?”

“Sure. But, like, what about Janice?” Natalie asks. “She looks cool.”

“Isn’t Janice someone from Mean Girls?”

“I mean, not _this_ Janice.”

“Still, would pops be able to talk to her without thinking about Mean Girls?”

“I don’t know what Mean Girls is.”

Natalie and Paige gasp in perfect harmony. “We’ll fix _that_ later,” Natalie mutters. “Moving on. This lady looks mean.”

“That’s rude,” Paige objects. “You can’t judge someone by their looks.”

“That’s literally all we’re doing.”

“Shouldn’t we check the reviews?” Neil asks. 

Natalie and Paige wave him off. “No,” Natalie says. “That’s why you do a consultation. Okay. Try Janice first—”

“Maura,” Paige objects.

“Janice. _Before_ he watches Mean Girls. And then Maura.”

“But what if he sticks with Janice?” 

“Then I’ve just saved him a bunch of time.”

“But what if Maura would’ve been better?”

“Well, but what if Janice is the best?”

“But—”

“So Janice, and then Maura,” Neil says. “Who next? How about Rebecca?”

“Rebecca’s fine,” Natalie agrees. “Shonda after that. Here, I’ll bookmark them.”

“That’s a lot of bookmarks,” Neil objects.

“I’ll make a folder.”

Neil pretends he knew that was possible, and lets her do it. 

“Call her tomorrow,” Natalie orders. “Now help us with math.”

Neil removes his feet from Andrew’s lap.

“Oh, thank god,” Andrew says. “I thought I was going to have to help with math.”

“You said you could,” Neil says.

“I didn’t _want_ to, though.”

Neil helps them with math. 

They straggle upstairs eventually, Paige so tired she’s shivering. Natalie pivots halfway into her room and comes back out into the hallway, nearly running into Neil. 

“Hug?”

Neil hugs her. 

“You’re gonna be okay, right?” Natalie mumbles in his ear.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m gonna be fine. Everything’s gonna be fine, Nat.”

She takes a deep breath, lets go of him, and looks pleadingly at Andrew, who holds his arms out for a hug, too, and receives one. 

Neil follows Andrew into their bedroom, shuts the door, and then takes a running jump onto their bed. He lands face first in the pillows and stays there.

“Oh?” Andrew says. 

It’ll be fine. It has to be fine. Neil will make sure that everything will be fine. It’s the least he can do. He rolls over onto his back. “I want a kiss,” he demands.

“Do you, now.”

“I have searched for therapists. I have allowed my daughters to do most of the work for me—”

“Fairly certain that’s just called _helping_.”

“They’re children, they shouldn’t have to help—and I have spent a solid chunk of the day—”

“Sleeping?”

“Well, that, I guess,” Neil agrees. By all rights he shouldn’t be tired yet. “But mostly, I’ve spent most of it anxious and paranoid, and I pulled through without breaking down, and I want a kiss.”

“As what, a reward?” Andrew asks, but he’s getting closer. “You don’t get a reward for doing what you’re supposed to do.”

“I wasn’t supposed to do any of what I did, but I did it anyway.”

“I thought _you_ were supposed to kiss _me_ breathless?” Andrew asks, crawling onto the bed, positioning himself over Neil. “Why do _I_ have to do the kissing?”

“Well, come here, that promise was good for 24 hours and it hasn’t expired yet,” Neil says, throwing his arms around Andrew’s shoulders and pulling him down. 

Andrew goes willingly, and Neil sets everything else aside. Only one thing is important, right now, and it’s this, Andrew, and Andrew again, and Andrew again, and everything else can go away. 

Neil grins at Andrew when he pulls away. “Breathless yet?”

“No,” Andrew says breathlessly. “Better keep trying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> neil and andrew @ each other are [just like](https://mayakern.bandcamp.com/track/i-cant-lie)


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neil makes some tough calls. the kids break their silence.
> 
> also there's porn in the first half. nothing plot- or character-wise happens so if it's not your thing you can just skip it

“Call,” Andrew says. “Do it. I dare you.”

“Is a dare really enough, though?” Neil asks, staring at his phone like it’s a bomb.

“Double dare you. I double dog dare you. Neil Josten, I triple dog dare you to call.”

“Fuck, and say what? _I wanna make an appointment, but not, like, for real?_ I don’t want to—I don’t know, lead them on?”

“Yeah, Neil, that’s why you use these magic words: _I’d like to schedule a consultation._ Or _I’d like to schedule a preliminary appointment, to see if we’d be a good fit_.”

“Holy shit, that’s so professional.”

“I texted Bee this morning.”

“Why?”

“Knew you wouldn’t know what to say. Well, actually, that’s not true. Knew you’d dither around under the pretense that you didn’t know what to say.”

“Do I often put off things I don’t want to do?”

“I’m sorry, I was under the impression you’ve been putting off therapy for ten years. Call. I’m not talking to you anymore until you make at least one call.” Andrew leans back in his chair and mimes zipping his lips shut.

“I’m gonna buy a pair of crocs for every day of the week.”

That very nearly works. Neil sees it in Andrew’s eyes, the amount of self-control it takes to avoid reacting.

Neil fiddles with his phone. “Oh, you know what, we have to call a lawyer, about that audio,” he remembers. “Shouldn’t I do that first? It’s more time sensitive.”

Andrew closes his eyes.

Fuck. He has to do this, doesn’t he.

Oooooooh, he doesn’t want to do this. Oh, man, he doesn’t want to do this. He wants nothing less than to do this. He’d rather call a lawyer.

Jesus.

Okay. Okay. He can do this. He can do this. What’s even the issue here, really? It’s not like he struggles with phone calls, that’s fine. He knows he needs therapy. This just seems like a lot of work, to get to a place where he’s not a danger to everyone around him.

Oh, no, okay, that’s why, that’s why, he dials the phone number before he can talk himself out of it.

“You’ve reached the office of Janice Rhyland, Erin speaking, how can I help you?”

“Hi, I’d like to—I’m looking for a therapist, and I’d like to schedule a consultation, to see if we’d be a good fit. Does Janice have any availability?”

“Of course,” Erin says smoothly. “We’ve got a spot open next Monday at 10, does that work for you?”

Neil makes the appointment.

When he hangs up the phone, it feels like a house has been lifted off his shoulders, and like his legs are garbage. He reaches out, Andrew scoots closer, and Neil folds in half to stick his head in Andrew’s lap.

Andrew runs his fingers through Neil’s hair.

Okay. One down. One down. Maybe he stumbled a little, but he’s got an appointment, and he’s going to go, and it’s going to be terrible. Well, maybe it won’t, maybe it’ll be great. Maybe it’ll be nothing at all. Maybe he’ll go through every therapist on the list and he won’t find anyone who’s any good. Maybe he’ll end up going to Bee after all. Fuck.

Andrew tugs gently on Neil’s hair, and Neil lifts his head up. Andrew’s mouth fits against his, and Neil puts his hands on Andrew’s thighs to support himself—he wasn’t expecting this, and he’s leaning out farther than is comfortable, and Andrew doesn’t complain when Neil goes deeper, perhaps, than warranted by a phone call at 9:30 in the morning. But, fuck, Andrew’s right there with Neil, fingers clenched in Neil’s hair, holding him in place.

It can’t last forever, but when Andrew pulls away, he doesn’t go far.

“Thought kisses weren’t rewards?” Neil asks a few minutes later, forehead pressed against Andrew’s.

“That wasn’t a reward,” Andrew says primly. “I’m just incredibly turned on by you finally taking steps to get therapy.”

Neil laughs, kisses Andrew’s cheek, and backs away. “No more until I’ve put in some real work,” he warns.

“Oh, are you gonna go build a house? Or just make some more phone calls?”

“Dick.”

“Not my name, but you’re the only person allowed to give me nicknames, so you may as well go all-out.”

Neil makes more phone calls.

Maura, it turns out, is available this Friday. He weighs that for a minute—first off, he’d agreed to see Janice first; second, this Friday is already busy, they’re getting a visit from Grant and he and Andrew have the concert that night. But, well, shit, the more people he sees and the sooner he sees them, the sooner he can maybe start getting some actual therapy done, so—Friday morning, it is.

He vows to give himself a day between appointments. He’s not going to do back-to-back appointments. He needs a break.

He does. For the most part it’s not necessary, but Rebecca has time on Tuesday and Wednesday, and he requests the Wednesday appointment. Is that self-care? Feels like it. That’s some kind of progress, he’s fairly certain.

He makes an appointment with the fifth person on his list, Erika, and then sighs. “Five is a good start, right? I can always make more appointments later. Right?”

“Yeah, Neil. It’s a good start.”

Neil takes a deep breath. “I guess I should call a lawyer, now.”

“Moriyama lawyer or no?” Andrew asks. “This is unrelated. Would they care?”

Neil deliberates. _Would_ they care? If he uses a Moriyama lawyer, will they ask for something? “I think—someone else,” Neil says slowly. “If we use a Moriyama lawyer, they might not ask for just money in return.”

“That sounds like the opening of a porn movie.”

Neil closes his eyes for a minute.

Andrew kisses his cheek.

“You don’t get to kiss your way out of this.”

“That wasn’t conciliatory, I just wanted to kiss your cheek. Is that a crime?”

Neil opens his eyes, locates Andrew, puts two fingers under Andrew’s chin, and pulls him closer for a kiss. Andrew follows, when Neil pulls away, and there’s an interesting look in his eyes that Neil can’t indulge just yet. “No. It’s not.”

He texts Allison. Asks her for a recommendation.

Allison texts back within 30 seconds— _You only text when you need things. You don’t even text when the news says you’re being abused. What’s that about, huh? And what makes you think I know SC lawyers?_

Neil answers, _I usually text more in the off-season, but that’s only been three days, you know that. I’ll text more soon, I swear. Also, you know I’m not being abused, I didn’t think I needed to tell you all about it. The clip was bullshit, I’ll explain later. And I think you know SC lawyers because of course you do._

Neil takes Andrew’s hand. Notes the slow way Andrew’s fingers curve through his. There’s a question there, albeit not an urgent one. Neil can put it off. He’ll put it off until they have a lawyer. He’s fairly certain, though, that the answer will be yes.

 _…this is true_ , Allison texts. _And it sounds like you’ve been busy. Fine._

She sends him info for a lawyer based in Columbia, and Neil calls her. He waits on hold for a couple minutes—he’s called at a good time, she’s got time for a quick ten-minute consultation, his whole life is consultations—glancing at Andrew out of the corner of his eye, not saying no.

Neil talks to the lawyer. It’s agreed that, should Channel 7 fail to release the audio, he’ll call her up and schedule an appointment so she can file the lawsuit.

And then Neil hangs up.

He looks at Andrew. Takes a moment to really appreciate him—beautiful, in a different way than he was ten years ago, a little older, a little more filled out, and Neil loves him, loves him so much his heart hurts. And there’s the way Andrew’s looking at him—if the answer’s no, that’s fine, but if it’s yes—

Neil reaches out and pulls Andrew into his lap, sliding down a little in the seat as he does, watching Andrew’s eyes flick down to Neil’s dick. Andrew settles in, releases Neil’s hand, goes to wrap his arms around Neil’s shoulders but doesn’t make it—his hands settle around Neil’s neck, instead.

“Oh, my turn to straddle you until my legs fall asleep, I see,” Andrew says, his thumbs sitting at the base of Neil’s throat.

“That it is,” Neil agrees. He swallows just to watch Andrew’s eyes go dark, and go dark they do, and that’s nice, that’s very nice. The answer is yes, he decides, glancing at Andrew’s lips. He could just say it. Probably _should_ just say it. But it feels like they’re playing a game, and Neil feels better than he has in a little while, and they don’t always have to establish a starting point, a route, and an end point all right at the beginning. They can establish boundaries as they go. The question, then, is this: What’s allowed, these days? Neil has his hands on Andrew’s thighs; that’s just where they went, when Andrew dropped Neil’s hands in favor of his neck. Neil hums, hears Andrew’s exhale escape too quick, and places his hands more purposefully—no longer just resting on Andrew’s jeans, but actively aware of Andrew’s body inside those jeans. “Is this good?” Neil asks, squeezing Andrew’s thighs.

“Yeah,” Andrew says, voice huskier than normal.

Neil slides his hands up. “This?”

“Yes, Neil.”

Neil rubs his thumbs along the inner seams of Andrew’s jeans. Andrew’s legs twitch—a little further open.

Holy shit.

Neil looks from Andrew’s lips to his eyes, only to find them half-closed. He can see Andrew’s chest, rising and falling, a little faster than usual. “So were you serious about being turned on by me calling a bunch of therapists?”

Andrew rolls his eyes, a gesture that might have a little more bite if it weren’t for how flushed he is. “No, I’m mostly turned on by _you_ , and it’s been forever since we had sex—”

“Three days, I think—”

“Ooh, knew _that_ one off the top of your head, didn’t you—no, I’m not turned on by you being on the phone with therapists’ receptionists, but you know _exactly_ what you’re doing.”

Neil grins. That’s perfectly true. “Just wanted to double check.” He reaches for Andrew’s mouth and finds it, catching Andrew’s bottom lip between his teeth for a second before meeting Andrew’s tongue. He rubs circles into Andrew’s inner thighs, feels Andrew roll his hips, smiles when Andrew pulls away for a split second.

“Too good at this,” Andrew mutters a few minutes later, hands in Neil’s hair.

“Learning curve may not be steep, but I’m stubborn,” Neil says, sliding a hand up Andrew’s thigh. He can _hear_ Andrew’s breath speeding up.

“Not fucking fair,” Andrew gasps. “I put _effort_ into being sexy and you put _none_ in and you don’t notice _shit_ and you’re the _hottest_ —” he breaks off as Neil slides his fingertips under Andrew’s shirt.

“I always think you’re sexy,” Neil says, tracing the waistband of Andrew’s pants. Is that true? Almost certainly not, not the way Andrew thinks of it. But he likes looking at Andrew, likes touching Andrew, likes when Andrew looks at and touches him, and whether or not that’s what Andrew’s talking about, Neil likes it just fine. He likes what he can do to Andrew. He likes how Andrew’s eyes go hooded and dark, likes what Andrew looks like after he’s been kissed, likes how Andrew gets goosebumps at Neil’s touch. Neil trails his fingernails up Andrew’s side and feels him shiver, and then Andrew pulls Neil in for a kiss, rocking his hips, pulling a gasp out of Neil. Neil slides his hands over to Andrew’s hips, up to his waist, down to his lower back—“Can I pull you closer?” He whispers.

“Fuck—yeah, Neil. You can.”

Neil pulls Andrew closer, until Andrew is pressed up against him. Neil’s brain is short-circuiting. His nose is brushing Andrew’s. He doesn’t know what to do, what to say, can barely think. He smiles. He doesn’t mind any of that. “Hey,” he whispers.

After a pause that’s just a second too long for Neil to believe it was intentional, Andrew says: “Come here often?”

Neil laughs. “Under you? Every night, my love, every night.”

Andrew rolls his hips—Neil must’ve said something, and he’s not sure what part of it did Andrew in, or maybe just all of it, but—

“Can I?” Neil asks, sliding a hand between them, running it down over Andrew’s stomach.

Andrew releases Neil and pulls his own shirt off. “ _Please_ ,” he says fervently, making Neil’s stomach flip in an odd way. Neil isn’t sure what to do with that. He’s not sure how to feel about that word. Not sure how to feel about Andrew saying it. But it’s not like anyone’s forcing Andrew to say it—Andrew’s acting of his own volition, so who is Neil to complain? He wraps a hand around the back of Andrew’s neck and pulls him in for a kiss, and when Andrew pulls away, breathlessly mumbling complaints about how long Neil is taking, Neil unbuttons Andrew’s pants, slides his hand into Andrew’s underwear—pauses as Andrew bites off a moan, leans forward to kiss Andrew’s neck, smiles as Andrew says something about taking his time—Andrew sounds wrecked, absolutely, Neil’s hand is barely there and Andrew already sounds like a mess, and Neil loves it.

He goes slow. He takes his time. They _have_ time, after all, nowhere to be and nothing to do and no one coming home—Andrew will have to go to therapy, but not for hours yet. So Neil goes slow. Andrew complains about it, but in that broken-off, half-whimper, desperate, breathless way that makes Neil hard, that makes him wish he had Andrew’s memory so he could file it away. But if he can’t, he can make sure _Andrew_ has something good to file away—Neil’s tongue on Andrew’s neck, Neil’s lips brushing Andrew’s jaw, Neil whispering nonsense and love in Andrew’s ear. Neil does his best, and judging by the way Andrew says Neil’s name when he comes, it worked.

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek, thoroughly satisfied, and rests his forehead against Andrew’s until Andrew catches his breath enough to go for Neil’s mouth.

“You’re so beautiful,” Neil whispers a few minutes later, “sometimes I look at you and my brain stops working.”

Neil feels Andrew’s lips on his cheek, at the corner of his eye, his nose.

“I love you,” Andrew says finally. “Come here, I can probably stand up now.”

Andrew stands on gratifyingly shaky legs, and Neil follows him to the sink to wash his hand off. He passes Andrew his shirt, which Andrew considers for a second before handing back to Neil.

Neil raises an eyebrow at Andrew.

Andrew shrugs, and then says “You may as well carry it upstairs, if I’m not putting it back on.”

Neil won’t question the way Andrew said _if I’m not putting it back on_ like it was obvious.

“Upstairs?”

“The things I want to do to you shouldn’t be done in the kitchen,” Andrew proclaims.

“So why do I have to carry your shirt?”

“Because I’m going to carry you,” Andrew says, like it should be obvious.

Neil launches no objection, so Andrew scoops Neil up.

Neil does not mind this.

He loops an arm around Andrew’s shoulders, keeps his head and feet in close when they go through doorways, and keeps his mouth shut until they reach the top stair. “So what is it you want to do to me?”

Andrew pauses for one heart-stopping second—Neil should’ve waited until they were safely in the hallway—but makes it off the stairs and heads for their bedroom. “Finger you. If you’d like.”

Neil doesn’t even have to think about it. “Yes, I would like.”

Andrew takes a deep breath, which Neil assumes is intended to hide the way his breath had just hitched, and carries Neil into the bathroom so Neil can grab a towel and the box of condoms. There’s an anticipatory heat in his stomach that he likes, as Andrew carries him back into the bedroom and dumps him on the bed.

“Gotta get better at setting me down,” Neil says as he scoots backwards, spreading the towel out where he’s fairly certain it should be placed.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Andrew says seriously, grabbing the lube from the bedside table.

Neil gets his shirt off to find Andrew standing there, staring at him, and he knows enough these days to know that that’s not Andrew choosing not to help—it’s Andrew’s brain shutting down. Neil grins at him. “Come here often?”

Andrew blinks at him for a moment, and then says “I’m about to make _you_ come here often.”

“That was _awful_ ,” Neil says. “Terrible. The _worst_. Oh my _god_ , Drew, that was _bad_.”

“You’re still unbuttoning your pants, though,” Andrew points out. “Clearly, it wasn’t bad _enough_.”

“Is there a joke you could make that’s so terrible I _wouldn’t_ want to have sex with you?” Neil asks, shimmying out of his pants, watching Andrew react to that. He grins wider, waiting for Andrew’s brain to reset.

“Probably,” Andrew manages to say, before he crawls across the bed to hover over Neil.

“What is it?” Neil asks.

“I’m not going to tell it to you _now_ ,” Andrew says. “Have I told you recently how fucking hot you are?”

“Mostly, I think you told me I was _not_ hot behind the wheel of a car.”

Andrew makes a face. “Okay, look, I was annoyed and being an asshole—”

“I know.”

“—but—oh, good. Anyway, I’m here to tell you now that I was being a jackass, you’re the hottest person alive and I can’t believe I managed to get lucky enough to have you fall in love with me—”

“Wasn’t luck, was just kinda you being you—”

“Absolutely shocking, given I was a terrible person—”

“You were the kindest, most honest, most trustworthy—”

Andrew kisses Neil, an effective method of making him shut up. And then Andrew moves his mouth to Neil’s ear and, in the huskiest voice he can manage, whispers: “Your dick must be a whisk, because it’s scrambled my brain like eggs.”

Neil cackles, and doesn’t stop laughing until he feels Andrew’s mouth on his dick, a condom-wrapped finger sliding inside him, the initial discomfort expected and then over before Neil can care about it.

Andrew goes slow, which Neil assumes is payback. He’s tempted to say something about it, but—why bother? It feels nice—feels nicer and nicer with each passing second—and if Andrew wants to do it, Neil isn’t going to complain. He just whispers Andrew’s name, over and over again, like it’s magic, like it’s religion, like it’s every hope and dream Neil has ever had—and that last one isn’t far off.

Eventually, though, Neil comes, shuddering, his hand buried in Andrew’s hair, and then it’s his turn to lie there, absolutely still, trying to catch his breath, while Andrew flops down on top of Neil and kisses his cheek, his nose, his forehead.

Andrew is still shirtless, and the amount of Neil’s skin that’s touching Andrew’s is enough to set him on fire.

“You ever get disappointed that refractory periods are a thing?” Neil asks eventually.

Andrew snorts. “All the time.”

Neil pulls Andrew in for a kiss, comfortably drowsy, and, well, they’re already in bed, why not take a nap?

Andrew strips off his armbands and lays them gently on the mattress within arm’s reach. “And how are you?” He asks, folding his arms across Neil’s chest.

“Doing well,” Neil says, raking his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “And you?”

“Better than that,” Andrew says. “Feeling happy.”

Neil’s brain says: _That won’t last_. Neil bats it away. He can’t deal with that now. He’s going to do one thing now, and that thing is _be happy_ , and maybe he’s going to do a second thing, which is _nap_. “That’s good,” he says.

Andrew cups Neil’s cheek. “It _is,_ Neil. It _is_ good.”

“That’s what I said.”

Andrew kisses Neil’s nose. “I know. I’m just—saying it again. Thoughts on a nap?”

“Already there,” Neil agrees.

An hour or so later, when they finally get back up and consider cleaning the house, they find texts from Kevin: _Thea’s going out this afternoon, come over?_

Neil latches onto that—getting out of the house is good, after all. _Andrew’s got therapy and he’s getting the girls started with Bee, but I can come._

Andrew looks prouder than he has any right to be.

And then—because why clean the house when they could _not_ do that—Neil sits down on the bed with Andrew and a laptop and starts googling.

“What are we doing?” Andrew asks, apparently unconcerned by the lack of cleaning getting done.

“Figuring out how Patrick found our address so easily,” Neil says.

“Ah.”

It’s not hard, Neil discovers. There’s a whole goddamn website that documents people’s addresses. He finds his old apartment on there, too, and Andrew’s apartment, and their phone numbers—and sure, it requires payment to access, but it’s not like it’s prohibitively expensive.

Neil shoves his horror down, fills out the form required to take their information off the site, and sends it over. And then he keeps searching. He goes through google images—are there any pictures of them in their neighborhood? By their house? A few; Neil figures out how to report the images to have them taken down. Neil can say with pride that he and Andrew have never shown their house off, never let reporters in or near their house, but he searches the local news sites anyway. Is this paranoia? Maybe. But he honestly can’t believe he didn’t think to do this the day Patrick showed up on their doorstep.

“We should’ve done this the day Patrick showed up,” Andrew mutters, watching Neil work.

“Was just thinking that.”

“How long do you think it’ll take them to take this shit down?”

“Probably a couple days.”

“What if I show up at Google’s offices with a knife?”

“As Paige and Nat would say: That’s terrorism, I think.”

Andrew makes a face.

Eventually, Neil gives in, closes his laptop, and they get cleaning.

And then Andrew heads out, and Neil heads to Kevin’s, and tries to find the line between paranoia and safety. He’s not sure if he can trust himself to do that. He also doesn’t want to force Andrew to be the arbiter of all that is right and mentally healthy.

Ah, yes. The reason why he’s going to find a therapist.

When he arrives at Kevin’s, he’s ushered into the kitchen and handed a soda—Thea’s still there, and she’s in the middle of a solid complaint session.

“So my parents have just gone down to Florida, and they keep insisting that we have to bring John to Disney World,” Thea explains to Neil. 

“Is that—bad?” Neil asks.

“Going to Disney World with a baby?” Thea asks.

“We swore we’d never do it,” Kevin says darkly. “You go as a young married couple, happy and in love, to the happiest place on earth or whatever the fuck, and you stare around at all the parents who look like they’re in absolute hell because their kid is screaming because it’s too hot or they want to go on a ride but the line is long or they’re hungry or they’re tired or they didn’t get to see Cinderella or—”

“A whole goddamn mess,” Thea agrees. “And you’re standing there going—are _we_ going to have kids? Are _we_ going to do that? Absolutely _not_. And we’re _not_ fucking doing it. Except my parents want us to, and how the fuck do I tell them no?”

“Say no,” Neil says.

“No, you don’t get it,” Kevin says. “Thea’s parents are _nice_.”

“Say it politely,” Neil suggests.

He gets twin stares.

“I have never been polite _in my life_ ,” Kevin says, just as Thea says “Is he a genius or an idiot, I can’t tell—”

“Just say—you don’t want to deal with it.”

“No, no, hang on,” Thea says, “let’s do some roleplaying, okay? Here. You be me, and I’ll be my parents. Ready?”

“Ready,” Neil agrees.

“Thea, sweetie, you and Kevin should _really_ bring Johnny to Disney,” Thea says. “He’s only going to be little for so long, and unless there’s another one in the works, this is really the only chance—”

“Why do you care so much about my sex life?” Neil asks.

Kevin chokes.

“ _Thea_ , that’s _not_ what I’m saying,” Thea says sternly, “and it’s _incredibly_ inappropriate for you to bring it up—”

“In the works, bun in the oven, it’s all the same—although I guess I could go for IVF—”

“Hey,” Thea says, “I’m trying to _not_ give my parents a heart attack.”

“Okay, okay,” Neil agrees. “Hang on, go back. _The only chance?_ ”

“Right. Okay. This is really the only chance you’ll have to get pictures of him while he’s so small in little Disney shirts with _all_ the characters, just _think_ about the memories you’ll make, he’s just—”

She goes on, and on, and on, while Neil sits, silently, until finally, she pauses to take a breath. “No thanks,” Neil says.

Thea sighs. “Here’s the problem, Neil: I need them to watch John during the season. _Without_ being reminded, forever, of when I crushed their hopes and dreams.”

“Let _them_ take him, then.”

“They won’t,” Kevin says. “Tried that.”

“Speed run it. One day, four parks, pictures and done. Or, fuck, just buy the Disney shirts and do some photoshopping.”

Thea sits up. “Now, that _last_ one is actionable. I can photoshop. I’m reasonably good at that. I’m—oh, fuck,” she says, glancing at the clock, “late. I’m late. Gotta go, Kev,” she says, sliding out of her chair, ducking to kiss him. “See you, Neil, don’t do stupid shit.”

“I’ll try,” Neil agrees. “See you.”

The door shuts behind her.

“So the whole family’s in therapy now except you, huh,” Kevin says, grinning. “How long do you think you’ll be able to hold out?”

Neil gives him a dark look. “I have my first consultation on Friday.”

Kevin sits up straight. “You _what_?”

“Have my first consultation on Friday,” Neil repeats.

“ _What_?”

“I’m not saying it again.”

“No, no, but— _what_? Wait— _first_? Aren’t you going to Bee?”

“No, don’t want to.”

“Don’t—you’re going to _therapy_? What the fuck did you _do_?”

“What do you mean, what did I do?”

“I mean, don’t _tell_ me you sat up one day like a rational adult and decided that therapy might be useful to you, what did you _do_?”

“You say that like it’s something bad.”

Kevin makes a face. “I mean, you didn’t cuddle up with some puppies and have a mental health epiphany.”

“How do _you_ know?”

“What do you mean, how do I know? It’s the most obvious shit in the world, Neil, a month ago you asked me if you should consider going to therapy to keep yourself from hitting your kids and you _still_ didn’t go, and you’re telling me that something _good_ prompted this decision?”

“I mean, no, I’m not, I had a bit of an—a bit of an issue—”

“Oh, over the Channel 7 bullshit?”

Neil takes a deep breath. He doesn’t even want to hear it. “Yes, over the Channel 7 bullshit. I may have been narrowly prevented from committing several murders and also arson and maybe that scared the kids and maybe Andrew then came upstairs and maybe he then asked me to go to therapy and _maybe_ I scared myself a little bit and—”

“Jesus _fuck_ , Neil.”

“Look, anyway, I’ve got five consultations lined up and ten more therapists to try if the first five are no good, and I don’t even know what _good_ is—”

Kevin just laughs. “Are you intending to figure it out?”

“I mean, yeah.”

Kevin stops laughing. “Oh. You’re gonna take this _seriously?_ ”

“Yeah,” Neil says, annoyed. He has no right to be. “I don’t want to be—dangerous. Not to them.”

Kevin considers Neil for a second, and then shrugs. “How proud is Andrew?”

“ _Offensively_ proud.”

“ _Knew_ it, he’s been _waiting_ —”

“How do _you_ know he’s been waiting—”

“I have _eyes_ , dumbass—”

“What, has he been writing _Neil go to therapy_ on his forehead—”

“Essentially, yeah, idiot.”

Neil makes a face at him and settles down.

“Mario Kart?” Kevin asks.

“Sure,” Neil agrees.

“ _Therapy_ ,” Kevin mutters as they walk into the living room. “Hey, can I tell the rest of the Foxes? This is cause for a bet.”

“What is there to bet _on_?”

“How long before you quit, whether or not you’ll settle on a therapist at all—”

Neil smacks Kevin’s shoulder. “Rude.”

Kevin snickers and hands Neil a controller.

Neil heads out a little while later, making it home a few minutes after Andrew and the girls do. He finds Andrew in the kitchen already making dinner, and Paige and Natalie looking none the worse for wear.

“How was it?” Neil asks, pulling out a pot for pasta. Andrew seems to have vegetables handled; Neil can fill a pot with water.

“Eh,” the twins say.

“I feel like this was just fake-therapy day,” Natalie says, not looking up from her phone.

“More like our own consultations,” Paige says. “She just asked, like, what is your end goal, what are you trying to work through, blah blah blah, and then we talked for a little while as, like, I don’t know, probably she was trying to figure out if there was anything else she should be worried about.”

“I guess that’ll probably come out as we keep going, though,” Natalie agrees.

“Like, what if I have issues I don’t know about?” Paige asks. “I mean, sure there’s the obvious shit, but how am I supposed to know if there’s other stuff?”

“She’ll figure it out,” Andrew says. “It’s part of her job. You’ll have to help her, though. Do your therapy homework. Go regularly. Be honest, with her and with yourself.”

“I know, I know,” Natalie says.

“ _We_ know,” Paige corrects.

“We know,” Natalie agrees. “ _Be honest with yourself_. Sure, dad, sure. Nice and easy.”

Andrew shrugs. Neil kisses his cheek. He can’t help it. Andrew’s cheek just looked—kissable. Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil. Neil shrugs. Andrew shakes his head, but doesn’t bother trying to pretend he’s not pleased.

The kids cheer up over dinner, returning to their preferred shitty riddle site and making themselves laugh so hard dinner takes twice as long as usual—they’re snatching bites of food in between riddles. Neil sticks his feet in Andrew’s lap when he’s done eating, content to sit and listen.

It doesn’t last, though.

The next day, Neil and Andrew finally get around to cleaning—they were supposed to wait until the kids were home to help, Neil knows that, but, shit, the kids are home every afternoon and Neil and Andrew still haven’t made them help, and the house needs to get clean. Neil is on his way from the living room to the kitchen, holding the dustiest lysol wipe he’s ever had the displeasure of holding, when the kids make it home.

Natalie’s inside first; Paige comes in right behind her, turns, shuts and locks the door—odd, in the middle of the day, and odd that they’re bothering. Odd that Natalie glances back at Paige, as if to check that she’s still there, and odder still that Natalie marches up to Neil and hugs him.

“Yes?” Neil asks, hugging her. She’s tense. So is Paige, pacing, back and forth, just inside the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asks.

Paige waves a hand.

“You can’t hand-wave this,“ Neil says. “Something’s _wrong_. You can tell us, you can talk to us.”

“No,” Natalie says, muffled in Neil’s shoulder.

“When have we ever punished you?” Neil asks, helplessly. “When have we ever—taken things out on you?”

“You haven’t,” Paige says.

“Then why can’t you tell us?” Andrew asks. “If you tell us why you can’t tell us, maybe we can help.”

Paige shakes her head. Natalie says nothing.

“This is a conspiracy,” Neil says. “A conspiracy against us.”

Paige nods.

“Now, I was joking,” Neil says.

“Shut up,” Natalie says. “Pops, dad, I love you.”

“Love you too,” Neil and Andrew say.

“Are you about to run away?” Neil asks. “Or—die? Is something happening? Is Patrick coming to get you?”

Natalie and Paige shake their heads.

“Which part of that was a no?”

“All of it,” Paige says. “None of it was correct. We’re not going anywhere. Natalie, move, it’s my turn.”

“I’ve got two arms,” Neil says, extending one to her. “And if that’s not enough, I’ve got a whole entire husband you can hug.”

“Yeah, but sometimes he doesn’t like hugs,” Paige says, giving Andrew puppy eyes.

“You can ask,” Andrew suggests.

“Can I have a hug?” Paige asks.

“Yes,” Andrew says, catching her as she flies at him. “Have you just been waiting for the offer of a hug?”

“No, I didn’t want to be hugged before,” she says.

“Ah,” Andrew says knowledgeably. “If you’re feeling better now, do you want to tell us what this is all about?”

“No.”

“Could we charades it?”

“No.”

“If we keep guessing, will you tell us when we’ve gotten it right?”

“No. I also won’t tell you when you’ve gotten it wrong. I’m done with that. No more clues.”

“Is there something we should be preparing for?” Neil asks.

“No,” Natalie says.

“Something we should be concerned about?”

“No,” Natalie lies.

Hmm. “Is it something that might happen again in the future?”

“No,” Paige lies.

It’s possible that Neil’s sense of when people are lying is no longer any good; it could just be paranoia.

Somehow, though, Neil is less inclined to attribute this to his mounting mental struggles. His ability to tell when people are lying has stopped being an ability to pick up on a collection of clues—nowadays, it’s just a red flag in his brain, popping up to let him know that something’s caught his attention. The better he knows someone, the easier it is to figure out if they’re lying. And he knows Natalie and Paige well enough by now to pick up on _something,_ even if he can’t say what it is.

Okay, then. So something has happened that they ought to be concerned about, and it might happen again in the future, and the kids won’t tell them what it is. “What can we do to prevent it from happening again?”

“I told you it won’t,” Paige says, edging on annoyed.

“I know,” Neil says patiently, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t be proactive about it.”

“It’s not gonna happen again,” Natalie says, pulling away, angry, and Neil _knows_ they’re worried. Natalie’s anger is reactionary. “We’re going upstairs.”

“We are?” Paige asks.

Natalie glares at her.

Paige lets go of Andrew. Wordlessly, the twins grab their backpacks and head upstairs.

Neil looks at Andrew to find Andrew already looking at him.

“So what do we do about _that_?” Andrew asks.

Neil shrugs.

“They’re scared,” Andrew says. “I know a liar when they talk to me, and something’s wrong.”

Neil nods. “I’m not arguing with you. I just don’t know what to _do_. It happened today, between the time they left for school and the time they got home, and I have no idea how to figure out what happened without—going behind their backs.”

He and Andrew stare at each other, and Neil knows they’re thinking the same thoughts: If it keeps the kids safe, is it worth it? More to the point: If they do nothing and something happens to the kids, will they regret it?

They’ll regret it. They’ll regret it forever.

Neil watches Andrew arrive to the same exact conclusion—it doesn’t matter. If Neil goes behind their backs and starts texting parents and calling the school and poking around looking for answers, the kids will never trust them again. Will never tell Andrew and Neil anything again. And the next time something happens, Neil and Andrew won’t be who the kids turn to for help—not that the kids are turning to them now, but—but if they survive whatever’s going on, they might be a little more open in the future.

Neil takes a deep breath. _If they survive_ is a tough sentence to think. An impossible chance to take.

“How long do you think it’ll be until we find out?” Andrew asks.

“I have no idea,” Neil says helplessly.

As it turns out, they don’t have to wait long.

The next day, the kids come home and head directly upstairs. They barely stop to say hello—“We promised Sandy we’d call her,” Paige explains on her way up the stairs.

“Well, that’s a lie,” Neil says conversationally when they hear the bedroom door close.

“Yup,” Andrew agrees. “Not a very good one, either.”

But—what are they going to do?

Nothing.

Neil hates this.

Andrew digs out flour, sugar, cocoa powder. Neil doesn’t even bother trying his book; he pulls out his phone, instead. Riley texted him—he has to answer her.

Before he can hit send, though, he gets a notification from an app he hasn’t used once—Twitter. He gets notifications, sometimes. And this one, he gets because it’s got his name in it.

_Trending: #MinyardJostenKids spill all in…_

He’s never clicked a notification so fast in his life. “Drew.”

“Hmm?”

“ _Drew_!”

Andrew appears over Neil’s shoulder.

They scroll through the tag, according to which their kids are hosting a live youtube session in which they’re going to talk about living with Neil and Andrew, and it starts in 30 seconds.

“I mean, we can’t watch that, right?” Neil says. “They didn’t tell us, it would be a huge invasion of their privacy, right?”

“It’s a public video,” Andrew says. “And it’s all over twitter. They didn’t tell us _not_ to watch it.”

Neil hesitates, staring at the youtube link. “I don’t—I don’t know. I mean, they didn’t tell us about it at _all_.”

“We’re both tagged in every one of these posts,” Andrew points out. “The only reason we didn’t know before this is because I’m not logged into Twitter and this is the first time you’ve ever read a Twitter notification. Now, the _real_ question is: Why didn’t our PR agents tell us about this?”

“Maybe they think it’ll be good PR,” Neil suggests. “They’ll be watching, ready to address anything bad the kids say. Or maybe this is really new—when did they decide to do this? Also, I mean, what were they going to do, tell us to prevent our kids from doing a thing they’d already announced on Twitter? That would’ve been _way_ worse.”

“Then we may as well watch, too, so we can talk to them after it. We’re late. It’s started. Let’s go,” Andrew says, clicking the link.

And sure enough, there’s their kids, sitting at their desk. Natalie is saying—“Jesus, there’s a lot of people here. Good. Okay, so—no, they’re not in here with us,” she says, rolling her eyes as questions pop up in the sidebar.

“Here, look—” Paige says, grabbing the laptop and turning it a slow 360 degrees. “See? Just us. The door is even locked—what’s wrong with our lock? It’s a good one, we picked it out—yeah, there’s a deadbolt. Who cares? I mean—”

“Hey, does anyone here have, just, _a_ brain cell?” Natalie asks.

“Nat!”

“What? I’m serious. Like—we’re not—this isn’t—there’s not, like, dangerous animals that come out at night who try to get in. It’s just—if the deadbolt was to protect us from dad and pops, why would they _install it_? Like, do you think that we, two teenage girls, managed to go out, get the deadbolts, and then install them, without dad or pops _noticing_? I mean, in what universe does that make sense?”

That doesn’t seem to stem the flow of lock-related questions— _then why do u have the locks? Are you in danger from someone else? Should you be in that house—_ and Paige sighs.

“Okay. First of all, maybe we should refer to them by first names, just to keep it easier to follow,” Paige suggests. “Second of all—I mean, look, being in the foster system isn’t always _fun_ , and then we came here and didn’t really know what to expect, and Andrew was having a couple bad days but we didn’t _know_ that, and Neil was worried about him but we didn’t _know_ that, and usually when adults are having bad days and are worried we get yelled at or slapped or whatever, you know? So we were really scared. And then Andrew found Natalie sneaking into my room, a few nights in, because it was the only way we felt safe enough to sleep. So Andrew started _taking my doorknob off_ , and I was like, oh, shit, we fucked up, this is gonna be bad, and Neil was sitting there like _he’s not taking your doorknob away, I don’t know what he’s doing but he wouldn’t do that_ , and I mean—”

“Not super reassuring,” Natalie says. “Not to mention, we were sitting there _watching_ Andrew take the doorknob off, so like, who were we supposed to believe, him or what we were watching Andrew do? And then Andrew went downstairs and came back up with the knob from the garage door—because, like, doorknobs on inside doors have shitty locks, you know, you can open those things with a bobby pin, and I mean, we’ve seen people break them just by trying hard enough, they’re not great. But the doorknobs downstairs are all super sturdy and whatnot.”

“So he installs that doorknob, and then turns and hands me his key, Neil’s key, and the spare, and he was like _now you have all the keys to your bedroom door._ And then he and Neil rearranged our bedrooms in, like, the middle of the night, so we could sleep in one room without having to squash in one bed—I haven’t slept that well in _years_. I just felt, like—” Paige gestures aimlessly with one hand. “Like, Nat and I were like hey, here’s what makes us feel safe, and instead of trying to toughen us up or whatever, or make us adults, Andrew and Neil were like cool, okay, but you don’t have to be uncomfortable or scared while you’re doing that. Like, they cared that we _felt_ safe—they didn’t just tell us that we were safe and expect us to believe it. Oh, the deadbolts? Oh—” Paige laughs, and Natalie takes over.

“So, I mean, we went out the next day and picked out our own doorknobs, so Andrew could put the garage doorknob back where it came from, so we go to all this trouble to make sure that we have this lock that they don’t have keys to and can’t just break open—and, I mean, I want to point out that they’ve never tried that, like, we lock the door sometimes because of like how kids use nightlights because they’re scared of the dark? Like, we don’t have to, here, but it still feels safer. But anyway, a little while after that, Andrew mentioned that he and Neil can _both pick locks_. They both know how! Which is why we have really good locks _and_ deadbolts on all the downstairs doors, because they know how easy it is to get through a locked door, but anyway, Paige and I were like _what was the point of the locks_ , and Andrew was like—we’ll get you deadbolts. And then they _did_. And Andrew installed them for us. And, I mean, they’ve literally never tried to come in unless we actively invited them in. I mean, the locks are basically unnecessary, but they make us feel better, you know? Like, if we had deadbolts on the _outside_ of our bedroom door, I can see why that would be freaky, but they’re on the inside. Like, use your brains, thanks.”

Neil watches as more questions pop up in the sidebar— _do you need help? Do you need someplace to run? Do you need legal assistance? Do you need financial assistance?_

Natalie and Paige sigh. It’s a long, deep, thorough sigh.

Paige steeples her fingers together. It’s an Andrew move. “Look. We know you guys mean well. But, like, at this point, the answer is _yes, we do need help_ , but like, not because we need help getting away from Neil and Andrew. We need help getting away from _you_. I mean, yesterday, one of our classmates—his dad tried to get us to leave with him, like, physically tried to pull us into the car, because he insists that we’re unsafe here and don’t know it.” Neil glances at Andrew— _what_? But Paige is still talking—this isn’t the time for him to talk to Andrew. “Our friends today walked us in, like, a platoon to our bus. And, I mean, maybe when _you_ were all 14, you’d have loved to have adults trying to kidnap you for your _safety_ , but we don’t. And, like, that’s on you. That’s on the people who got hashtags trending and petitions circulating. Like, we went on TV and talked about how great it is to live here, and then you listened to a guy who said _oooooooo I don’t know anything about anything and I’m a douche but maybe these two perfectly happy and healthy kids are in DANGER from BIG SCARY MEN_ and you were all like, yeah, cool, time to harass some kids—oh, don’t bother,” she snaps. Neil glances at the chat— _he’s your real dad tho._

“Yeah, I mean, just because he’s our bio dad doesn’t mean he has some special insight into what’s best for us,” Natalie says, annoyed and trying desperately to keep it under wraps. “He had no problem abandoning us for eight years, so like, what makes you think that now he’s the one you should be listening to?”

The comments pop up too fast for Neil to read them all, but he gets the gist, and judging by the increasingly furious looks on the girls’ faces, they get it too.

“No. Stop. Stop,” Natalie says. “Hang on. You think we’re _scared_ to be apart from our loving biological father? You think it’s _terrifying_ to be in this house? Hang on. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Like, just—just—imagine, for a moment, that you’re five years old. You’re a kid. And then your mom doesn’t come home, and your dad tells you that she’s dead and never coming back. You’ll never see her again. And you don’t understand that. You don’t understand why. You don’t know what cancer is, you just know your mom is _gone_. And that’s pretty bad. And then, less than a year later, your dad bundles you in the car with some of your stuff in a bag, and drops you off with a bunch of strangers. And they tell you that that’s where you live, now. You’re _wards_ , not children. You don’t have parents, you have _guardians_. And, I mean, you’re thinking, no, that’s bullshit, why are these people acting like they can tell me what to do, why are we here, when is dad going to come back? And the thing is—he doesn’t. He never does. Sometimes, they move you to a different house, and for the first couple years, you keep hoping that the house will be _home_ , that they’ll just—take you back. Just drop you off, the way you were dropped off in the first place. And you sit there and wait for your dad to come back—because you see that happen, sometimes, your foster siblings will be with you for a couple weeks and then they’ll go back home. And you just _want_ that, so bad, because—because you’re not these people’s kids, and they know it.”

“And, like, it wasn’t _always_ terrible,” Paige says. “Sometimes it was pretty good, actually—the people were nice, and wanted to help. But like—you never knew how long anything was going to last. Maybe you’re in a good house now, and then three months later one of your foster parents dies in a car crash, or gets diagnosed with cancer, or the family decides to move, and suddenly they’ve dropped out of the foster system and you have to switch houses. Like, even when it was _nice_ , it was always pretty clear that we weren’t _family_. We didn’t _live_ there. Because we didn’t. And it was—we were really scared, in the beginning. And then every time we’d move houses, that was terrifying, because we never really knew if we were going to go to a good house or a bad one. Maybe, this time, they’d hit us if we made noise. Or maybe they’d get angry if we asked questions. Or maybe they wouldn’t want us to get fat so they’d only give us one meal a day. We just—we didn’t know, we never knew what to expect, we’d have to learn the rules all over again, and sometimes the rules were that there _were_ no rules and we couldn’t do anything right. And adults don’t respect kids, no one ever gave us the benefit of the doubt, no one ever trusted us to know ourselves, even a little bit. And _that’s_ not a foster issue, it’s just a regular adult issue, which Patrick has but our dads really don’t—”

“And like, to be honest, it’s kinda bullshit,” Natalie interrupts, “because a lot of the stuff I’ve seen online and whatnot the past couple days is about how kids belong with their dad, how kids belong with their families, but I mean, _he’s the one who gave us up_ , he’s the one who abandoned _us_ , first off. Second of all, if you _really_ believed that, you’d be looking to overhaul the foster system—like, if someone’s been taken away from their parents because their parents are too poor, and then the government is going to pay _the foster parent_ to take care of them—just give that money to the parent! I mean, for sure, there needs to be a system for kids like us who were abandoned, but—like—there needs to be better vetting, or something, and—I’m getting off-topic. The point is, if Patrick wanted us, he should’ve come back for us years ago, instead of waiting until our grandparents saw us on TV—”

“And like, even, another bullshit thing—” Paige says, reacting to something in the chat that Neil has missed, “—sorry for interrupting—but like, the idea that _oooh, Neil’s dad was scary,_ like, I don’t care, it’s bullshit that you think that kids are responsible for the shit their parents did? And like, even when you’re like _Neil’s been violent in the past, oohhooo,_ I mean—like, he did what he had to do to survive, and now that he’s not actively fighting off people who want to kill him, he doesn’t do that shit. I mean, look, he’s gotten better, first off. Second of all, neither he _nor_ Andrew have ever so much as _touched_ us without our permission, they’ve never even _yelled_ at us, they’re the best parents in the world, and I’m just—”

“And, like, yeah we were scared, jackass, at the beginning,” Natalie says, responding to a comment. “It’s always scary to go live with two adults you don’t know who have total control over your life. But the thing is, Neil and Andrew have done everything possible to make us safe and happy and healthy, even when we were being assholes to them, whereas I’d be _way more scared_ to go live with Patrick, because—I mean, for one thing, again, he abandoned us. Neil and Andrew haven’t done that. And also, the reason why he gave us away was because _we looked like our mom_ , which, let me say, as a 14 year old that’s probably way more true _now_ than it was when we were _six,_ and second of all, again, remember that whole _giving away_ thing? Like, he did that! That’s not something his dad did, or something he had to do because otherwise he’d die, or something he did for our health. He gave us away, and he never looked back. Like, yay, he’s trying to become a foster parent now, but I mean—he could’ve done that at any time! He didn’t need to wait until now! We chose Neil and Andrew over him, and now he’s feeling bad about it. That’s not—like, I’m not going to choose _that_ over the two adults who accepted us and respect us and trust us and have done literally everything in their power to make sure we felt safe and comfortable and loved, and have done everything to help us—like, they help us with our homework pretty much every night, they’ve roped half their friends into helping us where they can’t, what the fuck can Patrick do for us?”

“Like, the fact that he donated his sperm doesn’t actually make him the best for us,” Paige says. “So, anyway, I think the whole point of this stream was for us to say, like, _please_ stop harassing us, that’s fucking rude, and also, please stop pretending that the dude who has seen us for 10 minutes total in the past eight years knows what’s best for us, and, just—what? Yeah, I mean, sure kids don’t know everything that goes on in their house. But, I mean, we’re not stupid, we’ve seen a billion different bad relationships, we know what that looks like. And also, I don’t know why you think that some heavily edited audio clip and a bunch of shit you’ve read in the tabloids or whatever makes you more qualified to comment on my parents than I am. And, just, like, even if Neil and Andrew got divorced, I’d still rather split my time up between the two of them than go back to _Patrick_ , and like, the thing is—the thing is—” she repeats, louder, as Natalie tries to interrupt, “the thing is, this isn’t bias on my end, like I was so happy and excited when he showed up. I wanted to make it work with a third dad, and to go visit him in Denver, and to meet his new kids, and whatever, and like, do weekly FaceTime sessions with him or something, and instead of being like, _wow, that’s an olive branch I don’t deserve_ , he was like, _hey, you’re gonna grow up to be an abuser, you don’t know what’s good for you, and you belong with me, the asshole who forgot about you for eight years_ , and like, I don’t know why you’re all on his side, given that he’s the worst?”

“Like, really, though,” Natalie says, “I mean, Neil and Andrew are just—modeling how to respond to trauma, and how to get out of the shittiest imaginable situations, and how to find happiness, and how to, just, make life _worth_ it, whereas Patrick went and did grief _so bad_ that he gave up his two kids! And you want us to go back to _him_? Are you out of your mind?”

“Honestly,” Paige says. “And I didn’t want to do this whole stream just to yell at people, that wasn’t the point, but—I mean—I just—I just want to be left alone so we can get adopted by the two guys who love us and care about us and _want_ us to be in their lives. Patrick—he doesn’t. He didn’t love or care about us enough to bother searching for us, or to do anything at all about us until our grandparents saw our interview with Gianna Rosetti and told him to get his ass over here, and the only reason they didn’t come themselves was because our grandpa isn’t healthy. And we’re not in danger here, we’re safer than we’ve ever been and happier than we’ve ever been, and we just want to stay here. And, no, we’re not just saying that,” she says, sounding tired. “They’re _not_ watching. We announced this without telling them or their PR agents, and neither one of them uses twitter, they would have no way of knowing. As far as they know, we just don’t feel like hanging out downstairs right now. We don’t want—we don’t want to worry them. And we didn’t want people thinking we were just saying this because they were holding us at gunpoint or something. Like, look, if we were in danger, we could tell our foster agent and they’d pull us out. It wouldn’t even be hard. I don’t get why you guys are acting like we’re being held hostage during a bank robbery when we’re literally just trying to live our lives.”

“Anyway, I think we’re done,” Natalie says. “We’ve said our bit. I don’t feel like being angry anymore. Anyway, just, like, leave us alone. Stop talking about rescuing us, you’re gonna get us kidnapped. And you’re wasting our time, we have homework to do.”

“What she said,” Paige agrees. “Bye.”

Neil closes out YouTube as the stream ends. He puts the phone down.

“That’s what happened yesterday,” Andrew says, blank and apathetic. “Someone tried to pull them from school.”

“We should be walking them to and from the bus stop,” Neil says. He’ll stop being calm about this, soon. He’ll be worried, soon. Blazingly furious, soon. But not yet. “Or maybe just driving them to and from school.”

“Might be easier to grab them, then—someone could just say we couldn’t make it.”

“They know all our friends.”

“They don’t know Roland. Don’t know anyone from Eden’s.”

“But who else knows that? No one. And the kids are too smart to give that away. We could do a password. So if someone says they’re there to get the kids, the kids can ask for the password, and if that person doesn’t know it, the kids won’t leave with them.”

“Might be a good idea regardless,” Andrew agrees. “There are those apps where—you push down a button, and hold it, and when you let go you have ten seconds to enter a passcode or else it sends out texts telling important people that something’s happened to you.”

“Useful, but that won’t tell us where the kids are, and I’d rather prevent anything from happening to them in the first place.”

Andrew waves a hand— _of course_.

“How do we tell them we watched the stream?”

“You watched it?”

Neil and Andrew swivel to find Paige and Natalie, bloodless, in the doorway.

“It was—it was all over twitter,” Neil says. “And I’m logged in on my phone, I get the notifications.”

“How much did you see?” Paige asks.

“The whole thing,” Andrew says apologetically. “Someone tried to kidnap you.”

“I mean, he didn’t try very hard,” Natalie says. “There were two of us and one of him. I don’t think he really expected us to put up a fight.”

“I’m sorry,” Andrew says.

Natalie and Paige shrug. “It wasn’t your fault,” Natalie says.

Andrew looks like he’s biting his tongue hard enough to bite it off. Neil figures it out half a second later—if Andrew hadn’t yelled at him, there would be no audio clip, there would be no movement to take the girls away, no one would be trying to kidnap them. None of what’s happening would be happening.

Neil flicks Andrew’s shoulder. “How can we help you?” Neil asks.

Paige and Natalie give Neil twin faces suggesting that that was a ridiculous question.

“How can we help you feel safer?” Neil clarifies. “We could pick you up from school, we could create a password so you know whether or not you should go with a stranger who says they’re with us, we could sit on the phone with you when you leave the house until you get on the bus and when you leave the bus until you get into the house—”

“Yeah,” Paige says. “You probably don’t need to pick us up from school—we literally have a guard. Half our class has made it their duty to see us get on the bus. But maybe—we could text you? When we leave, when we get on the bus, when we get off the bus?”

“That works,” Neil agrees.

“I don’t see the point of a password,” Natalie says. “I can’t see a situation where you can tell someone the password, but not text us to let us know who’s picking us up. I think probably we just won’t talk to strangers anymore.”

“I’m glad you know,” Paige mumbles. “We didn’t—we didn’t want to worry you. Didn’t want you to freak out.”

Neil feels that like a lead weight in his stomach. This one’s on him. “I won’t,” he promises. “I mean, I’ll worry, but I promise not to freak out.”

Paige smiles at Neil, but—Neil’s got some work to do, there. He’s glad his first consultation is tomorrow.

But for now—for now, he’s got two kids and a husband and too much space between all of them. Something has to be done about that.

Ah. Neil knows what to do about that. “Wolf pack?”

Paige and Natalie light up. “Yeah yeah yeah,” Paige says, grinning, poking Natalie in the ribs. Natalie swats Paige away, but she’s smiling, too.

Neil and Andrew stand up, and Natalie and Paige position themselves within launching distance. The four of them howl. Natalie and Paige launch. Neil and Andrew catch them, three of the four of them laughing, and Neil hugs his daughters, and takes comfort in the fact that Patrick can’t take the kids away. The public can’t take the kids away. Grant may be coming tomorrow, but he won’t take the kids away—he’ll see them, happy and safe and well fed, and know that they’re better off here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing neil's therapy schedule: look how lucky you are. you're so lucky. I don't feel like inserting drama here so you can have five therapy appointments just every other day no problem. you see what I do for you? You see how I help you? you should be thanking me


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> therapy consultation, grant consultation, fbi call, red december concert, katy perry, mozzarella sticks, we didn't start the fi-RE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i didn't answer comments til 2 minutes ago but it's been a stressful week but ALSO @ all my fellow USAicans: WE DID GOOD

“So about your kids,” Eliana says.

Neil makes a face at the car in front of him. Of course they had to have this conversation now, while Neil’s on the way to his consultation. “What about them?”

“I’m assuming you didn’t know about their stream?”

“Found out about it 30 seconds before it started.”

She sighs. “Then there’s only so much we could’ve done; once they announced it, we couldn’t have forced them to take it back.”

“And I wouldn’t have, anyway.”

“Of course. Look. It wasn’t great. It also wasn’t the worst.”

“If it was neutral, why did you bother calling me?”

“Because I’m your PR agent, and that’s the whole point of my job, Neil. If Gianna doesn’t have questions—either for them directly or just about that stream in general—I’ll chop off my own head. You need to decide what you’re going to say, and you have _got_ to talk to your kids about their tempers. They need to keep it under wraps when they’re on camera. They can’t run around cursing people out and yelling and being rude and then insist that you’re doing a great parenting job.”

“And why not? What do I care about any of that? They’re safe and—”

“Neil, don’t yell at me about it, I don’t have much say in what the public thinks of as good and bad. It’s not my job to change that. It’s my job to make sure that _you_ fit into what they think of as _good_ , and two kids who appear to have no social graces fit into what they think of as _bad_. The problem is that if they go to the other extreme, it’ll also look bad—like they were coached. They can’t appear to have been coached. It has to seem reasonable.”

“People got used to me, they can get used to my kids.”

“No, they can’t. No one likes a rude kid. Rude adults—that, we can spin as shocking, or honest, or blunt, or outspoken. Rude kids? No way to spin that, not unless you want to hand out a sob story about their terrible childhoods.”

“I’m not telling anyone about their childhoods, it’s no one else’s business.”

“Then they need to stop being rude kids. They can talk more about living with you if they want—that seemed to be fine, as long as they stop talking about Andrew’s bad days, which was a big slip-up. But they can’t be rude to people who ask questions. They’re kids, they don’t have that luxury.”

“They’re kids, how can they be expected to be polite in the face of people trying to take them away from their parents?”

“If they can’t be polite, they shouldn’t be sticking themselves in the public eye like that.”

“Well, they are.”

“Neil, I need you to work with me for 30 seconds here,” she says. She’s exasperated, losing patience with him, he can tell. This is all reasonable, to her. “I get it, but look, people are organizing to get the kids taken away. You’re not the only person in the world who cares about those kids, and even if everyone else is misguided, they’ve still got more power together than you do alone, and you’ve gotta find a way to make sure you keep the kids _without_ every human on this planet calling for you and Andrew to get fired. And you and Andrew aren’t the only people in the world who wants good PR. Yes?”

Oh. Shit. Would his boss stand by him? If people start calling for his resignation, will his boss let him stay? And if Neil _does_ resign or get fired, would Ichirou accept that? Could Neil leverage his new position as southern outpost to keep himself and his family alive and out of the mafia?

Neil considers pulling over. He wants to puke.

“Neil?”

“Yes. Yes, I understand,” Neil says. “I’ll talk to them. I have an errand to run, now, so I’ve gotta go.”

“All right. Bye, Neil.”

“Bye.”

Hearing the call end over his car’s speakers is a relief.

This is an issue, suddenly. The general populace doesn’t have the power to take his kids away, and Neil is reasonably certain the foster agency won’t take them, but if Neil gets fired, it might be game over for all of them. If Andrew gets fired—they should be able to make things work just fine, on Neil’s salary. Even just on what he gets to keep, they’ll be okay. If Neil gets fired, though, that’s not a financial hit, it’s just a mafia hit.

Pulling into the therapist’s parking lot feels ridiculous. He doesn’t need therapy, he needs an _out_. An out that will keep everyone safe. A way out that won’t end with him and his whole family dead. What is therapy going to do for him? He should just go home. Talk to Andrew. Figure out a way to talk to the girls about this.

Neil puts his head on the steering wheel and counts to ten.

He can’t go home without going to the consultation. Andrew will be furious if Neil gets home and hasn’t even tried. And Neil could fake it—just sit here for an hour, cancel the appointment, and then go home—but if he’s going to do nothing for an hour, he may as well try therapy. And hey, maybe it’ll help—he knows it’s coming, can see it heading for him, the mental _badness_ is on its way. The concept of getting fired is sending him headfirst into a bad place. Neil takes a deep breath. This is just a consultation. He can’t go in there in the middle of an episode of whatever it is he’s got.

He shoves it down and gets out of the car.

And, honestly, he’s really good at just—pushing things away, most of the time. If he can perfect that on his own, does he even need therapy?

Well, fuck, maybe he’ll go into therapy and have an epiphany.

The therapist is punctual, he’ll give her that; the patient before him is out on time.

He takes one more deep breath—the last of his sweet, sweet freedom—before he heads into her office.

An hour later, Neil leaves annoyed, and isn’t any less annoyed by the time he gets home.

“Not her?” Andrew says, as soon as he sees Neil’s face.

Neil flops down on the couch next to him.

It’s nice to be home. Neil likes his house. He likes the paint job they did, likes the furniture they bought, likes the people who live in it. “Not her. What were you listening to?”

“Podcast. Why not her?” Andrew asks, sticking his headphones in his pocket, refusing to be derailed.

Neil shrugs. “Just—I didn’t like—”

Andrew makes a show of getting comfy.

Neil rolls his eyes, but he can’t help but smile. “It was just—I’d say, you know, shit sucks or whatever, and she’d say oh, that must’ve sucked, which—yeah, it did. I know that. My issue is not that I’m lacking validation, or that I don’t know things were bad. It’s that I don’t know how to—how to—reconcile all the facts of my present. It’s not my past that I struggle with. I think.”

“You think.”

“I think. I mean—how does it help me to have someone sit there, telling me that what I just said is true?”

“Some people need that,” Andrew points out. “And it builds trust.”

“I know,” Neil says. “But it just annoys me. Feels like a waste of time. For me. I don’t feel like being told things I know.”

Andrew shrugs and sticks his feet in Neil’s lap. “So, not her, onto the next one. At least you know what you _don’t_ like: validation. Sweet, sweet validation, and affirmation of your own understanding of past events.”

“Exactly,” Neil agrees, patting Andrew’s shins. “Probably I need someone to yell at me.”

“Whatever you need, love. As long as I’m not there. If I see someone who isn’t Kevin yell at you, I might lose it.”

“That would be fun,” Neil says, meeting Andrew’s gaze. “I want to see what happens when you lose control.”

Andrew stares at Neil. Is he—flushed? Is Andrew _blushing_? Neil grins. “I can hear your brain trying to restart.”

Andrew shakes his head, opens his mouth, finds nothing to say, and closes it again.

Neil tiptoes his fingers up Andrew’s leg.

“God, are you even—do you even _want_ to fuck or do you just like _destroying_ me?” Andrew asks, voice deeper than usual.

“Could go either way,” Neil decides, still grinning. “How destroyed are you?”

Andrew stares at him.

“Trying to decide whether or not you want to ruin the mood?” Neil asks.

“The _mood_ was only established two minutes ago, and rather suddenly at that.”

Neil shrugs. “Next time, I’ll put down some rose petals and light some candles.”

Andrew stares Neil down.

Neil awaits the verdict.

Andrew sighs. “I’m going to wait for those rose petals and candles. But also. I have been thinking.”

“Have you, now.”

“About the offers you put on the table.”

Offers? The table?

Oh. _Oh_. Neil stops breathing for a minute. Neil giving Andrew blowjobs. Penetrative sex. “And?”

Silence.

“Maybe I should’ve decided what I wanted to say before I opened my mouth,” Andrew mutters. Neil snorts. “I could be down. You can start asking. I may not say yes.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees, too quickly. Andrew doesn’t say anything about it. “Okay. I will.”

They sit there in silence for another few minutes. It’s not-quite-awkward.

Andrew turns on _Much Ado About Nothing_. When that ends, he puts on _Twelfth Night,_ and they’re halfway through that when the kids get home.

“Grant is coming,” Paige announces, grabbing King and flopping down into a chair.

“Right now?” Neil asks.

“No. I don’t think so. But, like, in half an hour.”

“Yes,” Neil agrees.

Natalie falls onto the other chair.

Neil waits.

Nothing.

“How was school?” He asks.

“Good. Are you gonna hit play?”

“I can,” Andrew agrees. “Do you want to talk about anything?”

“No,” Natalie says.

Andrew hits play.

Neil closes his eyes and hopes with every bone in his body that Grant will be nice.

Half an hour passes at light speed, and then Neil is opening the front door, a polite smile on his face.

Grant walks inside and instantly sets off every alarm bell Neil has. He looks—unhappy. Nervous. He reminds Neil of when Patrick turned up on their doorstep, and Neil doesn’t like it.

“How are you doing?” Neil asks. Manners. Polite, adult manners. He can do that.

“I’m well, how are you?” Grant asks.

“Doing just fine. Can I grab you a drink?”

“No, thanks, I’ve got a water bottle.”

Paige and Natalie pop out of the living room. “How are we doing this?” Natalie asks. “Which one of us do you want first?”

“Do you have knives on you?” Grant asks.

“What?” Paige asks.

“What the fuck?” Natalie says.

“Those aren’t answers,” Grant says. “For my safety, I don’t generally interview people who are armed.”

“Wow,” Natalie says sarcastically, “this is a _great_ way to start off the day. No, we’re not armed. Should we be? For our safety, we don’t generally hang out alone with grown men without weapons.”

“You have nothing to fear from me,” Grant says, and all of it, all of it is wrong, Grant is expecting pushback, and Neil is fairly certain he knows why. Grant is looking for any excuse to take the kids away. Any excuse at all will do. Neil can practically hear Eliana’s voice in his head, telling him that he isn’t the only person in the world who wants to have good PR, can hear people on Twitter banging away on their keyboards trying to move the kids to Colorado. Neil can’t look at Andrew, can’t do it, because if he does he’ll ask Andrew to move to Colorado, to follow the kids there. Fuck, to try to transfer to Denver—that would work, Andrew would have to skip out on his contract but they can take the financial hit, unless Denver wants to trade—of course they would, Andrew is good, the issue will be getting the Jaguars to accept the trade—and Neil will be stuck here.

Natalie is walking out onto the porch with Grant. Neil’s missed something, again. He’s losing it again. “Your jacket,” he says, and Natalie doubles back to grab her jacket off the chair. She gives him a quick, tense smile, and then his daughter walks out the door, leaving Neil and Andrew in the kitchen with Paige. Neil wants to tell her to run, like kicking a dog out of the house when there’s a fire—

Andrew takes Neil’s hand.

“He wants to take them away,” Neil says in Russian. He can’t not say it. “Did you hear him, did you—”

“You don’t know that,” Andrew says in fierce, furious Russian. “He didn’t say that. You can’t read minds, Neil, and you’re as observant as a three-month-dead goldfish, you don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t have to do this.”

“What?” Paige asks frantically. “What’s going on?”

Neil holds his free arm out to her, and she tentatively moves in for a hug. “Nothing, Gigi.”

“Lying to me,” she mumbles.

“If they go to their dad,” Neil says in Russian, trying to avoid names, “will you transfer to Denver?”

After a minute of silence, Neil gives in and looks at Andrew. Andrew wasn’t waiting for that, though—he wasn’t waiting for anything. He looks—he looks—bad. He looks bad.

Neil crumples like a tin can under the weight of a house. “We’ll keep them,” he says. “Whatever we have to do, we’ll keep them.” He can’t make Andrew make that choice. Can’t send Andrew away. Can’t make Andrew abandon the kids. If Neil was free to leave South Carolina, it wouldn’t even be an issue—they’d both go, and if it fucked up Neil’s income they’d drain their savings to appease the Moriyamas. But Neil can’t leave, so Andrew can’t leave, so they have to keep the kids at all costs.

“I don’t understand,” Paige says. “I don’t get it. What you’re worried about. Stop it.”

Neil rubs her back. “Nothing. It’s nothing you need to worry about. We’ll take care of it.”

“You’d better,” she says, scared and confused and confused about why she’s scared, and Neil doubles down. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep them.

The porch door opens, and Paige steps away, smooths her face. Natalie knows better, though—she walks through the door and stops dead. Glances behind her—Grant must not have followed her in, though, because she looks at Paige and hisses “ _what_?”

Paige shrugs, puts on a smile, and heads out to the porch.

“ _What_?” Natalie stage-whispers once the porch door closes.

“Nothing,” Neil says. “It’s okay.”

“He’s trying to take us away,” she says quietly, crossing her arms, trying hard to be furious and only barely passing scared. “He’s pushing, he’s looking for reasons.”

“He won’t,” Neil says, a promise he can’t keep. “We won’t let him. He’s got no reason to take us.”

“It’s—he’s trying,” she says again. She steps forward, and it’s her turn to get a hug. Neil rubs her back. Are these visits always going to be like this? Always going to be terrifying? Always going to be the four of them fighting to stay together? They’ve only got three visits left, but that feels like a lot. A long way to go, before they can adopt the kids. And even after that, there’s always CPS. The kids won’t be safe here until they’re 18.

It’ll be fine. Neil will make sure they stay. He’ll keep them here.

Eventually, the porch door opens again. Grant trails Paige coming in. They all sit down at the table. Neil keeps his hands on his thighs; they might be shaking, and he doesn’t want anyone to know.

“The kids seem on edge today,” Grant says.

Neil doesn’t speak. That wasn’t a question.

“I’m not sure if you’re aware,” Grant says, “but there was an attempt made to kidnap Natalie and Paige on Wednesday. They publicized that, in a video yesterday, made without parental knowledge.”

“We are aware,” Neil says.

“The kidnapping attempt appeared to be related specifically to your parentage—”

“I mean, hang on,” Natalie breaks in, “it’s not like, he, like, pulled us kicking and screaming at gunpoint into the car. He just—thought we wanted to run away, and tried really hard to help, and had to be very loudly told otherwise. And had to be kicked. That’s not _really_ an attempted kidnapping, I think you’re exaggerating—”

“Nat,” Neil says quietly.

“What?”

“It’s okay. We know,” he tells Grant. “We are aware of the situation, and look forward to addressing it on national TV this weekend.”

“That won’t stop people.”

“It’ll stop some,” Neil says. “For the rest, we’ve established a system with the girls to make sure they’re safe throughout the day, and we’ve taken steps to get information about our home address down on several websites. They are as safe as two kids can be.”

Grant looks down at his hands, clasped on the tabletop. He takes a deep breath.

Neil’s stomach falls out of his body.

“Look. I can’t—I don’t think I can leave the kids in this house,” he says. Neil’s been waiting for him to say it. The words still hit like speeding trains. “There’s—”

“ _Why_?” Paige asks, leaning forward. “Why _not_? What, you think people will stop caring about us once we’re back with Patrick? They won’t! We won’t let them! We’ll tweet non-stop about how terrible he is and how unhappy and how unsafe we are and how it’s all your fault and—”

“Not necessarily with Patrick,” Grant says, trying to appease her. “He hasn’t been cleared yet, and you’d have to be moved back to Colorado. Just—to a different family—”

“Oh, even better,” Natalie says hotly. “I can see the headlines now. _Foster system tears children away from parents—_ ”

“And, I mean, if you think we won’t sit there day and night on every social media site talking about how you took us out of a good place and put us into a shitty place, you are _wrong_ ,” Paige says.

“Surely you can see that, left here, you won’t be particularly safe—”

“No, I can’t,” Natalie snaps. “I don’t think we’ve been particularly safe in a solid few of the houses we’ve been in, but I _can_ say that no one ever bothered trying to take us out of those places, no one’s ever seemed to care too much about us until _suddenly_ we start doing well, and then it’s a whole fucking issue for you and we have to leave to go god knows where and maybe even to the person who _put us in the system in the first place_? Sorry, do you _have_ any brain cells?”

“I’m sorry you’ve been in bad houses before, but having members of the public following you and trying to remove you from the house and harassing you—virtually and in person—will put you in danger, if it hasn’t already, and taking you out might help things calm down—once you’re in a safe place, once we figure out what the landscape is like, we can talk about next steps, and if you’re really insistent on being here, we can try again, maybe in a year—”

“ _No_ , you’re not taking us away for a year,” Paige says, “that is _unacceptable_ , we are in the middle of adoption proceedings and—”

Neil stands up. “I’ll be right back,” he says, ignoring the betrayed looks his family is giving him as he speedwalks out of the room. The argument explodes behind him as he half-runs through the living room to the bathroom. He locks himself in, sits down on the floor, and pulls out his phone.

And then he changes his mind. He can’t call the Moriyamas. He promised Andrew he wouldn’t. And anyway, what can they do, right now, to help? They can’t exactly call Grant and tell him to go away. And what would they ask for in return? Neil isn’t certain he could argue that _keeping the kids_ falls under their pledge to keep the kids safe.

Neil can do nothing.

Unless—

He calls Browning.

It takes a couple minutes—he doesn’t exactly have Browning’s cell phone number, he has to go through secretaries—and every wasted second feels like the kids’ lives down the drain. Neil hears his family, distantly—is that Andrew? Andrew, raising his voice? Neil needs to be back in there. He needs Browning to get on the phone, right now—

“Neil,” Browning says pleasantly. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Neil opens his mouth, and then he realizes he has no words. He didn’t plan out what he was going to say. “Sorry for calling,” is what comes out. “I don’t know what else to do. Grant—the foster agent—is trying to take the kids out of the house—not because they’re unsafe here, but because other people are—”

“Oh, I was wondering when he’d try that,” Browning says. “I’ve been following the fun, of course, and it was only a matter of time before they had to respond. And any response would look best if they’d already fixed the problem. How closely have you been following the drama, online?”

“I haven’t.”

“Oh, you should, you might find some solutions. For instance, here’s something I’ve noticed: Everyone’s very divided on where, precisely, the danger lies. Some people are _heavily_ fixated on you, Neil—they think you wouldn’t be able to get out of a gang that easily, you’d have had to go into witness protection in order to survive this long, so if you _didn’t_ go into witness protection and you’re still alive, it must be because there’s someone more powerful out there keeping you around. Some people are just as fixated on Andrew—he’s been violent, and he was the one yelling at you, in that fancy little audio clip. There are a few who think you’re a match made in heaven and both a threat, and you ought to kill each other before you hurt anyone else, but they’re a minority. People like to pick sides, and you’ve given them two. Which means this, Neil: If only _one_ of you had the kids, the outcry would probably be halved, and then it would die down, and the foster system would leave you alone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Divorce, Neil. One of you moves out. One of you keeps the kids. Shit, one of you trades teams. As long as one of you doesn’t have access to the kids, you’ll likely get to keep them—and then you can Skype and FaceTime and all that, no one will ever know. Clandestine family vacations will even be fine, as long as you stay away from cameras. Offer that up to your foster agent, and probably he’ll find it acceptable. Thoughts?”

“Thoughts—on divorce? No,” Neil says. He can’t even think straight anymore—why does Browning want him and Andrew to get _divorced_? He sees it from the PR perspective, but the concept of living the next four years separately makes Neil want to disappear. They barely managed it for _one_ year. “No. That’s not an acceptable compromise.”

Browning sighs. “You know I’m not your friend, right, Neil? I’ll humor you, because you _did_ get me a promotion and help us break a major gang, but I just gave you advice and you’ve decided you want something better. We don’t even have a working relationship, let alone a friendly one. I don’t show up for ex-gang members to help them get kids every month, I only did it _last_ month because it was convenient. Unless you have something for me? Some reason why you need the kids? Some information you’ve withheld? I’m not going to go out of my way to interfere with the affairs of a whole other department, Josten.”

Neil could give up the Moriyamas.

Even as he thinks the thought, he dismisses it. Better for the kids to be with Patrick than dead. “I’ve got nothing. I just—” He just what? What _did_ he expect Browning to do? “I’m backed into a corner. I’m sorry for bothering you.” He hangs up before Browning can answer—what does he care if Browning’s offended? It’s not like they have even a working relationship, let alone a personal relationship. And Neil doesn’t want Browning to hear Neil lose it, because that’s what he’s about to do.

He could call the Moriyamas. He knows how to contact them—not Ichirou directly, but _someone_. Could beg. What would they ask for? Would Neil be willing to give it? Would Neil be allowed to turn them down?

And then, of course, there’s his promise to Andrew. 

But they’re about to lose their _kids_. Surely—surely, now, for this, Andrew would understand. Surely that wouldn’t be the end.

Neil can’t do that to Andrew.

He just can’t. Even for the kids. Even for the kids, he can’t break that promise. He may as well agree to divorce Andrew. Andrew would stay, if Neil called the Moriyamas—the kids are too important for Andrew to leave over this. But—it would be broken. _They_ would be broken. Forever. Andrew would never trust Neil again, and Neil can’t handle that. There’s a line there that Neil will not cross.

If Grant takes the kids, Neil can talk to Andrew about calling the Moriyamas. Ichirou can reverse this decision as easily as he could prevent it.

Or Neil and Andrew could just go kidnap their kids back. It wouldn’t be hard. In fact, Natalie and Paige would probably help it happen. Consensual kidnapping. But what then? What, when someone comes looking for the girls—because anyone with a brain cell would know where they were. And are the kids just going to hide in the attic for the next four years? Kidnapping wouldn’t work. Couldn’t be permanent.

Neil takes a deep breath. He can’t solve this from the bathroom. Maybe they can still argue their way out of it. 

He puts his phone back in his pocket. He can’t be distracted right now. He heads back into the kitchen, giving Andrew an apologetic glance, just in time for Grant to be interrupted by a ringing phone.

“Sorry,” Grant mutters. “Must be an emergency—oh,” he says, tone changing, going flat. “A FaceTime from Federal Agent Browning.” He sighs, apparently oblivious to the horror Neil is feeling, and answers the call.

Neil suppresses the urge to knock the phone out of Grant’s hands. Neil shouldn’t have hung up so abruptly, shouldn’t have called him in the first place, shouldn’t have—

“Agent Browning,” Grant says cordially. “How can I help you?”

“Grant! How are you?”

Neil’s stomach is performing previously unheard-of gymnastics. When is Browning going to say it? How long will he drag this out? When is he going to tell Grant to take the kids? When is he going to exact his revenge on Neil for being rude?

“I’m a little busy,” Grant says. “Is this urgent?”

Browning sighs, loud and long. “I was trying to be polite, Grant, the least you could do is return the favor. But look. Are you trying to take a couple kids away, right now? Is that what’s going on?”

Neil swallows down bile. He’s argued with the FBI before. He can do it again. He just has to keep from puking while he does.

“Can’t imagine how you’d have heard that,” Grant says politely.

“Are you really going to fuck over a couple kids for the sake of making your agency look good?”

Neil blinks. What?

“I don’t think that this is _effing them over,_ ” Grant says. “I think it’s protecting them from members of the public who would interfere in their lives.”

“Do the _kids_ seem to think they need that help?”

“No, but we don’t often let kids take their lives into their own hands. This is why parents exist.”

“Okay. Look. Grant. I’m trying my level best to let you make this decision yourself, but if you won’t make it, I’ll make it for you. You’re not taking those kids out of that goddamn house.”

Neil’s heart bursts. Did he just hear that? Did Browning just say that? Andrew and the kids look like they’ve just seen blue sky after years of clouds.

“Here’s the thing,” Browning says. “When I work with people from gangs, and mafias, and all sorts of shitty walks in life, and I want them to turn informant, either staying with the gang in question or going into witness protection—there’s a lot of people who are resistant. They resist because they don’t see how it can lead to a better life than they currently have. And I don’t have much answer to that. I can’t exactly point out other informants, or other people who are—or have been—in witness protection. You know who I point to, these past few years? Famous, successful exy player Neil Josten, happily married, living his life to the fullest, absolutely _thriving_ after spilling his guts to me. A miracle he’s still alive—without witness protection—but doing well. Having kids? A bonus! Getting those kids taken away because the whole government will turn against him because of some bad PR? Not great, Grant. Ah ah ah,” he says as Grant opens his mouth to talk, “no. No, this is nonnegotiable. If the kids were in danger—I’d be on your side. But what on earth makes you think the public will leave them alone, once they’re in a different house? Maybe if the kids put out videos of them being happy and safe, sure, but what on earth makes you think they’ll _cooperate_? They’ll run away, they’ll make a fuss, they’ll call up fucking Gianna Rosetti and get on the news, they’ll call CNN. You think you look bad _now_? Wait until two furious teenagers are reaming your ass on national TV. Wait until the public is decrying your agency’s insistence on putting public outrage above the safety of two kids. Wait until their birth father gets tired of them and of the difficulty of dealing with two kids who don’t want to be there and of the public expecting the world from him and gives them up again, or finds a new, less blame-worthy way of getting rid of them—”

“Now, I think _that’s_ unlikely,” Grant objects.

“Unlikely? What’s unlikely? That he’ll find a way to not have to take care of them?”

“You—it sounds like you’re suggesting murder. And I’m not suggesting giving them back to their father, he’s not even part of the foster system yet, we intend to find a new house altogether for them.”

“That won’t work, Grant, you know it won’t, the public is out for a family reunion and a third party isn’t that. With regards to Patrick finding some way of getting rid of them—is murder unlikely? Sure! But I’m FBI, Grant. You don’t survive here long if you make mistakes, and one of those mistakes could be putting two kids in a house with someone who has already shown a penchant for getting kids out of his life when he doesn’t want them.”

“You’re on speaker, you know,” Grant says frigidly. “The kids can hear you.”

“I’m fucking sure they can, Grant! I’m also sure that they can hear you talking about how much you want to take them away from the people they consider their parents. I’m sure they can hear you talking about how much you want to send them to someone they don’t want to live with. I’m sure me saying shit they already know is vastly less distressing than whatever bullshit you’re pulling. So. I have paperwork to do, and it’s not doing itself. Natalie and Paige Gray are going to stay in that house, with Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard, and in a few months they’re going to become Natalie and Paige Minyard-Josten or whatever the fuck. End of story. You’re done there. Have a good evening.”

The phone beeps, and Neil knows Browning has hung up.

Neil feels lighter than air. He feels like he’s going to puke. He feels like he could fly. They’ll have to send Browning a thank-you note. Would he accept homemade baked goods? Maybe poptarts? Neil can breathe again, and that’s lovely, it’s wonderful.

Grant looks like someone’s just shoved a lemon in his mouth.

“You heard him,” Natalie says, shooting to her feet. “We’re staying.”

Neil stands. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“You called him,” Grant says. “That’s what you left the room for.”

“I did,” Neil agrees happily. “The door is this way.”

Grant stands, staring at Neil. Neil can imagine the words he’s biting back— _snitch_. _Tattletale_. But he’s an adult, talking to another adult, and can say nothing. Nothing that won’t sound immature, nothing that won’t sound like a threat. “This won’t—this won’t _end_ , just because the FBI decided it should,” he says. “The public won’t calm down, the agency won’t feel more comfortable about it. Even if you adopt them—that won’t solve the problem.”

Neil shrugs. “We only have to keep fighting for them for a few more years, and then they’re legally adults, and no one has any say in it at all. We can manage that. After you,” he says, waving Grant towards the door. “Oh. And you should send someone else, for their next few monthly check-ins.”

“This isn’t _me_ ,” Grant says, opening the front door. “It’s not me, alone, doing this. I’m just the messenger.”

“I’m sure,” Neil agrees. “But the fact is that you _are_ the messenger. And given a chance to let the FBI take the hit, you tried to argue it. And every time my kids see you, Andrew and I have to spend days making them feel safe again. So next time—send someone else. I don’t think you need to come back here. Good bye.”

He shuts the door behind Grant, puts his forehead against it, and grunts as three people slam into him.

“We’re staying!” Paige and Natalie are chanting, grabbing his arm, pulling him away from the door, jumping around. “We’re staying! We’re staying! We’re staying!”

Neil grins at them. The urge to puke is passing; now, he just feels euphoric. “Yeah. You’re staying. You’re staying.”

Natalie tosses herself at him, and he hangs onto her. They’ll find a way to keep dealing with this. They will. And in the meantime—in the meantime, he hugs his daughter. Hugs Paige, too, when she jumps in, and when she reaches towards Andrew to drag him into the group hug.

“We have got to stop doing this,” Natalie grumbles.

“Agreed,” Neil says. He, too, has had enough of heart-stopping terror and the rush of relief following their success. It’s nice that they keep pulling through, but he’d like to stop having to pull at all.

“As long as we keep staying here,” Paige says.

Andrew says nothing. Just hugs Paige and stares at Neil.

Neil stares right back. He’s not above a staring contest.

“Oh, what time are you leaving?” Paige asks.

“Leaving?” Neil repeats.

“Yeah, you have a concert tonight, right?”

“I mean, we’re not going to go, though, right?” Neil asks Andrew. “Not after—this whole—”

The girls set up a cry that makes Neil jump. “See!” Paige yells. “See! I _knew_ you weren’t going to go! I told you I wouldn’t believe you were leaving the house—”

“Liar, liar,” Natalie shrieks, “pants on fire—you _said_ you’d go out—”

“I went out on Tuesday,” Neil protests, “and the only reason I’m canceling now is because—do you guys really want to be alone in the house right now? And I mean, that was a tough afternoon, are you sure—”

“You guys are _going out_ ,” Paige says firmly. “You’re going out and you just have to live with that. You’re going to have a _good time_ with your _friends_ and it’s gonna be _good_. What time are you leaving?”

“You don’t have to parent us,” Neil says.

“We’re not parenting dad,” Natalie says. “We’re mostly just parenting you. Although, dad, you need to get out of the house, too.”

“You’re really pushing to have us leave,” Andrew says. “Why?”

“Because it’s good for you to go do things sometimes, we shouldn’t have to explain this,” Paige says.

“Will you two be okay, alone here for a few hours?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah. We’re protected, remember?”

There’s a sick swoop in Neil’s stomach as he realizes they’re talking about the mafia, but they’re not wrong. They’re not wrong, and also—“Real quick, while you’re both here, my PR manager said you’re not allowed to be rude on camera, because apparently there’s no way to spin rude kids unless we want to tell everyone a sob story about your past—”

“We’re appealing to the average citizen,” Paige says immediately. “We’re playing up the Annie-before-daddy-warbucks vibe—”

“Was Annie ever rude on camera?” Natalie quietly asks Paige.

“Probably, I don’t know, how should I know? I think we’re doing just fine—”

“I wouldn’t care,” Neil says, “but she pointed out that if things get bad enough, people might call for my resignation, and if I lose my job, we’re all a little bit fucked, so _please_ try. Just a little bit.”

“Oh,” Natalie says.

She and Paige look deflated—Neil’s brought them down.

“Anyway, who wants to learn poker?” Andrew says.

“Oh, _fuck_ yeah—oh, wait, shit, you two probably have the best poker faces—”

Neil reaches out to tap his fingers against the small of Andrew’s back as he follows Andrew and the kids into the living room. _Thank you_. Andrew reaches back and takes Neil’s hand, squeezing it tighter than a _you’re welcome_ warrants—there’s something Neil will have to ask about, later.

Later, though. Right now, he has to teach his kids how to play poker.

And then they get changed. Andrew goes all out—“Have you even looked them up?” Neil asks, glancing at the spiked jacket Andrew is hauling out of his closet. “Are they even that kind of a band?”

Andrew looks at Neil like Neil has lost his mind. “The only time this would be inappropriate is at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Maybe. _Maybe_.”

Neil shrugs. “What about The Wiggles?”

“Are you kidding? Kids would think I’m cool.”

“They’d think you’re one of them. ‘Cause you’re short.”

“First off, no, I’m 30, I don’t look like a fucking baby, Neil. Second, that’s why I wear the boots. They make me tall.”

“They make you my height.”

“They make me taller than I usually am.”

“Usually? Aren’t you always the same height?”

“Not when I’m angry. When I’m angry, I get taller.”

“But you’re always the same height. Short.”

“That’s my secret, Neil. I’m always angry.”

Neil cackles. “I understood that! I got that reference.”

“Okay, Captain America.”

“As long as I can call you the hulk.”

“You can call me the _hunk_.”

“Of what? Cheese? I could go for some parmesan.”

“I was thinking cheddar.”

“I could go for cheddar.”

“Maybe we should go grocery shopping instead of to the concert.”

“Grocery stores will probably be open, still, when it’s over, right? How late will this thing go?”

Andrew stops dead halfway down the stairs. He turns towards Neil, eyes staring at a point far, far away. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Neil’s heart drops. What? What now?

“We’re _old_. Neil, we’re old, you just said _how late will this thing go_ —”

“I can’t pull all-nighters anymore,” Neil protests. “And maybe we want to pick up some cheese on the way home.”

Andrew takes a deep breath. “Well, if I have to be old, at least I get to be old with you.”

Neil grins at him. “I love you. Also, 30 isn’t _that_ old. I mean, I know we’re not teenagers, but we’re also not that old. We’re gonna get _so much older._ We’re going to be 40. And then we’ll be 50. Drew, one day we’re going to be _60 years old_. Double our current age! Double, Drew!”

“The way you live, we won’t,” Andrew says, but there’s nothing in it, no bite, and he flicks a look at Neil before turning and heading the rest of the way downstairs.

“What the _fuck_ are you wearing?” Natalie shrieks.

Neil drops, laughing so hard he stops breathing.

“One day,” Andrew says blandly, “I’ll take you to a punk concert, and we’ll see which one of us blends in.”

“You can’t wear that!” Natalie says, still high-pitched, while Paige wheezes. “You’re old! That’s for, like, _young people_.”

“I’m not that old,” Andrew says. “Also, one day, _you_ are going to be old, and you’ll be _thrilled_ to find out you don’t have to give up all your interests.”

“I’ll probably dress appropriately for my age group, though,” Natalie says. Paige is still useless; Neil makes it to his feet and into the kitchen to find her with her head down, banging her fist on the table top.

“Hey, _I_ think he looks hot,” Neil says, “and I’m mostly who matters.”

“You do not, you’re lying,” Natalie accuses.

“Yes, I do,” Neil says. It’s _not_ a lie; Andrew could wear a potato sack and stop Neil in his tracks. “And anyway, we’re going to a concert, it’s appropriate. _And_ we have to go, or we’re gonna be late.”

“You’re just trying to cut this conversation short,” Natalie calls as Neil shepherds Andrew out the door. “We will not forget!”

“Do your homework,” Neil calls, already out the door. “Text us if you need us.” He shuts the door before they can respond.

“Maria will appreciate this,” Andrew grouches.

“She will,” Neil consoles him. “You’ll match.”

Andrew starts the car, and then they sit there, in the driveway, Andrew staring through the windshield.

Neil pokes him in the ribs.

Andrew tosses him a glance. “Fuck off. Should we go? I feel like—that was a lot—”

“We’ll just get yelled at if we go back in,” Neil says. “And anyway, they might be glad we’re out of the house. They might want us gone. Gives them a chance to deal with things without the pressure to perform.”

Andrew sighs. “Okay. Yeah.” He pulls out of the driveway, and then he takes Neil’s hand and they’re on their way.

They meet up with Maria and Riley outside the expo center, where, sure enough, Maria practically matches Andrew.

“Fucking _cool!_ ” She shrieks. “ _Yes_ , I knew this was a good plan—” And then she and Andrew vanish towards the bar, complimenting each other’s outfits, Andrew looking absolutely _thrilled_ about it.

Neil grins up at Riley. “So how is it, dating Maria?”

Riley melts. “Neil, yesterday I made her breakfast in bed, and she was _so happy_. It was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. I almost collapsed. She’s reading Nora Roberts books, Neil, it’s like she _knew_ , I don’t—oh, fuck, did you tell her? You told her, didn’t you.”

“Would I tell my friends’ secrets?” Neil asks indignantly.

“Yes, you would,” Riley says. “You know what, I forgive you, it turns out it’s all right that she knows. I trust her with that. You were right to trust her with it.”

“I’m glad.”

“So do we know anything about this band?”

“Trish is the lead guitarist.”

“Who’s Trish?”

“She did the commercial for Skin Deep with me.”

“Oh. Have you spoken to her at all since then?”

“Been a little busy. I made a lot of promises that day. This is just the only one with a deadline.”

“Have you listened to any of their music?”

“I think Maria and Andrew like it.”

“She hasn’t shown any of their music to me.”

“Andrew hasn’t bothered showing an to me, either. Unless we’ve listened to it in the car and I didn’t realize it.”

“So to sum up, we’re here because you met a girl while filming a commercial and made a promise, and neither of you have spoken to each other at all since then but we’re here anyway, and also, neither of us know if we like their music, but Andrew and Maria are dressed punk-goth and yet _we_ are the ones who stand out in this crowd?”

“That’s a good summary,” Neil agrees.

“We should ditch,” Riley says. “Tell Maria and Andrew that we have—a stomach bug—”

“A shared stomach bug?”

“You gave it to me, just now—”

“Handed it on over.”

Riley holds out her hand. Neil mimes putting something in it. Riley mimes popping it into her mouth. “Anyway, we need to go to the bathroom, but we’ll just, help each other puke? No other support needed?”

“In, what, the unisex bathroom?”

“Okay, fine. Next time, _we_ go get the drinks, but instead we just go take a walk or something. Get burgers.”

“Take a walk _and_ get burgers?”

“Can you not eat and walk, Josten?”

“Fuck, I can even chew gum and walk.”

“I can—oh, I forgot, how the fuck did I forget? Has Channel 7 released that audio yet?”

The subject change gives Neil whiplash. He makes a face. “Nope. I assume they’re waiting til the last possible moment. I’ve got that interview with Gianna on Sunday morning one way or the other, though.”

“Are you flying up?”

“No, I’m literally just going to Skype in. I was thinking I’d just use my headphones, but maybe I should go get an actual microphone? I don’t even know where I’m going to sit, honestly. I guess the living room? Coffee table is a little low, but maybe if I stick everything on a stack of books or something—”

“Oh, it would be _hilarious_ if the whole thing fell over.”

“Fuck, Riley, I’m already nervous.”

“Sorry. Sorry. Just get a real microphone, Neil, you deserve it. Treat yourself. And a good camera—then you can set up the camera on a stack of books instead of your whole computer, _way_ less likely to fall over.”

Neil grimaces. “That sounds like a lot of money.”

“Neil, you’re rich.”

“Oh yeah.”

Andrew and Maria return bearing drinks—Neil’s is just a shot of whiskey, which he appreciates. Andrew’s decided to get himself something Neil doesn’t recognize, which Neil puts down to Maria’s influence—she, too, has something fancy. Riley’s just got a beer.

Andrew looks excited.

Neil grins at him. Andrew sparkles right back. They head into the main part of the expo center, from which Neil can hear a harsh baseline and someone all but screaming into the mic.

They emerge a few hours later, Neil’s ears ringing and a bounce in Andrew’s step, Maria happily yelling in Riley’s general direction—although Neil can only tell she’s yelling based on her body language. Next time they go to a concert, Neil’s going to bring earplugs. He hasn’t survived this long only to go deaf at the age of 29 because he was too stupid to stick tissues in his ears.

Neil now knows that he has, in fact, heard Red December’s music before—Andrew’s been playing it in the car for a week and a half. Neil’s taste in music is rather nebulous, but he actually doesn’t mind them. He also knows that Maria really likes them, and that Riley will absolutely get into them for Maria’s sake—and, judging by the gooey look on her face, she’ll even enjoy it.

They wander into an Applebee’s—still open, and there’s food, and mozzarella sticks, which they order three servings of. Andrew just gets ice cream.

“That was _good_ ,” Maria says, lowering her volume a little as everyone’s ears recover. “Anyway, what’s our next double date?”

“We’ve been meaning to go roller skating,” Neil suggests.

“Funnel cake,” Andrew says in agreement.

“I have no idea how to roller skate,” Maria says. “Ri, you do, right?”

“I do,” Riley confirms.

“Perfect, you can teach me.”

Neil grins at Riley, who looks like her brain has exploded.

Andrew and Neil had learned how to roller skate together—it wasn’t particularly hard, to be fair; they both have a reasonably good sense of balance, and four-wheeled roller skates aren’t exactly ice skates. Still, it had been fun—standing there, shoulder-to-shoulder, ever-so-slowly rolling forward, holding hands while they learned how to brake—never mind that they’d been married for two years at the time, it had felt like the end of the night would come and their parents would come pick them up and they’d go to separate houses and grin into separate pillows. As it turned out, they went home and watched _Princess Bride_ and made out on the couch, but that did not detract from the experience.

“You can lean on me,” Riley is saying gallantly. “I won’t let you fall.”

“What if I fall into your arms?” Maria asks.

Riley turns bright red, and Neil grins and looks at Andrew.

Andrew’s giving Neil that _look_ again—the one Andrew gave him earlier, after Grant left. Neil stares right back at him. What’s Andrew thinking? He’s not likely to say anything while they’re surrounded by people, so presumably Neil will have to wait until they go to bed, but that’s not going to stop him from studying Andrew the way Andrew is studying him. Neil has never been opposed to spending minutes or hours staring at Andrew. For a split second, he thinks of the rings—and then he shuts that down. Can’t think about that in Andrew’s presence.

Maria saves him—“Hey, did you see that video of the dude falling flat on his face?”

That takes them down a rabbit hole that ends in America’s Home Videos, Neil and Maria doubled over laughing, Andrew watching with undivided attention, Riley miming taking notes.

“I have two brothers,” she says when Neil raises an eyebrow at her.

“Aren’t they both adults?”

“So what if they are?

Eventually, though, the server offers them the bill. Neil glances at his phone and is duly shocked by the time.

Riley knows, these days, that she doesn’t have to tell Neil to tip well. He’d once held eye contact with her while he slid five 20s onto the table for a $20 meal. He may often struggle with spending money, but even he knows when to fork it over.

“Drive home?” Andrew asks Neil as they head for the car.

“Okay.”

Neil settles behind the wheel of the maserati and raises his eyebrows at Andrew. “Am I hot right now?”

“I’m sure that’ll change as soon as you stick the car in drive.”

“At which point I will morph into a refrigerator.”

“I can see the headlines now. _Local man in love with refrigerator—says their love is hot enough to curdle the milk on the top shelf.”_

“Amazing. You’ve said ten words and have completely disgusted me.”

“Completely? Is that a challenge?”

“No, no, no it’s not—”

“Do you know that back in the 1800s there was a guy named Charles Brown-Séquard who used guinea pig sperm as a sports performance enhancer?”

Neil forgets, for a minute, that he’s driving.

He glances at Andrew, and Andrew looks distressingly pleased with himself.

Neil shrugs. “Do you want to try that? I don’t think you need it, but I’m willing to support you in anything you do. It’ll be hard, because we don’t have a guinea pig—do we even know anyone with a guinea pig?—and I don’t think they sell that in stores, but look, there _must_ be a black market—”

“You win,” Andrew says loudly. “You win, oh my god, shut up, I will take this defeat and learn from it—”

“No, _you_ win, because you have just admitted a deep, dark desire to me and found out that I am a wonderful, non-judgmental, loving husband who just wants you to follow your dreams—”

“Hey, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me—”

“Isn’t it the _best_ , really? You have discovered new depths of my love for you—”

“ _Please_ go back to looking for cops.”

“Oh, fuck, I forgot about that. Hang on, was I hot for a few minutes there? Was that a turn on?”

“I regret _everything_.”

“ _Everything_? Really? We have children.”

“I’m shutting my mouth now.”

“Only temporarily, though, right?”

“No, maybe permanently, I haven’t decided yet—”

“If you shut it permanently, I can’t stick my tongue in there.”

Silence.

Neil glances over.

Andrew’s face is buried in his hands, and he looks—red? _Red_?

“Are you _blushing_?”

“I am _too drunk for this_ , you can’t just _say_ things like that at when I’m _tipsy_ —”

“Is tipsy really _too drunk for this_?”

“ _Yes_. Jesus, Neil.”

“I didn’t even say anything really sexy.”

“You need to drive faster, we need to get home, I want to kiss you.”

“Really? You’ve kissed me before, I thought you were full of regrets about that?”

“Why do you think _that_?”

“You just said you regret everything.”

“Oh yeah, that’s why I was going to shut my mouth. But no, I have never once in my life regretted kissing you.”

“Even that time you kissed me before I told you Kevin had just dared me to eat a scoop of wasabi?”

“Bleugh. That was pretty bad, actually. Remind me to slap Kevin for that. Also, who the fuck eats a _scoop of wasabi_ and then doesn’t even drink any milk or anything? Just sits there? You should’ve been coughing, crying, dying. Why would you just stretch up to kiss me like nothing bad had just happened?”

“I didn’t get a chance to say anything,” Neil says, grinning. “I was trying to prove how badass I was, and then you walked over and leaned in—what was I supposed to do? Say no? Push you away? I would _never_ hurt your feelings like that.”

“It was like when you go in for a handshake and find out the other person is holding something that gives you an electric shock, but I trusted you more and you hurt me worse.”

“You _did_ make me look really good, though.”

“By what, stealing Dan’s chocolate milk and then trying to knife Kevin?”

“Yup.”

Andrew considers that for a minute. “Yeah, okay, you’re right, that did make you, Mr. Sits There, look kinda cool.”

“And hot.”

“Quite literally.”

“Cool and hot.”

“Don’t make me do it.”

“Hot and cold.”

“Fuck you, I’ve just ingested alcohol, you can’t— _cause you’re hot then you’re cold, you’re yes then you’re no—_ ”

Neil cackles as he pulls off the highway.

“I’m not even singing it, I don’t understand why this is so exciting to you.”

“It brings me great joy. One of these days, I’m going to get you drunk enough that you’ll sing _Teenage Dream_.”

“Oh, right, our song.”

“And why won’t you half-heartedly sing that one?”

“It is _humiliating_.”

“It’s just the two of us,” Neil coos. “I’m not even looking at you. You’re safe here, with me, you can be yourself—”

“Oh, look at that, we’re home.”

“Not yet we’re not,” Neil says, taking his foot off the gas, letting them cruise slowly towards their street.

“We’re almost home. We’re getting closer to home. Why are we stopping, Neil? Why are we slowly drifting to a stop, so close to home?”

“I don’t know, it’s like the car wants you to sing _Teenage Dream_.”

“You learn how to sing it and I’ll duet with you.”

Neil gives in and turns onto their street. “Maybe I will.”

“I am going to schedule your days to the _second_ to prevent that from happening. I will become a micromanager.”

Neil reins in the urge to make a joke about Andrew being micro, and pulls into the driveway. It works out in his favor—he’s barely got the car in park when Andrew reaches over and pulls Neil in for a kiss, making Neil melt like ice on a driveway in the middle of the summer in Arizona. Neil makes good on his promise, sliding his tongue into Andrew’s mouth, pushing a hand into Andrew’s hair, holding Andrew close.

“I love you,” Andrew whispers, forehead resting against Neil’s.

“You…” Neil whispers. “You make me feel… you—you make me feel like I’m living a teenage dream—where are you going—”

Andrew is shaking his head, opening the car door.

“The way you turn me on—oh, come back—” Neil gets out of the car, reaches for Andrew’s hand, whines when Andrew snatches his hands out of reach. “ _Drewwwwwww._ ”

“You have lost your hand-holding privileges.”

“I didn’t ask you to sing it, I just said some words in a speaking voice—”

“You’re not even the drunk one here!”

“I’m drunk on love for you— _mm._ ” Neil finds himself thoroughly silenced by Andrew’s lips, standing there on their porch at nearly one in the morning, and decides not to argue.

Maybe getting out of the house _was_ good for them.

Neil resolves never to acknowledge that.

Andrew lets go of Neil after a couple minutes, takes his hand, pulls him inside. They circle the house, checking all the locks, and then head upstairs, skipping the creaky stair.

Neil pauses, halfway through brushing his teeth, to text the girls— _Just got home._ If the kids are awake, Neil doesn’t want them worrying about who just came in the house; and if they wake up later, Neil wants to make sure the kids know he and Andrew are home.

And then, finally, feeling every second of his age, Neil collapses into bed. Andrew falls in next to him, and Neil takes Andrew’s hand.

This is the time, really. If Andrew wants to say something, this is when he’ll do it.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“You looked—scared. When Browning called Grant.”

Neil traces the lines on Andrew’s palm. “He asked if we’d get divorced, for the kids. Pointed out that one of us, alone, wouldn’t draw the same ire. Suggested _clandestine family vacations_. Just for four years, until no one could take the kids away anyway. He said it would work. And, I mean, I don’t know what I expected him to do—it’s not like we’re friends, it’s not like we’re coworkers, he was just—he’s got power, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t call the Moriyamas. I apologized for bothering him, and then hung up on him. When he called Grant, I thought it was punishment—I thought he was going to tell Grant to take the kids. Thought that was it.

“I’m glad you didn’t agree,” Andrew says, so quiet Neil almost misses it. “I should be more worried about the kids. But I’m glad you didn’t suggest divorce.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

“I thought—I was so surprised, when Browning called. Made it clear you’d called him. You only had time to make one phone call. I thought you’d called the Moriyamas.”

“No. I made a promise.”

“I’d have forgiven you.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to.”

“The kids are more important than a promise.”

“I was going to talk to you. Afterwards. If we failed. The Moriyamas can reverse a decision, too. But I wasn’t going to call them without talking to you. I may as well have just agreed to divorce you.”

Andrew is quiet, for a minute.

Neil knows better than to think that he’s fallen asleep.

“Neil—you are—kinder, and smarter, and _better_ , and more trustworthy than anyone gives you any credit for, including me—”

“Drew—”

“Since we _met_ you have done nothing but prove me wrong, over and fucking over again, and I hope you never stop, Neil, I love you so fucking much—”

Neil grabs his face and kisses him. “Everything I am I am because you made it worthwhile—you’re all that and more—”

“Only because you made it worthwhile.”

Neil throws his leg over Andrew’s thigh. “Somewhere, some god is tearing their hair out, because we were both supposed to die young and miserable and decided against it.”

“We unionized.”

Neil snickers, smothering the noise in Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew’s been sitting on this for _hours_ , marinating in it. In the assumption that Neil would break his promise at the first sign of strain.

Neil stretches his arms out, and Andrew tugs, and Neil wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders and sprawls across Andrew’s body. “I’m sorry you didn’t trust me.”

“Hmm?”

“You thought I’d break my promise.”

“If I were you, I’d have broken it. I am known for breaking my promises when people I love are in danger.”

Neil kicks himself.

“Did you just kick yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the fuck?”

“Trying to reorient. Hang on.”

“Reorient what?”

“From _Andrew doesn’t trust me_ to _Andrew forgave me before I even did anything wrong_.”

Andrew squeezes Neil. Neil, with his lips on Andrew’s neck, can feel Andrew’s muscles tense. “I trust you, love, I do. And when I forget that—it’s my failure, not ours.”

Neil hugs him tighter. “We’re a union, remember? _Our_ failure.”

“I’m rolling my eyes.”

“That’s fine. I’ll roll mine, too, in solidarity.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Shutting my eyes now.”

“Good night, Neil.”

“Good night, my love.”

Andrew has no comeback for that, and Neil smiles against his neck and wills himself to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew has started listening to Sawbones, because I like that podcast. I promise that none of the random facts he spills will be too gory/animal abuse-y. anyway if you wanna learn more about the ways athletes have doped up in the past go listen to sawbones episode 150


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interview. A secret discovered. A pact made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somehow got worse at answering comments but i WILL get to them i swear

The camera is standing on a stack of books. All hardcovers—Neil was unwilling to trust it to paperbacks. The cats have been summarily locked in Neil and Andrew’s bedroom, to ensure that they don’t bump the table or tug on the wire linking the camera to Neil’s laptop. The microphone is set up just out of view of the camera; Neil had recorded a test video and played it back, and the setup had worked. There is a text on Neil’s phone, which he keeps glancing at, stating: _Gianna’s bored. Trying new things. Exy season is over and she’s getting tired of her cohosts. Floated the idea of you sticking around for longer than a normal interview; I told her yes. Do it, Neil, this is a good opportunity for you. Remember: If everyone hates you enough, you lose your job._

Neil is, as per usual, considering fleeing.

“Maybe I’ll go sit with the cats instead of in the kitchen,” Andrew says, apropos of nothing.

“What? Why are you sitting in the kitchen?” Neil asks. Andrew is sitting _not_ in the living room? Neil is going to have a whole entire interview about their relationship, and Andrew _isn’t_ going to be there? Neil may have to be on camera for an abnormal length of time, without Andrew?

“I won’t, I’ll go hang out with the cats upstairs.”

“Why won’t you just stay here? With me?”

Andrew looks at Neil. “Do you—do you _want_ me to sit here? I don’t think I’m allowed to contribute, Eliana wouldn’t be happy about it.”

“Then don’t contribute, but yes, I _do_ want you to stay here.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Andrew says, settling back into the couch, putting his feet in Neil’s lap. “You’ve done interviews before. And it’s Gianna. And the audio came out.”

“I know,” Neil says. “I don’t know. I’m just—nervous.”

Channel 7 had released the audio two hours ago. 7:30 in the morning shouldn’t be the best time to do anything news-related, but it had already been picked up by CNN, and Twitter was already passing it around. It still doesn’t sound great, but it sounds better—Neil’s voice, confident and teasing, saying _oooh, you love me so much_ , is a solid counterpoint to the idea that Andrew had been actively threatening to kill him. And it saves Neil a lawsuit. But—

Maybe it’s just what’s at stake. If he didn’t have to worry about the yakuza. If his kids weren’t in danger. Normally, the stakes of an interview are that if he does poorly, Eliana will lecture him.

_Remember: If everyone hates you enough, you lose your job._

He takes a deep breath. He has faith in Gianna.

The Skype call pops up on his screen.

It’s five minutes early.

He supposes he gets time to prep, just like he would if he were there in person.

It’s fine. It’s just another interview. He clicks accept.

Gianna grins at him. He has his laptop set up on a chair behind the camera, so he can see her out of the corner of his eye and still look at the camera while he’s talking. “How are you doing, Neil?”

“All right. You?”

“Better now that the audio is out. I really thought I was going to have to say something bad about Andrew. Instead, I’ll get to play the full audio, and you’ll get to explain the context, and I’ll get to break the story that will be quoted by CNN. And _then_ I’ll get to go back to talking about those _incredible_ plays in the championship game and no one can accuse me of being a fan of an abuser. Wonderful. Anyway, we’ll have your feed projected both on my computer and on the screen behind me, so make sure you look into the camera, people will be watching. I’m not going to hang up when we start the show, but we also won’t get to you for a solid ten minutes. We’ll mute you until we need you, but don’t get too distracted or you’ll miss your cue. Yes?”

“Yup.”

“Great. I’m kicking my cohosts off when you come on; after Yarrow tried to ask Natalie and Paige what they thought about Andrew sucking dick, I don’t really want him anywhere near this, and I can’t kick him off and not everyone else. I’m considering making you the rest of the show. Do you have anywhere to be, for the next hour?”

TV ratings are the bane of Neil’s existence. “Nope. I’m good for whatever makes you happy.”

“You know, if I didn’t know you, I’d never know you were lying. It’s okay, Neil, if it gets too awkward I’ll end it and bring everyone else back on. Just don’t say anything about when you expect the interview to be over or about whether or not everyone else is going to come back, and no one will ever know it wasn’t planned.”

“The network is willing to let you do this?”

Gianna grins at him—not the one that says _we are in front of an audience_ , but the one that says _ratings_. “Neil, I told them I was thinking of having you stay for a chat and they told Yarrow, Grant, and Jen that they might not be needed this episode. I didn’t even have to _say_ anything. The issue with you is that half of it’s about the mystery—once you clear things up, you’ll get less interesting. Just promise me you’ll keep being an asshole. I don’t want to go out in a blaze of glory, I don’t want one last burst of ratings followed by irrelevance.”

“If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s being an asshole.”

“Lovely. Gonna ask you to shut up, now.”

Seconds later, Gianna starts the show.

Neil can stay zen. He can do that. He can sit here, watching Gianna discuss whatever she’s talking about, and he can be zen.

He puts his hands on Andrew’s shins. That feels much more actionable. Is putting hands on Andrew a coping tactic? Neil decides it is. He feels calmer, anyway.

“And now we’re getting to the main event,” Gianna says, smiling. Neil tunes back in. “If you missed it, the full, unedited audio clip of Andrew Minyard yelling at Neil Josten was released this morning, and it paints a very different picture than the one we saw last week. In case you haven’t heard it, here it is.” She sits, pensive and focused, as the audio plays. “Here to talk about it with us is Neil Josten himself. Neil, how are you?”

Neil smiles at the camera. “Doing well, Gianna. How are you?”

“Doing just fine, and happy to talk to you. Let’s get straight down to business. How did you feel when the edited audio clip came out?”

“Absolutely furious, Gianna, absolutely furious. I know I said this in the statement I released last week, but I’m going to repeat it. It’s horrifying enough that a news station would record a private conversation and then release it without the consent of those recorded. To edit it down into something barely recognizable? As a news station, they should be ashamed of themselves. They have an obligation to their viewers to report the truth as they know it, and to deliberately report a lie just for views is—well, they’re lucky I don’t feel like dealing with a lawsuit, or they’d have one on their hands regardless of whether or not they released the full clip. Not to mention that it’s unimaginably cruel—Andrew and I went through a lot as kids, and we’ve spent years trying to show people that we got through it and figured out how to be good people regardless, while also trying to protect our privacy, and Channel 7 did their best to destroy everything we’ve worked for—and not even because it was the truth! I fully believe in exposing those who have done terrible things, Gianna, because that’s not _ruining_ someone’s reputation, it’s _correcting_ it, but that clip—it was never intended to show anyone the truth. It was intended to do harm.” He shuts his mouth. Gianna knows what to do.

And, as usual, she jumps to the occasion. “ _Has_ it done harm? I’m sure everyone who cares about this has been following the story of Natalie and Paige—we were all so concerned that they might be in danger, and Twitter hopped onboard, ready to help pull them if they needed it, but from their YouTube stream, they don’t seem to need protection from you as much as from everyone else.”

Neil takes a minute to compose himself. “They didn’t tell us—they didn’t tell us about anything. They didn’t want to worry us. I’m sure any parent out there will understand how Andrew and I felt when we heard Natalie and Paige say someone had tried to take them from school. It sounds like it wasn’t a particularly good kidnapping—and it’s a parent at their school, so it’s someone we can have a word with—but it’s absolutely terrifying to us, and we’ve really got no idea whether or not it will stop there. It is unconscionable to attempt kidnapping, even if you’ve somehow come to the conclusion that it’s the best thing for the child’s safety.”

“People really were convinced that they wanted to run away,” Gianna says, but before she can finished wherever she’s going with that, Natalie comes sprinting out of the kitchen.

“And you know what, that’s _offensive_ ,” she calls, lowering her voice as she gets closer to the microphone. “Pops, did you just jump?”

“You surprised me,” Neil defends himself, but she’s not waiting for him.

“Hi, Gianna, everyone, anyway, look, I can’t believe I forgot to say this on YouTube, it is _offensive_ that people think we _really_ want to run away and _can’t_. I was a bad kid in foster care _because_ I ran away, and I did that _successfully_ in _spite_ of the fact that I had nowhere to go. If we wanted to go live with Patrick, we’d already be there. I mean, worst case scenario, we email him from the school computers so dad and pops can’t check our emails and ask for plane tickets, and then we beg our friends for cash so we can get a taxi to the airport. _Done._ If we tell dad and pops we’re going to see a movie with our friends after school, they won’t even realize we’re gone until we’re in Colorado. But like, that’s worst-case scenario. They don’t check our phones, emails, bank accounts, _anything_ , and they give us allowances—we could buy the plane tickets ourselves and text about it all day and our parents wouldn’t know. I mean, the hardest part of running away is staying gone, and if we have a place to go and someone who is willing to pay for us to get there, it would _literally_ be the easiest thing in the world, and I am _offended_ that people think we’re too stupid to figure it out.” She takes a deep breath.

“Thank you for letting us know,” Gianna says sincerely. “Also, it’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, too.”

“Did you breathe at all while you said that?” Neil asks.

“No. Was I supposed to?”

“No, there’s no need.”

“Cool. That’s all. I’m gonna go now.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees, turning back to the camera.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andrew twitch. At the same time, Gianna’s smile gets a little wider.

Neil makes a leap of faith. Turning—not enough to see Natalie, just enough that she knows he’s talking to her—he says, “That’s rude, don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” Natalie says defensively. “I’m behind you, you have no idea what I’m doing.”

Ah. He was right. “I have eyes in the back of my head, I saw _exactly_ what you did.”

“What did I do?”

He glances over his shoulder at her. “I’m not going to say it out loud.”

“‘Cause you don’t know. _Eyes in the back of your head_. Sure.”

“I do,” Neil insists. “All parents do, everyone knows that.”

“You—” Natalie marches back to him and starts messing up his hair. “Where?” She asks, nearly laughing. “Where are they?”

“Ow ow _ow_ ,” Neil says, ducking away from her hand. He glances up at her—she looks distressed, honestly concerned, which is sweet.

“What? What did I do? I didn’t—”

“You poked me in the eyes,” Neil says.

Her face snaps into an expression so offended and shocked that if Neil didn’t know any better, he’d think she’d practiced. He folds in half, laughing too hard to sit up straight.

“It was _not_ that funny,” Natalie says, but she’s laughing, too. “Oh my _god_ it was _not_ funny. You’re killing dad. You’re killing your husband. Look at him, he’s dying.”

Neil glances over at Andrew to see his face in his hands, and finds that, actually, he _can_ laugh even harder.

“I just want to say,” Paige says, surprising Neil—when had she come in?—“That that was a terrible joke, and anyone who laughs is just encouraging him, and Natalie, that includes you.”

“I’m not laughing at his _joke_ ,” Natalie says, offended. “I’m laughing at how hard he’s laughing.”

“But does _pops_ believe that?”

“No,” Neil says, “I _know_ you think I’m hilarious.”

“That is _slander_ ,” Natalie says.

“But anyway, while I’m here,” Paige says, settling in, “I—move, pops—go—go—” as Neil tries to sit up, Paige pushes him over to the side, so he’s not blocking the camera, but however far he’s leaning, it’s not good enough. “Go.” Neil lets himself topple on top of Andrew. “Goodbye. Anyway, while I’m here, I just want to say—with the social media whatnot we’ve got on our side, going to live with Patrick would really be the easiest thing. Natalie’s right, running away isn’t _hard_ , you just—walk out the door. It’s money and a place to stay that’s the problem. Unless you’re in, like, a jail cell—”

“Or if your parents lock you in and put bars on the windows, or put you in—like—oh, you know what we should do? We should do one of the—the—runaway rooms.”

Paige looks at Natalie like she’s sprouted a second nose. “A _runaway room_? What’s a _runaway room_?”

“It’s not called a runaway room—it’s—”

“Runaway—an _escape room_?”

“Yes,” Natalie says, “yes. We should do an escape room, we’d be good at it.”

“What are those?” Neil asks.

“Oh, Jesus,” Andrew says. “Okay, I just—can Gianna hear me from here?”

“We can hear you well enough,” Gianna says cheerfully.

“I just want to say that I don’t, in fact, lock Neil in every day. He does, actually, have the freedom to exit the house and do things. It’s just that usually he goes to other people’s houses, the stadium, or the arcade. He doesn’t know things because he doesn’t want to know things. I just want to make it clear—given the public perception of me—that Neil is fully free to explore the world, and just flatly refuses to.”

“It’s not that I don’t _know_ things,” Neil argues. “It’s just—I mean, what do you have to do? What happens if you can’t find your way out? How long are you in there for?”

“I mean, it really depends on which one you do,” Natalie says excitedly. “A few years ago we went to a couple with friends, but usually it’s something themed— _oh, you’re trapped in a library, find clues that will lead you to the key_ or whatever. If you can’t find your way out, you lose. They’re usually like an hour long, but I feel like we’re pretty smart, we’d find our way out before that.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “I guess there aren’t any windows, or you’d just crawl out, but what kind of lighting are we talking?”

“What, are you afraid of the dark?”

“Mildly claustrophobic.”

“Oh. I mean, then, why are you worried about the lighting?”

“It matters.”

Natalie visibly chooses not to argue. “Paige will pick one that’s well-lit. Also, I don’t think you really _get_ it. The point isn’t just to _get out of the room_ , it’s to solve puzzles, it’s not like they lock you in and bar the door—”

“Why is this my job?” Paige asks, immediately prepped and ready to argue.

“I’m your older sister,” Natalie says. “I get to delegate.”

“You don’t know that! Gianna, I want it on record, we have no idea which one of us was born first—”

“I’m gonna text grandma and ask,” Natalie says.

“Do it.”

“Do you guys wanna duke this out in the kitchen?” Neil asks.

“Huh?” Natalie asks.

“Instead of, you know, on camera?”

“Oh,” Natalie says. “Hi, Gianna, we forgot about you.”

“No worries,” Gianna says.

“I didn’t forget,” Paige says.

“Yeah, we’ll go,” Natalie agrees. “Wanna take this outside?”

“No,” Paige says. “I’m gonna take it _inside_. Inside the _kitchen_.”

“That was _not_ as cool as you think it was,” Natalie says, voice fading into the kitchen as Andrew helps shove Neil back into a seated position.

“Hello again,” Neil says. “Where were we?”

Gianna takes a second, getting her face under control, and continues. “I believe the next question on my list was: _Does_ Andrew abuse you? We’ve all seen your scars, now, and I think most of us are thinking about them in a different light, after that audio—which, I realize, was edited.”

“He does not,” Neil says, firmly, doing his level best not to sound angry. “He has never hit me. He has never hurt me. He has never verbally or emotionally or financially abused me. My scars—I mean, look, I grew up with a gang lord for a father and then spent years on the run from him. He wasn’t _nice_. His people weren’t _kind_ about trying to kill me. When they found me they didn’t stand there and smile at me and ask me nicely to come home. My dad was called the Butcher for a reason.”

“It’s good to hear we have no reason to fear for you,” Gianna says smoothly. “Now that we’ve gotten all the big stuff out of the way—what _was_ Andrew yelling at you for?”

“Oh. You know—sometimes, Kevin and I, we do stupid stuff in training. Trying things out, seeing if they work. And I’d… had an idea. And Kevin wouldn’t let me try it, because it was too dangerous, but when I saw my opportunity, I took it, and—well, everything worked out, obviously. But he wasn’t _wrong_. It could have gone very bad—for me and for one of my teammates. We could have gotten pretty badly hurt.”

“Or killed,” Andrew says.

“Or killed,” Neil agrees. “And I think I gave Andrew a heart attack—”

“You didn’t, because all of my organs vacated my body.”

“I made all of his organs vacate his body—hey, that sounds really weird—”

“It was weirder for me to experience it than it is for you to hear about it.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, he did me a favor by hauling me off the court to tell me off instead of doing it in front of the whole team. You can hear him in the full audio—he’s not _threatening_ me with broken bones and a smashed skull and no more exy, he’s warning me that those are possible outcomes of the move I tried. Kevin would’ve said the same thing; honestly, Andrew should’ve just raked me over the coals on the court, Kevin would’ve joined in. I, of course, was riding an adrenaline rush from pulling it off, and _extremely_ proud of myself, all the way up until I realized Andrew was really upset, hence my tone change midway through.”

“Makes sense,” Gianna says. “As an exy fan, I have to ask: What was the move?”

“I’m not going to share that,” Neil says. “I don’t want someone else to try it.”

“You’re _not_ keeping it to yourself because you intend to try it again,” Andrew says. “You’re not going to try it again.”

“I’m not going to try it again,” Neil agrees.

“Is he feeding you lines?” Gianna asks, grinning. “He knows we can hear him, right?”

“He’s not feeding me lines, he’s trying to psychically prevent me from trying it again.”

“You _will not_. And this isn’t psychic.”

“I will not,” Neil agrees.

“This sounds like a real point of difference between the two of you,” Gianna observes.

“No, I agree with him,” Neil says. “I’m just disappointed about it.”

“I’m gonna call Kevin,” Andrew threatens. “He’ll ream you out so bad Twitter will start a campaign calling _him_ an abuser.”

“Good idea. Actually, is he watching this? I expect to get a text in three… two… one… one-half… one—oh, there it is. He says—” Neil cackles, opening his phone to see the full text. _Fuck off. I’m moving to California. See how you do without me._ “He did some cursing, and then threatened to move to California. Oh—now he says to stop reading his texts on TV—I’ll just stop there,” Neil decides, turning his phone off as the bubble pops up to indicate Kevin is typing.

“You know—not to push—but there would probably be fewer negative rumors about the two of you if you did things like this more often. Most couples at least post on social media about things they’ve done together, but the two of you barely seem to exist, outside of what other people say about you.”

“Oh,” Paige calls from the kitchen. “I have an idea,” she says, sliding around the doorway into the hallway. “I have an idea for that—”

“How did you _hear_ that?” Neil asks, incredulous.

“She has ears in the back of her head,” Natalie yells from behind Paige.

“No, I don’t,” Paige says, annoyed, and then she reaches the couch. “I was eavesdropping through the wall. Anyway, I have an idea, and I think you should do, like, a YouTube series, like, weekly or something, just _arguing_.”

“You—you want us to—to get on camera and _argue_?” Neil asks.

“We can’t even argue _off_ of camera,” Andrew objects. “You want us to argue _on_ camera? And you think it’ll, what, rehabilitate our—public image?”

“Not like, fighting-arguing, I don’t think you could keep that up for more than, like, two minutes, and doing it weekly would be too much anyway. Arguing like how you do. Over stupid stuff. The best cleaning agent or whatever.”

“Oh, yeah,” Natalie says. “Like, whether or not pudding will be available in a zombie apocalypse, or some dumb shi—stuff.”

“That has to arise organically,” Andrew says. “We won’t be able to set a time for that, we can’t just turn that on.”

“Well, what about settling other people’s arguments?” Paige says, unwilling to let it go. “Like, pop onto YouTube live, or whatever, and let people stick stuff in the chat—like if a bed should be against one wall or two. And then just argue it out.”

“Would people _watch_ that?” Neil asks. “I mean, it can’t be entertaining for pretty much anyone other than us.”

“Then people won’t watch it and you can give it up and delete your channel,” Natalie says. “But I think people would watch it.”

“Sure but would we even—” Neil is interrupted by his phone ringing.

Andrew reaches for it.

Neil’s neurons fire at a rate they’ve never before reached, and he snatches his phone off Andrew’s legs. “Sorry about that, I forgot to silence my phone,” Neil says with a smile. He glances down, is immediately happy that he didn’t let Andrew get it, and hits end.

“Oh, don’t do that, it might have been important,” Andrew says.

“No, it’s fine, I’ll deal with it later.”

“No, deal with it now, go ahead.”

“I’m—I am literally in the middle of an interview,” Neil says, pointing at the camera.

Andrew swings his feet down and scoots over. “I can take over for a few minutes. Go ahead, go call them back.”

“Gianna’s only got so much time, it’s—”

“No, I mean, the exy season is over and I don’t really care about football,” Gianna says. “I’m happy to keep going as long as you two want, and if Andrew wants to hang out for a few minutes, I am _sure_ our viewers would be overjoyed.”

“Go ahead, Neil,” Andrew says.

“I’m taking it outside,” Neil says, giving in, standing up.

“That’s fine,” Andrew agrees, moving over to take Neil’s place in front of the camera.

Neil passes the kids. Out into the hallway. Pauses, hand on the doorknob, and listens to Andrew speak.

“Around a week ago, Neil woke up and the first thing he said was that he had to run an errand,” Andrew is saying. His tone of voice implies that some sort of conspiracy is taking place. “He wouldn’t tell me what it was. He told me I’d find out in a couple weeks, and that it might take a second trip—”

Neil walks onto the porch, shuts the door behind him, and calls the jeweler back. “Hi, I just missed a call, my name is Neil Josten?”

“Oh, of course. Mr. Josten, your rings are ready for pickup. Just a couple reminders—they are already paid for, and the final price meets the estimate, so you don’t need to bring any form of payment; and we will only hold onto the rings for a month, after which we will issue a refund and recycle the materials.”

“Great, I’ll pick them up in a couple days,” Neil says, and he’s already grinning. He doesn’t even _have_ them yet. Just knowing they _exist_ is enough to make him this happy—

“Wonderful, we’re open from 9-8 on weekdays.”

“Great, thank you.”

He hangs up after saying goodbye, and takes a minute to calm down. He locks this all away. He can’t think about it. He can’t have this knowledge right now.

He takes a deep breath, and it’s gone. He’ll just tell them it was a spam call or something.

He walks back into the house, and is stopped halfway down the hallway, stopped in his tracks by the sheer force of the eyeballs staring at him as he approaches. “What?”

“So what’s my birthday present?” Andrew asks.

Neil grabs ahold of himself with a vise-like grip. He will not react. How did Andrew _know_? “What?”

“Well, Gianna pointed out that a couple weeks from when you told me I’d find out in a couple weeks is my birthday. So what’s my birthday present?”

Neil steels himself and pushes past the wall of interrogation to slide back onto the couch. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“You are lying _directly_ to my face.”

“No, I’m not. I didn’t even make reservations for dinner anywhere—I was thinking maybe we’d go to the beach, and who wants to dress up right before walking on the beach? We can just go to Applebee’s or something.”

“And people think _I_ abuse _you_. This is _cruelty_. What takes _two visits and a phone call_?”

For half a second, the concept of the rings exists in Neil’s brain, and he closes his eyes. No. He feels nothing. He has no thoughts. He’s grinning, and he can’t hide it. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Maybe he can make this look like annoyance.

“It’s something good, huh,” Gianna says, and Neil finds himself grinning wider.

No one in the _world_ would believe that this is annoyance. “Don’t,” Neil says. “It’s a surprise. Don’t ask, Andrew, or I’ll spill it. Also, I have an errand to run tomorrow.”

“Fine. When are you going to give it to me?”

“On your birthday.”

“Sure, but _when_? Am I going to wake up to it, or do I have to wait until the end of the day?”

“How _old_ are you? Act your age.”

“I’m still 30,” Andrew protests. “That’s young, I’m still allowed to want presents.”

“Oh, good, then the day you turn 31 you’ll learn patience, and it won’t matter when I give it to you.”

“Jesus. Evening. You’re going to make me wait all day.”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, I can’t plan, every time I think about it I do _this_ ,” Neil says, gesturing to the grin he can’t keep off his face. “I was _trying_ to keep it a secret, which I _clearly_ cannot do if I’m thinking about it. Anyway, how about this YouTube thing? I think we could do that, right?”

“Changing the subject,” Andrew accuses.

“Yes. Yes, I am. When should we do that?”

“Well, hang on, do you actually want to do this? Or are you just changing the subject? I can drop it, if that’s what you want.”

“We can try it,” Neil says, shrugging. “If you’re up for it.”

“Thursday?” Andrew suggests. “I guess sometime in the evening. 7?”

“That works,” Neil agrees. He glances over at the kids, who have been surprisingly silent, and finds them hunched over their phones. “Hey. Thoughts?”

“We are, engaged, in… a heated, debate,” Paige mutters, slowly, fingers flying.

Natalie grins at Neil, looking practically demonic. “Grandma says _I’m_ the oldest.”

“It’s been a while, though,” Paige says, looking up, “so maybe she’s misremembered.”

“Apparently I had a _lot_ of hair,” Natalie says, “and she remembers, for sure, a certain brunette being born first.”

Paige’s head snaps up. “You know what that means?”

“I’m the oldest?”

“You’re _old_.”

“What? I’m not, I’m only 14, I’m only 15 minutes older than you are—”

“ _Old_ ,” Paige says, pointing at Natalie like she’s casting a curse. “I’m the only young person in this house.”

“The cats,” Neil says.

“They’re older than I am in cat years. _I_ am the young one. Natalie is _old_.”

“Now, when they say their grandma,” Gianna interrupts, “and that this grandma knows which one of them was born first—is this a blood-related grandma?”

“Oh, yeah,” Paige says, breaking their stand-off. “The only good thing Patrick gave us was contact information for our mom’s parents, who are still alive, which is pretty cool. And it turns out _they’re_ pretty cool, because grandma quite correctly remembers that I am not old—”

“I’m 14!” Natalie says. “I am _legally a child_.”

“Old,” Paige declares.

“Then in fifteen minutes, you’ll be as old as I was when you said I was old.”

“Yes, but you’ll _still_ be older than I am, and _I_ will still be young by comparison.”

“What’s wrong with being old?” Gianna asks. “I’m older than all of you.”

“Well, _that’s_ fine,” Paige says, waving Gianna off. “You’re not old. But _Natalie_ is.”

“Hang on, what does _old_ mean? How are you using it?” Gianna asks.

“Like, mentally,” Natalie says. “Spiritually. You two are elderly,” she says, waving at Neil and Andrew, “by virtue of being our parents. Gianna is cool, and therefore young—although actually, she’s a fan of both of you, which really works against her, but we’ll let it slide.”

“Are you using _old_ to mean _uncool_?” Neil asks.

This brings the whole conversation to an immediate stop.

Neil counts one full second of silence. Two. Three.

“See, this is the thing,” Natalie says, “you say words like _uncool_ , like—like— _woaow, that’s uncool_ ,” she says in a mock-deep voice. “ _I was born in the 70s_ —”

“Is that what people born in the 70s sound like?” Neil asks quietly.

“I have no idea,” Andrew murmurs back. “I was not born in the 70s.”

“I was,” Gianna volunteers, “and I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“It’s just—like—if you insist on _acting_ old and _trying_ to be young—”

“Now, we _try_ to be young because we _are_ young,” Neil interrupts.

“I’m not done, don’t interrupt me—if you’re _going_ to insist on being old—”

“Which is why Natalie is old,” Paige says victoriously. “Because she _insists_ on being old,” Paige says.

“Fine, _you_ can be the older sister. _I’ll_ be young.”

“No, grandma said _you’re_ old—”

“Do they argue often?” Gianna asks, grinning. “I have _many_ memories of fighting with my siblings.”

“You know, when they moved in, they didn’t argue at all. Actually, hey, that’s true—you two _do_ fight more often. Hang on, maybe we _are_ bad parents.”

“What?” Natalie says. “No, other way around, other way around.”

“Explain?” Andrew requests.

“I mean, in some houses, we _couldn’t_ argue, because we’d get in trouble,” Paige says. “And in some, it was more like, we had a common enemy, and we _lived_ with the common enemy, so we had to have, yknow, solidarity. And then when we were in a _good_ house, we didn’t want to make trouble, because we didn’t want our foster parents to make us move.”

“But like, here, it’s okay,” Natalie says. “You won’t yell at us _or_ give us up. But we’ll take it into the kitchen, if you want.”

Neil stares at her for a minute.

Is he going to cry? Is that what’s about to happen? Crying?

“You’re right,” Andrew says. “But yeah, you could probably take this into the kitchen. There are also other rooms in the house, if you’d be more comfortable elsewhere.”

“Nah, can’t eavesdrop as easily,” Paige says, waving him off, already wandering towards the kitchen. Natalie waves at the camera and follows her.

Neil glances at Andrew.

Andrew understands.

“That must be nice to hear,” Gianna says, teeing Neil up for a perfect shot. “As a parent. To know that, at least, your kids think you’re doing a good job.”

Neil sees it, sees the ball, waiting for him to hit it, but he can’t, he’s already saying the wrong words. He should shut himself up, say something about how nice it is to get that validation or some shit, but he can’t, he’s furious and sad and relieved and furious and sad about how relieved he is. “Honestly, Gianna, it’s actually really hard. I mean, we’re not the best parents.” Gianna twitches. Neil barrels on. “Really, I can’t imagine we are, it’s not like either of us ever worked with teenagers—the only kids we know are still toddlers. And we’re young, to have teenage kids, and clearly we’ve got our own baggage. But the fact that we’re _still_ the best they’ve ever managed to get—the way they’ve been treated—the fact that they’re still the best kids on the planet—what’s-his-name can take us to court if he wants, he’s not getting our kids—”

“What’s-his-name?” Andrew says. “You mean Patrick?”

“Yeah—sorry, I forgot to care about him for a minute. He’s not getting our kids. We’re not the best parents, but we’re not going to give our kids up.”

“Since you brought it up,” Gianna says carefully, and Neil’s stomach dropped— _what_ did he bring up?—“what about the accusations of—knife usage? Violence?”

Neil blinks at her. He opens his mouth—

“ _Karate_ ,” Paige shouts through the wall. “ _Tae kwan do_.”

Neil laughs.

“I didn’t quite catch that,” Gianna says. “Is she yelling from the kitchen?”

“She is. She said _karate_ and _tae kwan do_. I assume what she’s trying to say is that if you see a kid in a karate uniform, you don’t harass the parents for teaching their kid violence—you just go about your business, the same as you would if you saw a kid in a dance leotard. We’re not teaching our kids to be violent, we’re teaching them how to defend themselves. It just so happens that I know a lot more about knives than I do about karate. And if someone’s carrying you to a car, it’s easier to pull a knife out of your pocket and stab them than to do—karate. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about karate, actually. Maybe you _can_ do stuff if you’re being carried—what is it that people do in movies, where they lock their legs around someone’s head and then kill them? I—anyway, the point is, knowing how to hold and use a knife is a worthwhile skill, I’ll teach them how to carve up a turkey for thanksgiving.”

“CNN reported that there were actual threats made.”

Neil shrugs. “A man comes to your house. He tries to take your kids away. He insists, with no evidence, that you are a danger to your kids. He admits to being someone who has—in a uniquely horrible way—hurt your children before, and who never made any attempt to make amends or to mitigate that harm. Nonetheless, he stands there and insists that your children leave the house with him. What do _you_ do? He’s lucky we didn’t call the police on him. To be perfectly honest, I take great interest in his application to become part of the foster system—I have to assume they would reject him, yes? They wouldn’t allow a man to foster children when he has a history of abandoning kids and then attempting to kidnap them years later, right? Besides the eyewitness accounts of all four people in this house, he outright admitted to it when CNN interviewed him. But—well, that’s not my jurisdiction, is it.”

“We’ll all be keeping a close eye on this,” Gianna promises. “I know we all have Natalie and Paige’s best interests at heart, and we’re all nothing short of thrilled to know that they’re in good hands—and we’re all absolutely invested in keeping them there. But—now that we’ve gotten through all of that, we can talk about sports again! Let’s take a commercial break, and when we come back will talk championships, Denver, and next season.”

The audience cheers, Gianna mutes her mic, and her outro music plays as she waves at the crowd. And then she grins at Neil. “See? Not too bad, right?”

“Not too bad,” Neil agrees. He’s honestly not sure. He can’t think about any of it yet.

“Ready to talk exy?”

“I have never been more excited in my _life_ ,” Neil says honestly.

“Do I have to stay for this part?” Andrew asks.

“Do you— _not_ like exy?” Gianna asks.

“Do _you_ want to talk about your job outside of your job?” Andrew asks.

“I _do_ talk about my job outside of my job,” Gianna says.

“Well—” Andrew stops short.

Neil pokes him. “Trying not to be rude?”

“Maybe,” Andrew admits. “I don’t _want_ to be rude, but anything that comes out of my mouth _will_ be rude.”

“You know what? I’ll take this as a step up in our relationship,” Gianna says. “But if you’d like to head out, you can, we didn’t really expect you to be here in the first place. Not that we’re not overjoyed by your presence, but you’ve already given us more than expected.”

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks at Neil.

Andrew sighs. “I’ll stay, but I’m going to be off-camera. Don’t talk to me.”

“Okay,” Gianna agrees cheerfully. Andrew scoots back to his side of the couch and swings his feet up into Neil’s lap.

“Thanks, Gianna,” Neil says. “I know it would be better for you if Andrew stuck around to chat.”

Gianna shrugs. “Gives the people a reason to keep watching my show, if he won’t talk exy yet. Hey. Do me a favor. Don’t spill too much on your YouTube show. I need to stay in business.”

“We’ll keep it to a minimum,” Neil promises.

Yarrow, Grant, and Jennifer get settled, the musical intro plays, and then Neil spends half an hour talking to the four of them about exy.

When Gianna finally lets him go, Neil ends the Skype call, closes the laptop, and falls over sideways.

“Hello,” Andrew says.

“Hi.”

Neil can feel Andrew relaxing. Neil does his best to do the same.

“So what’s up with the claustrophobia?” Natalie asks, making Neil jump as she pitched herself into the closest rocking chair.

“What do you mean, what’s up with it?” Neil asks, sitting up. “It exists.”

“Yeah, but, like, what’s up with it?” Paige asks. “I mean, you don’t have an issue with, like, showers, right?”

“I—I don’t think that _claustrophobia_ has anything to do with being unwilling to take showers.”

“No, I’m just saying, showers are small spaces.”

“Oh. No, I don’t have a problem with showers.”

“Or cars.”

“Or cars.”

“Or… um… okay, look,” Paige says, and Neil settles in. “I mean, _I_ don’t often find myself in much smaller spaces than that, but like, how small do you think an escape room _is_ , that four people can fit in it and that we’d _want_ to go in there?”

“I don’t know,” Neil says.

“Yeah, obviously,” Natalie agrees. “So, like, what’s up with the claustrophobia? Is it, like, real? Or do you just have some weird, fucked-up issues, and you’re just _calling_ them claustrophobia for, like, ease-of-use? That’s not the right word, but you know what I mean.”

“Why?” Neil asks. “Why does it matter?”

“Well, because if you don’t like small spaces, most escape rooms aren’t that,” Natalie says. “Or, at least, they’re not _tiny_. They’re room-sized. But is it that you don’t like not having windows? I mean, you deal with bathrooms, so that can’t be it, right? Like, are there activities that we need to rule out? If we don’t know, we can’t avoid shit.”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t like being underground, but I can handle it. I don’t like not having windows, but I can handle it. I do _not_ like being stuck in a small room with no access to a bathroom.”

For that, he gets stares.

“Yeah, pops, no one likes that,” Natalie says. “Why is that—why is that something that needs to be— _articulated_?”

“Wrong question,” Paige says shrewdly. “When were you trapped in a small room for so long that _bathroom access_ became the biggest problem?”

“Don’t ask,” Andrew says. “He’ll tell you.”

“To be fair, most of it is just the time I spent in the Raven’s nest,” Neil says. “Underground, no windows, painted completely black—does bad things to a person.”

“Did _they_ trap you in a small room with no bathroom access?” Natalie asks.

“No. We don’t have to talk about this, though. I didn’t understand the concept of an escape room, we don’t have to have a whole entire conversation about it.”

“You are, like, the only person on earth for whom the words _escape room_ mean literally _a room you have to escape by any means possible_ ,” Paige says.

“I am _absolutely_ certain that that’s not true,” Neil says.

“Is hyperbole illegal now?” Natalie asks. “Okay, fine, I have made my decision, I want to know. I’m asking. What the _fuck_ is up with your shit, pops?”

“I’d like to jump in and agree,” Paige says. “I too am asking.”

Neil shrugs. “My mom.”

“Is that a failed _yo mama_ joke?” Natalie asks.

“No,” Neil says. “That’s who. When we’d only been on the run for a couple months—we were in Sicily. It was summertime, and hot as fuck. Mom found this abandoned farm house. We couldn’t turn on the lights or cook or anything, she didn’t want anyone to realize there were people living there. And—to be fair, I mean, I didn’t really know what was going on, I was 10 and she hadn’t told me anything, she thought I’d mostly be a liability. I’d talk, or move wrong, or she’d have to protect me, or something. But anyway, one morning she stuck me in a closet, and she told me not to come out until she came back to get me, and that if I left she’d know and she’d leave me behind.

“I think she thought she’d be back pretty soon. Knowing what I know now, probably she meant to go establish a fake trail somewhere, or lead my dad’s people—and the Moriyamas—away from me, or something. But something went wrong. My assumption is that either she was caught, or she had to crawl through mud and blood to avoid getting caught—she escaped regardless, obviously, but it couldn’t have been a clean getaway. When she got back, she was a mess, and she said something about three people being dead, and we had to run, but—she’d left me in there for 12 hours. And I hadn’t moved, because I didn’t know where she was, I didn’t understand why I had to be in the closet, I didn’t—anyway, it was a couple hours before we could stop anywhere long enough for me to shower and get changed. And then eat. I think there was a water bottle in the car—it was hot, but hey, so was I, it had been a hot day. I don’t know. It’s not an issue that generally comes up, for me. There aren’t many places people want or expect me to go where I’m liable to go hours on end without any kind of access to a bathroom. But, I mean, it’s called an escape room, what do I know?”

Silence.

“I mean, my mom didn’t _mean_ for me to be in there that long,” Neil says. “She probably meant to come grab me while it was still dark, honestly, which would’ve only been a couple hours. And anyway, she never did that again—after that, she just started bringing me with her, which at least meant that when we didn’t eat for 10 hours I knew why.”

More silence.

Neil doesn’t even want to look at Andrew. He knows full well how Andrew feels about this story. When Neil told him it, Andrew got up and left. He returned 10 minutes later, and then turned and walked right out again. He hadn’t wanted to risk taking his anger out on Neil. Hadn’t wanted to leave Neil right after Neil had told that story.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand.

Neil squeezes it, relieved. “Anyway, if it’s just an hour, I’m down.”

“Yeah, that’s usually the time limit,” Natalie says.

“So we’re just gonna skip over that?” Paige asks.

“Yup,” Neil says.

“Our math teacher was five minutes late to class on Friday,” Natalie says. “And there’s this tile in the ceiling that’s just a _little_ off—like, just a _little_ not in the right place. So we were throwing pens at the other end of the tile, trying to, yknow, just put it back where it goes, and then Dave threw his fucking _shoe_ at it at, like, _top speed_ , and instead of just sliding back into place the tile _bounced_ and a baggie of weed fell out.”

Neil snorts a laugh. “So how’d that go?”

“Well, the teacher came in, and no one would say anything, because we didn’t want to get in trouble for throwing stuff at the ceiling, and we were standing there trying to surreptitiously hide Dave’s shoe and push it back in his direction, and Mr. Smitt _saw_ and asked what was going on, and then Archie said they’d been trying to figure out how tall Dave _really_ is because it’s _cheating_ if he wears his shoes but he’d only gotten one off, and then Mr. Smitt was like _then why is it so far away from him_ and Dave was like _because I was pulling it off and you surprised me when you walked in and I threw it_ and Mr. Smitt couldn’t _prove_ we’d done anything wrong so he just started class, and, here’s the thing,” Natalie says, Paige already laughing hysterically, “ _no one knows what happened to the weed._ ”

“No one _saw_?” Neil asks, delighted.

“ _No!_ And, I mean, we know where it _fell_ ,” Paige says, “but we don’t know who grabbed it or kicked it or what, and we couldn’t exactly search for it because Mr. Smitt was there, and we can’t _say_ anything because weed could get you expelled, but—we’re making a roster of the people in school who are tall enough that it might make sense to hide weed in the ceiling, and Dave’s at the _top_ of the list but he _can’t_ be it—”

“Because, I mean, if it hadn’t been for his throw, we’d never have gotten the weed down, and who would _wreck their own stash_?” Natalie interrupts excitedly.

“So then there’s just, not many people—”

“And _then_ there’s the question of, you know, how many people _would_ hide it there, because—like—”

“Was the panel open like that so someone would remember where their stash _was_? Or did they just—toss it in there to hide it at the last minute?”

“I mean, the thing is, it wasn’t a _big_ gap, so just slinging it in there would be a fucking _miracle shot_ ,” Natalie says.

“But on the _other_ hand, that classroom isn’t empty very much. Which means that the only reason to hide it there would be if you knew you could get to it again.”

“Which means—”

“Mr. Smitt,” Neil and Andrew chorus.

“ _Yes_!” Paige shrieks. “Which is _crazy,_ because imagine you walk in to a bunch of pens on the floor and a shoe on the floor and your students acting all weird, and then at the end of the day you go—”

“ _Well, that was a rough day, time for some weed—”_

“And then it’s _gone_. And you can’t tell anyone! And you can’t ask the students! So pretty much we _know_ it’s his weed and he’ll _know_ we know and he’ll know that _someone_ in our class has it, unless he finds It under a cabinet or something—but they’re all flush with the floor, so—”

“And we’re just going to _live_ like that,” Natalie says. “We’re just going to _live_ like that for the rest of the _semester_.”

“Holy shit,” Neil says.

“Someone will brag,” Andrew says. “No high schooler could keep their mouth shut about _that_.”

“No, we will, though,” Natalie says solemnly.

“Because if we don’t, we’ll have to admit to ceremonially burying it in the backyard yesterday,” Paige says.

Andrew sits up straight. “ _What_?”

“We didn’t smoke it or anything,” Natalie says, defensive. “We didn’t save any. We just—I’m good at stealing things, and I just— _took_ it, and then passed it to Paige, and we just _had weed_ for a full 24 hours, and we didn’t know what to do with it.”

“So we buried it. If it grows we’ll have to salt the earth or whatever, but probably it’ll just decompose, right? We took it out of the plastic bag.”

“And we put the plastic bag inside yesterday’s cat litter bag,” Natalie says. “So no one will be able to find it.”

Neil looks at Andrew. In Russian, he says, “okay, so—we’re not punishing them, right? I mean, that’s—that was honestly kind of cool, right?”

Andrew considers. “What kind of ceremony did you perform?”

Natalie and Paige glance at each other. This is not the reaction they expected.

“Um, we said—ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that,” Paige says. “And then we stopped, because, I mean, is weed _Catholic_? That seems like a weird thing to assume. So we just said thanks for making Friday really fun, and we hope that it doesn’t rise from the grave, and we wanted to wrap it in leaves like a burial shroud, but we don’t want to risk the leaves decomposing and providing, like, food for the weed? I mean, it takes heat though, right? And we’re going into winter?”

Neil pulls himself together. He can’t laugh at this. Paige is sincerely anxious. _Is weed Catholic_. Neil will _not_ laugh. He won’t. He won’t. “Did you tell us this just because you didn’t want us to be surprised if we got a marijuana plant in the backyard?”

“Maybe,” Natalie says.

Neil almost breaks. Almost. He can’t look at Andrew, that’ll be the end. He stares at his knees. “I think—I think you’re fine. We’re not going to punish you, because you basically practiced vigilante justice—and I don’t think that’s how you grow marijuana. My final verdict is this: You can’t tell anyone about this until you’re out of high school. That’s your punishment for—having weed in the house.”

“Okay,” Paige agrees. “Okay. Okay. I’m going upstairs, I need to find an escape room.”

“Yeah, I want a nap,” Natalie says.

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

He and Andrew wait.

They hear the door shut.

Neil bursts into laughter, leaning over to smother it in Andrew’s shirt.

“Holy shit,” Andrew mutters. “Holy _shit_. That’s the _funniest_ —a _ceremonial burial_.”

“ _Is weed Catholic_?”

“Is it rude to assume all marijuana is the same religion?”

“I mean, yeah, we know there’s at least two—”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah, Indica and Sativa.”

Andrew rolls his eyes. A full 360. He shoves Neil up and away. “Okay. You know that, but you don’t know what an escape room is? Okay.”

Neil laughs to himself. “Escape rooms aren’t ever in the news.”

Andrew picks up his book. “I’m ignoring you.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

Andrew plants his feet firmly in Neil’s lap.

That’s fine.

Neil has work to do.

He texts Maria.

He revises his text no fewer than seven times.

_Andrew’s birthday is coming up. Can you teach me how to do my eyeshadow?_

A response comes in from Maria— _ohm y GOD yes I can. when? today? tomorrow? I know you just had that interview thing?_

_Tomorrow? Yeah, I just had that interview thing, don’t plan on doing much else today._

_Yes. Tomorrow. I will teach you. I’m a good teacher. Look at me, I’m even capitalizing each sentence_

_I noticed, it’s very impressive. What’s your address?_

_come to riley’s? I’m hanging out with her all day_

_Did you just offer to teach me how to do makeup knowing full well it would involve ditching Riley?_

_no, I offered to teach you how to do makeup knowing full well it will make riley fall MORE in love with me than ever before. anyway whaat time? could do 2? ish?_

Neil contemplates that for a moment.

“What?” Andrew asks.

Neil shrugs. He can’t exactly ask Andrew about it.

If _he_ planned to spend a day with Andrew, and Andrew invited Maria over to teach Maria—something—knife tricks? How to play a video game?—would Neil fall more in love with Andrew?

Well, maybe the scenario is wrong. Maria is inviting over Riley’s friend—not that Neil isn’t friends with Maria, just that he was Riley’s friend first and still hangs out with Riley more—they _do_ have to hang out more, he misses her—he’s getting off-track. Is this overthinking? No, this is probably just regular thinking.

He reorients himself.

If Andrew invited _Riley_ over to teach her how to play a video game, would Neil fall more in love with _Andrew?_

That feels like a stupid question. Most anything Andrew does results in Neil being increasingly in love with Andrew.

And to be fair, the concept of Andrew teaching Paige how to play goalie makes Neil feel like melting, so maybe it _does_ make sense.

“I have therapy tomorrow, don’t I,” Neil mutters, half to himself, checking his schedule.

“Yup.”

He should, theoretically, be out by 1. He could get to the jeweler and make it to Riley’s by 2:05, 2:10, allowing 10 minutes for in-store bullshit. _2ish_ _works_ , he texts back. _Might be a few minutes late_.

 _sounds good to meeeeee,_ she answers.

Well, that’s _that_ taken care of.

Moving right along, Neil has other problems. For one: Andrew had requested rose petals and candles. Not _really_ , to be fair, and not necessarily for his birthday, and there’s not even any guarantee that they’ll _want_ to have sex on his birthday, but Andrew is nothing if not a romantic, and if Neil’s going to go all out, he’s going to go all out—a proposal, rings, a walk on the beach at night—maybe he _should_ make reservations somewhere. He’d made up that beach thing on the spot, but honestly, it’s pretty good.

Neil returns to a pair of questions he’s asked himself many times before. The answers have changed over the years, as Andrew has changed, but the questions remain the same: If Andrew’s upbringing had not been what it was, what would he want? And would this Andrew, the one who exists now, appreciate getting that, however belated it might be, however awkward the delivery? In this case, the question, specifically, might be—how would a different Andrew have wanted to get engaged? What kind of wedding night would he have wanted?

Neil has no answers. He’ll never know how much of Andrew’s personality is inherent and how much is trauma-induced. And Andrew has changed so much since Neil met him that it’s becoming even harder—how much comes from therapy, how much was self-induced, how much done for Neil’s sake? Is Andrew as soft as he is these days because of therapy, or because that’s how he naturally would have been without his massive amounts of trauma, or because he thinks it’s what Neil needs, or because Neil has encouraged that, or because—

The problem is, there _is_ no other Andrew. Neil doesn’t live in a universe where a pre-trauma Andrew exists, let alone grew up. He has no control group for the experiment that is Andrew.

Neil usually accomplishes this feat of philosophical thought by thinking in clichés.

The rose petals and the candles—Andrew’s already mentioned them. Andrew _does_ like walking on the beach, as does Neil—it had been a surprise to both of them, but Neil doesn’t particularly associate the salt of the sea with his mom’s death; the smell of the fire had drowned it all out. The makeup—Neil _knows_ Andrew likes it when Neil gets dressed up. The issue lies more in where he’d fit the ring boxes. Can’t exactly hide one in a pocket. A sweatshirt pocket, maybe, but that doesn’t count as dressed up—although he’d be justified in wearing a sweatshirt on the beach, but that’s not—well, what law says he has to present the ring in a box, anyway? Why can’t he just stick the rings in his pocket, loose?

Neil sees, like a film reel, himself, pulling his phone out of his pocket much too fast, sending the rings flying, lost to the sand, maybe lost to the ocean—maybe not _loose,_ then.

He can figure that part out later.

The better question: Out for dinner, or in for dinner?

Neil supposes the answer lies more in whether or not the kids are going to eat with them. If so, is there any real point in going to an expensive restaurant? How much romance can be had at a candlelit dinner with their two teenage children? Then again, would Andrew want family dinner more than a romantic dinner?

“Hey,” Andrew says, poking Neil, “stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Overthinking.”

“I’m thinking about a good thing,” Neil promises. “This isn’t an anxiety-induced facial expression.”

“It was either that or constipation,” Andrew says drily. “But—I’m glad it’s a good thing. Am I supposed to give you a penny for your thoughts, or do we have to adjust for inflation?”

“Adjust for inflation,” Neil demands.

“Okay, then I guess the first question is when was the saying created—hang on,” Andrew says, fingers flying as he googles.

Neil waits.

Andrew bites his lip. “Okay. Problem.”

“Yes?”

“We don’t really know who came up with it, because of course not, but it was first written down in 1522.”

“Ah,” Neil says. “Now, is the problem that we probably won’t get an accurate estimate of inflation between then and now? Or is the problem that the United States didn’t exist, so neither did the American penny?”

“Must be in pence,” Andrew mutters. “I feel like I’ve already done too much work for this joke.”

“I mean, you _could_ do math.”

“I’d rather die. I’ll just toss a couple hundred bucks in your direction.”

“Don’t bother, because I can’t tell you.”

Andrew looks horrified. “You made me do all that just to tell me your thoughts are not for sale?”

“Yup.”

Andrew considers.

Neil waits. He hopes Andrew hurries things along. Neil has planning to do.

“So is it about my birthday?”

“ _What_? Your—no. It’s not.”

“Lying to my face,” Andrew decides. “You know, I honestly can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out. I was telling Gianna the story and she went _oh, a couple weeks… we’ll call that two weeks… what takes two weeks? Or, what’s happening two weeks from the day he mentioned it? Hey, Andrew, isn’t your birthday early November?_ And I must have made a face like Natalie when you said she poked you in the eyes, because Gianna almost fell over laughing.”

Andrew’s birthday hadn’t been something to look forward to, in the past. Something to count down the days to. First of all, until he’d moved in with Aaron and Tilda, Andrew hadn’t known _when_ his birthday was. Second, he’d never exactly gotten presents. Had parties. His birth and life hadn’t been celebrated—and never really was until Andrew’s junior year of college, when Nicky dragged Neil to lunch to ask what Neil was doing for Andrew’s birthday— _Aaron’s going out with Katelyn and Renee is the only other one who ever treats him any different on his birthday and you’re the only one who can celebrate it without being stabbed, so I don’t care if we just go to Eden’s or what but you_ have _to help me plan._ And until a few years ago, Andrew hadn’t done much more than humor Neil, anyway. The day of his birth hadn’t been anything worth celebrating, and another year survived was mostly only worth acknowledging with whiskey and cigarettes. So of course Andrew hadn’t thought of his birthday as something worth being excited about. Neil almost feels guilty for inadvertently taking advantage of that.

“Fine, you’re right, but I’m still not telling you what I’m thinking. You know what, actually, I will. _Do_ you want to go out for dinner? Do you want to stay in? Do you want the kids to be involved?”

“Oh, are we actually planning?”

“Well, I am now. Turns out if I’m planning your birthday, I can’t think bad thoughts.”

“That sure is a sentence you just said. Um. What do I want to do for dinner? What _do_ I want to do for dinner? Can we get the kids out of the house for the night? That was mostly a joke. I have no idea, I didn’t think about birthday dinner.”

“We can probably get the kids out of the house for the night,” Neil muses. “I think if I suggest, slightly, that it might be better for them to sleep over someone else’s house, they’ll make plans to be gone for the whole week just to stop me from saying anything else. I _am_ thinking the beach, though. That, I do like.”

“That sounds good to me,” Andrew agrees. “You’re right, though, that it makes it hard to dress up. What about dinner in, but dessert out? We can get ice cream after the beach, and we won’t need to dress up.”

Ice cream in November?

Well, Neil knows who he married. “Kick the kids out. Maybe drop them off on the way to the beach.”

“Or get someone to pick them up.”

“That would be better,” Neil agrees. It fits more neatly into Neil’s idea of wearing makeup—he doesn’t particularly _want_ the kids to see it. They’ll make fun of it, he knows _that_ for certain, and Neil wants it to have an effect on Andrew that it won’t have if the kids are sitting there laughing. But if they’re driving the kids to someone’s house, Neil won’t really have time to do his makeup—not until they get home, anyway, and that means he’ll only have the makeup on for a couple hours. “Do you want to cook? I could cook, or we could order in.”

“I want you to help me cook.”

“That falls squarely within my skill set.”

“I want my present at breakfast.”

“Hmm. I haven’t decided when I’m giving it to you, but I’m thinking probably not breakfast,” Neil muses. Giving it to Andrew at home would solve the pocket problem, but it wouldn’t be _nearly_ as romantic.

“ _Before_ breakfast?”

Neil grins at him. “You’re not _usually_ this excited about presents.”

“ _You’re_ not usually this excited about presents, either.”

“That’s true,” Neil acquiesces. He can already feel a grin starting to tug at his mouth. “It’s a really good one, though. Hey. Promise me something.”

“Anything,” Andrew agrees. He’s staring at Neil in a way that makes Neil think he could ask for anything right now, anything at all, and Andrew wouldn’t so much as blink an eye.

“Promise me you won’t spend the rest of our lives expecting me to find a way to outdo myself. I’m really shooting myself in the foot with this one. I’ll never do anything this good again. It’s so good I’m honestly tempted to _refuse_ to do anything else for your birthday, just to try and bring it down to a level where I could feasibly beat it in the future—I’d still have to hire, like, a French chef to come live with us— _ooh_ , would you want baking lessons next year? Not _here’s how to make muffins_ lessons, but _I’ve hired a Michelin star chef to teach you pastry and shit_.”

“Would that chef beat this year’s present?”

Neil thinks about it for half a second, and then shakes his head. “Probably not.”

Andrew hums.

Neil’s face must be doing something interesting, because Andrew is staring at him, absolutely silently. Neil looks away for a second, trying to get his face back under control, but Andrew reaches forward, puts two fingers under Neil’s chin, and pulls Neil around for a kiss.

This has, historically, not been something Neil objects to.

Today is no exception.

Neil greatly enjoys kissing Andrew. Touching Andrew, in general.

Neil has never been as absolutely, boundlessly, brainlessly pleased as he was when he discovered that Andrew liked touching him, too.

“So are we just staying in for my birthday?” Andrew asks. “Standing in the hallway and refusing to move, in order to make the day as boring as possible?

“No. Breakfast in bed. Lunch—lunch can be normal. Dinner with the kids. Kick kids out. Walk on the beach. Ice cream. Home. It’ll be a good day.”

“I like that the only thing planned, all the way up until dinner, is food.”

“Anything else you want to do? Have a party? We could invite people over, actually—or do something later in the week, when Roland is off, the rest of our friends are free whenever—”

“Nah, I’ll just have the one day, thanks. But it sounds like a good day, Neil.”

“It will be,” Neil promises, grinning again. He’s going to put another ring on Andrew’s finger.

He leans in for another kiss.

“I’m trying to read,” Andrew murmurs a few minutes later.

“Right, right,” Neil says, straightening up. He settles into the couch. Maybe he’ll take a nap, too.

“Come here, idiot,” Andrew says.

Neil raises an eyebrow at him.

Andrew pushes his feet against Neil’s thighs, starts tugging Neil closer, until Neil understands and lays down on top of him. Andrew wraps his arms around Neil, props his book up on Neil’s back, and keeps reading.

Neil snuggles down.

He dreams of wedding rings and the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...anyway if anyone has any arguments they want neil and andrew to settle feel free to stick them in the comments


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neil picks up the RINGS!!!
> 
> otherwise just a regular day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who might have CO-VIDDDDDDDDD
> 
> anyway haven't been tested yet but HAVE been exposed and my sister, who was exposed to the same person, has a fever, so hey. this is relevant to you because it already takes most of my free time to write these chapters each week, so depending on how hard this hits me, chapters might start coming late/I might end up skipping a week. you guys are all great so I won't waste time asking for your patience, I just want to reassure you that if a sunday update doesn't arrive as scheduled it's not because I have abandoned this fic/am growing bored with it. I'm super duper excited about the next few chapters and also the general arc of the fic and, i repeat, am not abandoning it if a chapter isn't on time, i just might have needed extra sleep

The light is dim when Neil’s eyes first see it, and his muscles are aching.

That’s what he knows, when he wakes up Monday morning. The next thing he knows is that Andrew isn’t entirely on top of him—it can’t be comfortable, the way Andrew is lying, but who is Neil to question it?

He pets Andrew’s hair until Andrew twitches. “I’m going for a run,” he whispers, and Andrew grumbles, wordless and quiet, as Neil drags himself out from under Andrew, grabbing a pillow and sliding it under Andrew’s head to replace Neil’s shoulder. He gets changed, grabs his phone and headphones, and jogs down the stairs. Does some stretches in the hallway. He’ll have to get back into yoga—downward dog and plank and whatnot, to keep his arm strength up.

He steps outside. It’s quiet. Of course it is—it’s early still, no one’s even getting up to go to school yet. He sticks his headphones in his pocket. He doesn’t need them yet.

He runs six miles.

He passes a couple other runners—one he sees whenever he runs in the morning, one he’s seen around the neighborhood before. Three miles in, it’s far enough into the morning that people are walking their dogs. There’s movement behind curtains now, the smell of coffee wafting out into the street. Neil can feel the air in his lungs, the muscles in his legs, and it’s _good_. Yes. _This_ is what he’s been missing, the past few months. He doesn’t need therapy, he just needs to go for his morning runs more often.

Towards the end, it starts getting louder—he distinctly hears someone yell _wake up or you’ll miss the bus—_ and someone’s music is blasting out an open window. He doesn’t bother with his headphones. He doesn’t need them yet.

He slows to a walk when he gets home, does a quick lap around the block to cool down, and heads inside.

Natalie and Paige jump when he comes in—Paige nearly falls down the stairs.

“Oh, jesus _fuck_ ,” Natalie says. “I didn’t—okay. Okay.”

“Sorry,” Neil says. “I’ll start texting you when I head out for a run. I do that, sometimes.”

“I’m too old for this,” Natalie mutters as she heads into the kitchen.

“Yup, you are,” Neil agrees.

“Gonna give me a heart attack. Is that what you want, pops? For me to go into cardiac arrest? At the tender age of 14?”

“ _Tender?_ I thought you were old.”

“I’m tender because I’ve been brined, that doesn’t make me _young_.”

“That was an advanced cooking joke.”

“Yes. Because I’m old. Old and going to die of a heart attack. Because of you walking through the door with _no_ warning.”

“Should I knock, next time?”

“Yeah.”

“What if you’re not downstairs yet?”

“It doesn’t matter, we’re not letting you in. You can just stand there.”

“Oh, that’s _way_ better. I’ll just be standing there, smiling, when you open the door.”

Paige shivers. “Hey, actually, that’s _way more terrifying_.”

“Oh, by the way,” Neil says, passing Paige and Natalie their cereal, “Andrew agreed that you don’t have to be here for his entire birthday. We’ll probably eat in, and then you two are free to go visit Sandy or whoever.”

“Oh, gross,” Natalie says.

“What?” Neil asks. What did he say? What did he do?

“You guys want to have _birthday sex._ ”

Neil wastes a second being shocked that he hasn’t vaporized on the spot. “I’m _sorry_?”

“You should be, we didn’t need to know that!”

“I didn’t _say_ anything!”

Natalie points a finger at him. “You didn’t have to. We’ll go visit Sandy. Do you even want us to come home for dinner, or do you want, just, an uninterrupted 36 hours or so?”

“I—we’re not—that’s not what I—what?”

“Pops, you’re a bad liar.”

Neil is losing his mind. “Okay. First of all, you two wanted to go see Sandy, I told you I wasn’t sure if Andrew would want you home all day, and now I am following up to tell you you don’t need to be home all day, but Andrew would appreciate your company at dinner. After that, you’re free to do whatever you want. We’ll be going to the beach later that night, and I _do_ intend for _that_ to be just the two of us, so if you’d rather not be home alone, we can call someone to come hang out with you, or you can bring a friend over, or you can go out. I’m letting you know what our plans are. You don’t have to respond by discussing my and Andrew’s sex life before 8 in the morning.”

“Ew, you said it aga-ain,” Paige says, trying and failing to suppress a grin. She’s making fun of him.

“Yeah, you did,” Natalie says. “You’re our _parents_ , we don’t need to know about that.”

“Eat your breakfast,” Neil orders.

“Avoidance,” Paige declares. “This is _avoidance_.”

“Are you skipping out on a chance to eat?” Neil asks. “Just because you want to egg Natalie on?”

Paige shrugs. “There’ll be more food. I—”

Neil waits, but it seems like nothing’s coming. Paige has just said something so shocking she’s derailed herself.

She and Natalie eat their cereal in silence, and Neil tries not to cry into his glass of water. He will say nothing about this. He will not think about Natalie stealing Snickers bars so she’d have something to eat. He will not think about people who refused to give his kids food. He nudges the cereal box a little closer to the two of them, in case they want a second bowl, and doesn’t look at them. He doesn’t want them to think he’s watching them. His life’s mission is to get them to a place where they don’t even have to think about food.

Christ, he’s getting soft. He’s practically a feather blanket.

Is _wanting kids to eat_ really _soft_? No. No, Neil decides, that’s just a moral thing. Neil can be vaguely morally upright without being soft. He might be soft for other reasons, but not for this.

They finish their breakfast, load their dishes into the dishwasher, and then Natalie pats Neil on the head. “Stabbing you in the eyes,” she says.

“I’m wearing protective goggles.”

“Hey. Pops.”

Neil turns fully to look at her.

She points two fingers at her eyes, and then four fingers at him. “I’m watching you.”

“I’m watching you twice as hard.”

“No, because there’s _two_ of us,” Paige says, repeating the gesture. “We’re onto you.”

“Then it’s four eyes versus four eyes and we’re even.”

“Odd,” Natalie says.

“You’re going to miss the bus.”

“If you’ve got no comeback just say that,” Natalie says at top speed, before shutting the door behind her, cutting off any comeback Neil could have conceivably made.

Well, that’s not the end of the world.

He waits a few minutes, until he gets a text from Natalie informing him that they’re on the bus but she can still see him, and then he sticks his headphones in and calls Wymack.

“You’re lucky I’m already downstairs,” Wymack says by way of greeting.

“It’s late for you, I know you’re up.”

“Sometimes—this is gonna shock you—I _don’t_ spend my mornings doing paperwork. And if my phone ringing wakes up Abby, she’ll shove it down my throat. I assume that’s why Betsy’s alarm is so loud. She thinks it’s fucking funny.”

“It probably is. I trust Bee. Also, you only stay in bed late in the summer, when I don’t call you anyway.”

Wymack laughs. “That’s true enough. You already went for a run?”

“Ran, saw the kids out the door, got the text that they’re on the bus. Making coffee and pancakes. How are the new Foxes?”

“Glad the kids are safe. The Foxes are—breaking in. The juniors have really stepped it up, they’re trying to make things cohesive—the fifth years should really be doing that, but I think I spoiled them when they were freshmen.”

Neil makes the appropriate noise. Wymack has been insisting that he’s spoiled every freshmen class for the past six years—as soon as Neil was no longer on the team to argue the matter. He’s not even sure what _spoiling them_ would _look_ like—fewer gym days? “You know, if you had an assistant coach, they could probably prevent you from spoiling your team.”

“What are you, a salesperson for Dan?”

“No, she doesn’t pay me. I’m an _advocate_ for Dan.”

Wymack sighs. “I should probably give my daughter an excuse to move home, huh.”

“Yup.”

“Well, it’s too late in the year now, she won’t want to quit her job in _October_ , that’s cruel to the kids. I’ll think about it again in a couple months.”

“If you bring Dan in, she can insist on some cohesiveness.”

“Did you just ask about the Foxes because you wanted to tell me to make Dan my assistant coach?”

“No, but it’s as good an opportunity as any. I mean, Kevin is my best friend, which basically makes him my brother, which basically makes Dan my sister, so—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Hey, how’s your PR agent feel about your interview yesterday?”

Neil’s stomach swoops. He’d forgotten about Eliana.

He flips a pancake. “She hasn’t contacted me yet.”

“So, basically, she watched that, and then decided to save it for a business day.”

“Yup.”

“If it makes you feel better, _I_ thought it went just fine.”

“Thanks. I think it was okay, too.”

“How are the kids doing? Off-camera.”

“They’re all right. I scared the shit out of them this morning by walking through the door as they were coming down the stairs. Forgot to tell them I’d left.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Of being harassed for leaving without properly notifying the household? Or of being scared half to death at 7 in the morning?”

“Both.”

Wymack talks more about the new Foxes, and the fifth years—three are trying for grad school, one to law school, one to med school—and then Neil promises to call Abby, promises not to call Wymack again unless Andrew is also awake to talk, and promises to come watch the Foxes play, and then with barely a goodbye, they hang up.

Feeling like a good son and a better husband, Neil climbs on a chair to reach the tray on the top shelf. They pretty much never use it. Abby had bought it for them when they moved in together. Another nice thing they only own because someone else thought of it.

He loads pancakes onto two plates, coffee into two cups, and then, after a couple seconds spent deliberating, grabs whipped cream, sprinkles, nutella, and strawberries. He arranges them carefully, remembering Andrunior, and pretends to be slightly artistic. He hides the peanut butter under his arm. That’s a little secret he’ll keep to himself, for the moment.

He has never walked upstairs this carefully in his _life_.

Opening the door is a balancing act that Neil accomplishes with aplomb. He can’t revel in that, though. He is _much_ more invested in what’s going to happen next.

He _hears_ Andrew take a deep inhale, as the smell of coffee and pancakes hits his nose from a much shorter distance than expected. Andrew’s head tilts up, Neil catches a glimpse of his eye, and then Andrew is sitting up, wide-awake and fully focused.

“Did I sleep for a week?” Andrew asks, voice cracking from disuse and sleep. “Is it my birthday?”

“No, sleeping beauty, it’s just a regular, non-birthday day.” Neil passes him the tray, carefully keeping the peanut butter under his arm.

“Just a regular day,” Andrew repeats.

Neil kisses his cheek.

Andrew glances at him.

Neil shrugs unapologetically. “Your voice is cute in the morning.”

Andrew looks at him.

Neil doesn’t know what he’s done to inspire that love, but he’s happy to accept it.

Andrew reaches for the whipped cream, and then pauses. “Your peanut butter.”

“Oh, I have it, I just didn’t want to ruin the view.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Thoughts on me dipping the pancakes directly into the jar?”

“Hard to make a pancake sandwich like that, but you’re also the only person who eats it. _But_ : crumbs.”

Neil hums. That’s true. Nothing like pancake crumbs to ruin a jar of peanut butter. He grabs the extra knife and begins putting together his pancake sandwiches while Andrew builds a monstrosity—stacked pancakes held together with nutella and sprinkles, whipped cream and strawberries on top, the whipped cream piled three inches high.

“Neither one of us can eat pancakes like a normal human being,” Andrew says, staring at Neil’s stack of sandwiches, which Neil is carefully garnishing with strawberry slices.

“Normal people can get fucked.”

“A harsh sentiment for such a nice morning.”

Neil grins at him. “All right, Mr. Sunshine.”

“Please, just call me Bright, Mr. Sunshine was my father.”

“Your parents named you Bright Sunshine? No wonder you killed your mom.”

“Actually, I’ve always appreciated the name, my issue was more that she nicknamed me _Brig_.”

“Brigadoon.”

“Nonsense. That’s all you say. Everything you say is nonsense.”

“I get it from my husband. Oh—pick up your coffee—”

They both lift their mugs as Sir jumps onto the bed and runs across Andrew’s legs, shaking the tray. King follows right after him.

“We’ll have to get up soon,” Andrew says. “Feed them.”

Neil nods.

There’s hissing. Andrew passes Neil his mug, and when Sir and King go zooming across the bed again, Andrew grabs King, who yells his distaste for the situation, grabs Andrew’s face, and shrieks. Andrew bundles King into his chest.

Neil waits a minute.

King starts purring.

Sir—silent and light on her feet—jumps up to sit next to Neil.

Neil passes Andrew’s coffee back to him.

They resume their breakfast. Sir kneads the blanket. Andrew cuts his pancake tower with absolute precision. Andrew watches Neil eat his pancakes—just barely, out of the corner of his eye. Neil only catches it because he’s watching Andrew eat his pancakes, too.

It’s just—Andrew’s enjoying this. He likes this, and Neil likes that Andrew likes this.

Neil’s phone buzzes—Eliana.

Neil holds it up and shows Andrew the screen. Andrew waves a hand—Neil can answer it without disturbing breakfast.

“Hello,” Neil says.

“Good morning, Neil, I hope I’m not waking you up.”

“Nope, been up for a couple hours.”

“Good, good. So that interview—Neil, that interview. This is my area of expertise and I’m _still_ not certain whether it was good or bad.”

“How’s my PR looking?”

“Reasonably confused.”

“Well, as long as it’s _reasonably_ confused.”

“There are people in your corner. There are people who think it was all staged. There are people who think you’re cheating on Andrew, due to that whole thing with the phone, and people cautioning patience, because they assume they’ll find out after Andrew’s birthday whether or not there’s actually a big birthday present—you’d better have something, Neil. The fact that the kids are talking to their grandparents is falling in your favor. No one’s sure what to make of the fact that the kids think it would be really easy to run away—in some cases it’s turned the tide in your favor, but some people have decided it’s a cry for help. The full audio was helpful, but people still think Andrew is terrifying. Neil, quite honestly, I don’t know that there’s anything you could say or do right now to turn your image around. This isn’t exactly something you can apologize for, and I don’t think that making a big donation to—I don’t know—the National Domestic Violence Hotline would go over well. Usually, the tactic is to admit to wrongdoing and then apologize and take steps to make it right, and then cover it up with something really good, and hope to god that my client is willing to go along with it. The problem is that you haven’t actually _hurt_ anyone—you’re insisting Andrew’s never hurt you and the kids are insisting that neither of you have ever touched them, so who would apologize to who? And then what do you do to make up for it?”

Neil pinches the bridge of his nose. “So what’s the plan?” And what’s the point of this phone call?

“The plan is to do exactly what you said you’d do. Get Andrew a birthday present worthy of that interruption—”

“I literally did, Eliana, that’s what’s _happening._ ”

“Show it off, then. Keep the kids safe—I know, I know, that’s what you’re doing, but double down on it, they _cannot_ get hurt on your watch. Do your Thursday thing, and _do not fight_. A conversation is fine. _Don’t fight_. Gain the public’s trust and love, and you’ll turn the tide here, but Neil, you don’t get to be private anymore. If you’re private, and bad shit surfaces, you have nothing to fall back on.”

“Got it.”

“Great. If things go sideways on Thursday, I’ll call you on Friday. You _do_ know that Thursday is Halloween, right?”

“Thursday is Halloween?” Neil repeats, looking at Andrew, who stops eating. “Oh. Shit. We’ll just—we’ll do it late, on—after the kids are finished. We usually stop getting trick-or-treaters by 7; we’ll start at 8?”

Andrew nods.

“I’ll put out a press release, then,” Eliana says briskly. “Great. Talk to you later, Neil.”

“Talk to you later.” He hangs up, sticks his head on Andrew’s shoulder, and sighs. He takes a bite of his pancake sandwich.

“Anything good?”

“People don’t know if they love us or hate us, and there’s nothing we can do, but we _do_ have to care a lot.”

“For how long? I can probably care a bunch for a couple hours, but I think it’ll fade fast.”

“A couple hours is probably fine.”

Andrew kisses the top of Neil’s head.

“Natalie patted my head earlier and said she was stabbing me in the eyes.”

Andrew snorts. “And what did you say back?”

“I told her I was wearing protective goggles.”

“It’s really kind of unfortunate that I don’t laugh, given I’m part of the funniest family on the planet.”

“We’re comedic geniuses,” Neil agrees, picking his head up and leaning in for a kiss.

Sir jumps off the bed. Andrew gives Neil a kiss. Sir begins meowing at the door.

Neil shoves the last of his pancake into his mouth, while Andrew polishes off his stack. King flips away from Andrew, narrowly avoids knocking over the tray, and joins Sir at the door.

“I’ll feed them?” Neil says. “And then I have to shower.”

“I have to brush my teeth,” Andrew says, which Neil takes as agreement.

Neil brings the tray downstairs. Feeds the cats. Puts dishes in the dishwasher, refrigerated things in the refrigerator, and climbs onto the counter to put the tray away as he hears the shower start up. Is Andrew stealing the shower? No—he must’ve started it up for Neil.

Neil is so far gone for him.

It’s ridiculous. Andrew turning the shower on to heat up isn’t a major commitment or kindness.

But—

But Neil loves Andrew so goddamn _much_. What’s he supposed to do, _not_ fall in love with Andrew all over again for starting up the shower?

Neil heads back upstairs and into the bathroom, where Andrew is rinsing out his mouth. He kisses the base of Andrew’s neck, and then strips down and gets in the shower.

Andrew joins him half a minute later. Neil glances back, but Andrew just takes over from Neil, pushing Neil’s hands down and scrubbing shampoo into Neil’s scalp. Neil allows it, tilting his head under the water when directed, closing his eyes and letting Andrew work conditioner through his hair. Andrew lets the conditioner sit for a few minutes, wraps his arms around Neil’s waist, presses his lips to Neil’s spine.

Neil forgets, sometimes, how lucky he is.

 _Just a regular day_ , he’d said earlier. And it is. They don’t often bother with breakfast in bed, hence why the tray is nearly impossible to reach, but in the off-season and on Mondays during exy season, they have breakfast together, slow, unhurried, a luxury Neil rarely got before he hit adulthood. Showering together isn’t unheard of; Andrew being naked for that is rare, but also not unheard of. And, really, what is _irregular_ about this day? Neil’s got a therapy consultation, which is highly out of the ordinary, and his errands are unusual, but—but there’s nothing shocking about this morning. About the evening they’ll probably have, reading or watching a movie or spending three hours in the kitchen talking while dinner leftovers go cold sitting on the counter.

Every irregularity Neil can think of is something _good_ —the kids. The therapy, which Neil does begrudgingly have to admit might be a good thing. The rings. The makeup.

When did _regular_ become so _good_?

Andrew unwraps himself from around Neil, and then Neil feels the sponge against his back. He holds still until Andrew makes it around to Neil’s front, and then he tilts Andrew’s face up for a kiss.

Andrew wraps a hand around Neil’s hips, holding Neil steady, but just for a few minutes. Just a few minutes, and then Andrew breaks away. Neil opens his eyes. He and Andrew stare each other down for a minute.

And then Andrew dunks Neil’s head under the water to rinse out the conditioner.

Neil grins at Andrew. “What?”

“What, what?”

“You tell me,” Neil says, measuring out the appropriate amount of Andrew’s shampoo. “Also, it’s your turn.”

Andrew turns his back to Neil.

It’s nice, having an excuse to run his fingers through Andrew’s hair. Not that he _needs_ an excuses, but—still.

Neil rinses the shampoo out and squeezes out conditioner.

“Sometimes I have dreams about you fucking me,” Andrew says.

“We have sex in real life,” Neil says. “That’s not why you pushed me under the water.”

“Let me clarify: Sometimes I dream about your dick in my ass, and it’s not a nightmare.”

Neil’s hands are buried in Andrew’s hair. He can’t react to that. “Oh.” What else is he supposed to say? “Did you want to talk about that?”

Andrew shrugs. “That’s not one of the things you put on the table.”

“Well, you can put things on the table, too.”

“I don’t know if I _want_ that on the table.”

“Well, if you come to a decision there, I’m willing to have it on the table.”

“I just have no idea how that would _go_. I don’t know if therapy would ever get me to a place where we could do that and I wouldn’t knife you.”

“If you don’t want to, we won’t do it. If you’re worried about hurting me, you won’t.”

“No, I’d keep my armbands and knives on. I might hurt you.”

Neil rinses his hands off, leaving the conditioner in Andrew’s hair, and takes one of Andrew’s hands.

“And I’m assuming here that _you’d_ be at _all_ interested in that, in the first place.”

“I could be, but I’m not doing fuck all unless you want it to happen.”

“So I don’t even know if it’s worth the work.”

“I’d think that it would be worth the work, just for you, personally.”

“Coming from Mr. No Therapy, that’s not very convincing.”

“I do what I can.”

Andrew goes silent, and after a minute or two, dunks his own head under the water. Neil takes the hint and helps rinse out the conditioner, and then scrubs Andrew down, carefully keeping track of Andrew’s eyes, of any tension, but—there is none. Andrew is okay with this. He’s _relaxed_. He tilts his face up towards Neil, and Neil obligingly kisses him.

He’s not thinking at _all_ about what Andrew’s just said. It feels like it’s not his place. Andrew has to bring it to the table before Neil will consider it.

They spend the rest of the morning on the couch, legs tangled, reading their books, and then Neil eats a granola bar and heads to the therapist’s office—Janice.

Neil takes three deep breaths, counts to ten, and then goes in.

Another consultation down, another therapist crossed off the list, this one somehow worse than the last.

Neil feels almost cheerful, as he heads for the jewelry store. Maybe he _won’t_ find a good therapist. He’ll be able to look Andrew in the eye and say that he tried, and then maybe he’ll try meditation. More running. Really, what _was_ that breakdown that he had, anyway? He hasn’t had one since—probably it was just a stress-induced one-off. Is he supposed to go to therapy every time he feels vaguely stressed out? And if no one can help him, is there really anything wrong with him? Maybe the reason why he’s not clicking with anyone is because he doesn’t _need_ anyone.

He pulls into the parking lot and takes a deep breath. He’s not there yet. He’s not even halfway through the consultations he’s _scheduled,_ let alone the whole list of therapists he’s got. And—like it or not—he promised Andrew he’d do this, and he promised Andrew he’d take it seriously. He doesn’t get to give up early.

 _Has_ he given up early?

Maybe the reason he’s not clicking with these therapists is because he’s refusing to try. Maybe it’s his own discomfort getting in the way—him giving up before he even gives these therapists a chance. _Could_ he work with Maura or Janice? If he was willing to put in the work, could he sit there, every week, and talk to either of them about anything but exy?

Like talking to a wall. It would feel like talking to a wall. Running headfirst at a wall, in Janice’s case.

But then, maybe that’s just because it’s the first session, and not even a real session, just a consultation. They can’t exactly jump right into treatment—or—helping?—as soon as they meet him. Maybe he’s expecting too much. Maybe he’s not giving them a fair chance. Maybe he’s throwing the game. He picks up his phone, fiddles with it—he should call Andrew. Confess. He’s not holding up his end of the deal, not holding himself to the required standards—

Neil catches that thought. Confess? Why does he feel like he’s lying? He hasn’t _sinned_.

He puts his head on his steering wheel. Is _this_ a breakdown?

He’s never cared much about his car. Never spent much time in one. It was odd, at first, to own one—one that he wouldn’t ditch at the first sign of trouble, one registered and insured in his name—but when he and Andrew moved in together, Neil was happy to cede driving responsibilities to Andrew. Andrew likes driving, after all, and Neil doesn’t care much one way or the other, so what was he going to do, _ask_ to drive places?

These days, though, Neil’s finding himself with his forehead against his steering wheel rather often. He’s starting to bond with the car. Starting to feel that, maybe, he _likes_ his car. Maybe he should name it. Is that what people do? Has Andrew named the maserati? Neil has never heard him refer to it as anything other than _the maserati_. Or _the maz_ , when he’s making fun of Neil. Maybe _Neil_ should name the maserati. _That_ would fuck with Andrew. What would he name it? Anthony, of course—Anthony Minyard. Anthony Minerati. Neil can see Andrew’s eyes rolling.

Deep breaths. In and out, in and out, in and out.

Neil is falling apart, and right now, he can see where his seams are splitting.

It’s like lying outside on a cloudy day—he can insist that the world is nothing but clouds, until they part and allow him a glimpse of blue sky behind them. Easy to deny that the color blue exists, until he sees it—and even then, well, the sky doesn’t _really_ exist, color is subjective, so—how does Neil remind himself of this, forever? How can he remember to look at the clouds and remember that the sky is real? When he feels good, when he’s happy, how does he remember that sometimes he thinks thoughts that don’t make sense, how does he remember that he can go from joy to panic in the length of time it would take to go down a two-foot-long greased slide? Why does he have to _do_ this, _now_? He was fine when things were terrible, and now that things are going great—just a few hours ago he was wondering when _normal_ became _good_ —he’s breaking. What happened to breaking under pressure? If you run over a mug, it doesn’t hold up just fine for ten years after the fact and _then_ shatter.

Oh.

Oh, hang on, he’s fucked, he’s so fucked. This is what Bee and Andrew have been saying for _years_ —that’s what Bee told Neil a few months after he moved in with Andrew, when Andrew went back to therapy and started falling apart. That Andrew’s brain was recognizing that it was in a safe place, and it was finally allowing itself to process things. And that’s what Andrew said, a couple weeks back—that therapy wasn’t just about admitting that things were bad, but about having someone to explain why he was having a panic attack about something that had happened years back, and to help him cope with it. Oh, jesus, Neil’s so fucked.

But then, why _now_? Why is it so tied to his stress levels? Wouldn’t he have recognized that he was safe last year, before the kids, before the concept of kids had been floated? He _doesn’t_ feel safe now, that’s half the issue, his paranoia is what eats him alive half the time. So shouldn’t his brain be locking everything back up? Putting everything away for when he’s got more time to think about it? That might well be never, given the mafia doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, but—shouldn’t his brain feel unsafe _forever?_ Or is this just—he _can’t_ hold it back anymore, and this is just a slow leak of trauma, and Natalie was right, and he’s nowhere near rock bottom?

Also, why does he keep having to have these arguments with himself?

Neil imprints this one on the back of his eyelids. Brain = bad. Panic? Confusion? Self-doubt? For sure. The whole combo. Is it even as bad as he thinks it is? Ooh, that’s a whole _other_ issue for which he needs therapy. No breaking his promise to Andrew, because he _does_ need therapy and he _knows_ it. He doesn’t want to find out what rock bottom looks like.

Neil has no idea what he’s doing.

Sitting in his car. Poking at his brain. Seeing what comes crawling out. Hey, that’s probably therapy all by itself.

He gets out of the car. He has an errand to run.

He heads straight for the front desk. Exchanges greetings with the cashier. Explains his purpose. An adult, doing adult things, and he is not a shell, he is not empty, he is a human being. The cashier speaks into a walkie talkie, and then Lily comes flying out of a corner of the store.

“Neil, great to see you again!” She sparkles, slapping Neil in the face with the salesperson vibe she’s giving off.

“Good to see you too,” Neil says, smiling right back.

“Give me just a minute and I’ll go grab the rings.”

“All right,” Neil agrees, and then it’s time to stand there for an inordinately long time period.

It _cannot_ take this long to get a pair of rings.

Neil stares at diamonds and sapphires. Catalogues exits, hiding spots, makes note of who’s where. What if there’s something wrong? On the phone yesterday, whoever called him had said they were ready to go and met the price estimate. Could something have happened between then and now? Are they broken? Are they _lost_? Did someone _steal_ them? Where—

Lily comes out with Letitia, who looks perfectly proud of herself, which sets Neil at ease in a way he hasn’t felt since he left home.

Letitia places two ring boxes on the counter. “The size difference between the gems should barely be noticeable,” she says, cracking the boxes open. “You should wear them below your wedding rings, though, for a little extra protection—although, actually, your wedding rings are just gold—”

She stops, which is good, because Neil has no brain power leftover to listen to her.

The blue is accurate—Neil recognizes it immediately, courtesy of having spent two-thirds of his lifetime terrified of it. But—

But the brown is accurate, too.

Neil wants to wear that for the rest of his life.

He plucks it out of the box, turns it around in his fingers, watches the way the light flashes across the topaz, the diamonds.

He’s in public.

He looks up at Letitia, who looks nothing short of smug. “They’re gorgeous,” he says honestly. “They’re perfect. This is better than anything I was imagining, honestly.”

“I’m glad you like them,” Letitia says. “Take care of them—they’ll stand up to water and probably daily use, but maybe take them off when cleaning—I don’t know how the topaz will hold up against cleaning chemicals—and if you’re doing physical labor or playing a sport, _definitely_ take them off. They’re not glass, but they’re not diamonds, either.”

“Got it,” Neil says.

“Did you want to try it on?” Lily asks.

Neil does. Neil very badly wants to put this on his finger, and never take it off. “No,” he says, putting it back in the box. “Not yet.”

“All right.”

“Here, take my card,” Lily says, grabbing one from a stack on the counter. “In case you or someone you know needs more jewelry work done.”

“Thank you,” Neil says, taking it. “And thank you,” he says to Letitia.

“Of course,” she says.

And then he heads out the door, gets into the car, and pops the boxes open again.

They’re so clearly part of a matched set that Neil almost doesn’t want to separate them. He pulls them out of the boxes and stacks them on top of each other, and it’s perfect—every stone the exact same size, the exact same distance from the ones beside it. Andrew’s ring has two more gems—a bigger ring size—but still, they’re perfect, awe-inspiringly so. He didn’t pay enough for these, it should have been more expensive, probably.

Neil should wait. He should wait to put his on. He should wait, and let Andrew put it on him.

He tugs his wedding ring off.

Is he gonna do this? It feels like he’s doing something illicit—like he’s opening a gift too early.

He takes his engagement ring out of the box.

He puts his head back on the steering wheel. Hey. He’s got an engagement ring. And a wedding ring. Hey, what the fuck? He bought his own engagement ring, which _should_ make it feel less important, less—less _something_. But, it’s an engagement ring, which—does he even _care?_ If Andrew hadn’t proposed, would Neil had ever been bothered about it? He hasn’t ended up in the hospital since then, so there would be no real reason for them to get married. Would he have ever cared? Neil wants to say no. He’s not exactly under some illusion that marriage makes a relationship perfect; his parents were married, after all, and in a church no less, and that never made their relationship good or holy. Riley’s husband was a piece of shit. Neil knows this. He knows that he and Andrew had a good relationship before they were married, and that being married likely didn’t send them down a path they wouldn’t have followed anyway. He knows that. He and Andrew would have been just as faithful and committed to each other unmarried as they are married. He knows that, too. So what difference does it make? And, fuck, the concept of getting engaged should mean _nothing_. They’re already married.

Maybe it’s just the— _hopefulness_. The hope that this will work, that it will work for a very long time.

Really, marriage makes more sense as a business thing. He’s been friends with the rest of the Foxes for longer than he’s been married to Andrew, and he’s never felt the need to marry any of _them_. Marriage only makes sense for tax purposes.

But, well, here he is, holding an engagement ring, and even if it had come out looking terrible he’d still be sitting here freaking out over an _engagement ring_.

Well, if it doesn’t matter, then it won’t matter if he puts it on.

He puts on his engagement ring, and then puts his wedding ring on, looks at it for half of a second, and then puts his head back on the steering wheel.

The silver lining: If Neil is reacting like this, _without_ the element of surprise, he fully expects Andrew to have a total breakdown. He wants tears. He wants declarations of love. He wants philosophical discussions on the nature of marriage. He wants to get a divorce just so that they can get engaged and married again. He wants Andrew to stare at him forever and say _anything_ when Neil asks for a favor and stick his feet in Neil’s lap while they watch TV together and to trust Neil, to trust Neil and believe him, and is that really so much to ask? And, sure, he’s got all of that already, but he wants it _again_ , wants it _more_ , wants _two_ rings to remind him that he’s _got_ that.

He looks back at the rings.

He puts his head back on the steering wheel.

He can _feel_ both rings.

He remembers this from when he wore his wedding ring—it always felt a little odd, when he’d put it on at night, just because he so rarely wore it. He’d get used to it, and then he’d take it off, and then _not_ wearing it would feel odd for a little while. And then, when he started wearing it permanently, not wearing it felt _wrong_ , and putting it back on felt _right_. He’d gotten used to the little band around his finger.

And this one—this one isn’t smooth. Letitia’s done a good job—none of the stones are sharp, none of them painful—but he moves his pinky up and down and feels it rub against the stones. They don’t stick out very far, really—just enough for him to feel them.

He’s going to wear this forever.

He still has a _week_ until he can put it on for good.

Maybe he _should_ give Andrew the ring at breakfast. Just deliver it to him on the tray with a stack of waffles. Fuck, even _that’s_ too late, he should set an alarm for 12:01 in the morning, wake Andrew up, and give it to him right then and there. Put the ring on and go back to sleep.

Well, that wouldn’t happen, because Neil wouldn’t be able to sleep, and probably neither would Andrew.

Neil’s brain is imploding. He doesn’t _care_. There’s nothing to care _about_. None of this matters, none of it matters at all, he doesn’t care, he really doesn’t care. He’s got Andrew, whether or not they’re married makes no difference, and since they’re already married, who cares about an engagement ring?

He pulls both rings off, puts his wedding ring back on, and puts the engagement ring back in the box. He snaps both boxes closed. Done. He’s thought about this enough. He’s contemplated this enough. Now he needs to go learn how to do makeup, and he’s running late, because he’s spent fifteen minutes fighting two separate internal wars.

He puts his hands on the wheel, refuses to think about the place on his finger where the ring should be, and drives to Riley’s apartment.

The parking lot is empty—it’s work hours on a Monday. Neil’s picked a good time.

He should leave the rings in the car.

Oh, he should really leave the rings in the car.

He doesn’t need to bring them in. There’s no reason to do that.

What if they get stolen? He sticks the boxes in his sweatshirt pocket, makes sure they’re not obvious, and marches up to Riley’s door. He knocks. He will not tell anyone about the rings. No one will know they exist, let alone that they’re on his person.

The door swings open. “So did you run your errand yet?” Riley demands.

“I—what?”

“I was watching the interview yesterday,” she says. “Did you pick up Andrew’s birthday present?”

“You got Andrew’s birthday present?” Maria asks, immediately interested in the conversation.

“I did,” Neil says.

“Come in, tell me what it is, tell me tell me tell me,” Riley says, shutting the door behind Neil.

“I think Andrew should be the first to see it,” Neil says diplomatically. “And it’s a secret. He really should be the first one to know about it.” The rings are burning a hole in his pocket. He wants to wear his. Maybe he should propose when he gets home.

“It can’t be _that_ important,” Maria scoffs.

Neil shrugs at her. No, he can’t propose when he gets home, he’s going to have some goddamn self-control and hold off.

“Oh my god, did you get him a ring?” Riley gasps, putting a hand to her chest. Neil’s heart jumps so far up his throat it falls out his mouth. “Oh my _god_ , you _did_ , didn’t you.”

“What? I—”

“Uh-uh, you’ve got that deer-in-the-headlights look—I fucking _nailed_ it, didn’t I, first guess, come at me—”

“How the fuck did you guess that?” Neil demands. He can’t hide it, not now that she’s _guessed_ it. “How much do you think about rings that—” Riley’s face is showing nothing but pure horror, and, oh no, oh _no_ , “yeah, it’s a ring, I got us both engagement rings, we never got them, you know? Anyway, if I show you, can you keep your mouths shut about it for a week?” Oh no, he needs to hang out with Riley more often, needs to hear this shit from her before he spills it—also, is she really thinking of _proposing_ already? It’s been—four weeks? Has it even been _that_ many? Why is he distracting Maria by showing off the _rings_? Neil’s middle name is _idiot_. He used to be better at lying. Used to be better at dealing with having the truth shoved right in his face. Used to be better at thinking things up on the spot. Is he getting old? Is that what this is? Is he socialized, now, like a dog? Or is he just out of practice?

“ _Yes,_ I want to see, oh my _god_ ,” Maria says, but there’s a look on her face that tells Neil that she didn’t miss _any_ of what just happened.

Well, Neil’s in it now. He takes the boxes out of his pocket. Takes a second to get his face under control—he’s not going to be able to do this, oh jesus—

“ _Two?_ ” Riley shrieks.

“One’s for me—why does he get a ring and I don’t, he’s the one who proposed—here, this one’s—this one’s mine,” he says, glancing at it. He gets stuck there for a second—it’s catching the light just right, and it really is exactly the color of Andrew’s eyes, and why _can’t_ he just wear it starting now—and then remembers what he’s doing and opens the second box. “This one’s his.”

“Oh my _god_. Oh my god. Oh my god, he’s gonna _lose it_ ,” Maria says, staring at the rings. “Andrew’s gonna flip his shit.”

“I didn’t—I hope so. I mean, it’s not like I asked his input, I just—maybe I should’ve asked someone else—I don’t know. What would _you_ want in a ring? You two have similar taste, you really think he’ll like it?”

“He _will_ , Neil,” Maria says firmly. “You gotta know your punk, and Andrew’s a very _subdued_ punk. Now, to be fair, I am _not_ —love me some ostentatious shit—but he _is_ and he will _die._ Is that—did you get rings in the color of his and your eyes? Fuck, Neil, I never realized you were a romantic!”

“But Andrew is, and I wanted them to be good.”

“It _worked_. When are you going to give it to him?”

“On his birthday, but I don’t know when,” Neil says, but even as he says it the plan presents itself to him. “We’re gonna go to the beach, and I think—there’s this spot, where, you know how they have those lamps lighting the walkways over the dunes? There’s this spot where you’re at the top of the dune, and you can see the whole beach, and—I think there, because if we’re standing next to a lamp he’ll be able to see the ring, but I haven’t figured out ring transportation—I can’t exactly fit the boxes in my pants pockets, not without it being _noticeable_ , and I don’t want to propose in a _sweatshirt_.”

“To be fair, it’s not like he’s going to say _no_ ,” Riley points out.

“Still.”

“Also, _propose_?”

“Yeah, I think I’m just going to propose.”

Riley puts her hands on her head, a slow movement that tells Neil that she’s unsure if that’s really what she wants to do with them. “You’re already married—Neil, how’d he propose?”

“He insists that _I_ proposed, but he sat on my desk and dropped my ring on my notebook.”

“On the beach… end of the day… waves crashing… Andrew is gonna lose his fucking mind, Neil,” Maria says, sounding absolutely delighted about it. “That’s a _real_ proposal. He’s going to _collapse_. How are you going to hide these from him? Where are you putting them?”

“I—well, this is helping, right now. He _can’t_ know I was here, mostly because it’ll throw him off, time-wise—he’ll think this was really a second session of something, or a second shopping trip, not just me picking something up. I don’t—I guess when I get home I’ll call him and tell him to go sit in the bathroom or something so I can hide them? He _knows_ I’m bringing his present home today, I don’t have to hide _that_ , I just have to—do some misdirecting. Make him think it’s a bigger gift than it is, or something.”

“You’re going to gaslight your husband into thinking you bought him a—a—”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Neil says triumphantly, pointing at Maria. “A _what_? What is large but easy enough to hide that he’ll never find it and requires two separate, but lengthy, sessions, _plus_ a phone call, _and_ makes me this happy? What could it _feasibly_ be?”

“He’ll think up something,” Riley says. “He’s smart and he _knows_ things.”

“What, like he’s psychic?” Maria asks, grinning.

“No, like—you know how, as a human being, you forget things? So you don’t always make connections, because there’s shit you’ve forgotten? Andrew doesn’t bother with that. Given enough of an incentive, he’ll pull out shit _no one_ remembers. He’ll come up with something. He’ll be like, _oh, given the precise amount of time you were gone, you got me xyz_.”

“Well, as long as he doesn’t guess _engagement rings_ , I don’t care what he guesses,” Neil says. “Also, I don’t think that’s _gaslighting,_ it’s just—obfuscating the surprise. Also, wait, I really need help—hey, you know who I should call? Allison. I’ll call Allison. I have to call her anyway.”

“Oh, fuck, teammate bonding time?” Maria asks. “Call her _now._ ”

“Now?”

“Now. We’re gonna be teammates, we may as well bond,” Riley agrees.

“Are you—are you sure? I mean, theoretically it would probably take Maria 20 minutes to teach me how to do makeup, and then I could get out of your way.”

He’s met with shrugs.

“This is the most exciting thing that was going to happen to us today,” Riley says. “Call Allison.”

Neil calls Allison.

“Neil? My precious Neil? Could it be? I am worthy of a call from Neil Josten, soon-to-be famous YouTuber, desired by news networks across the country—and yet, this private, elusive—I’ll be honest, I keep waiting for you to interrupt me and I’m running out of shit to spew. I’m really just happy that you called.”

“Don’t get excited, I need something now, too.”

“One day, you’re going to call because you want to hang out.”

“One day, I won’t have to. When are you moving down here?”

“Oh, right, you’re going house hunting with me.”

Neil refrains from expressing his surprise about this. He _is_ going to go house hunting with her, he supposes, it just hadn’t been said out loud yet. “Just move into our neighborhood, it’s close to the main attraction.”

“You?”

“Me. Anyway. I’m putting you on speaker, Riley and Maria are here—”

“Teammates-to-be!”

“Hi!” Riley says cheerfully.

“Hello,” Maria says.

“Hi! What’s the gathering for?”

“I’m trying to figure out how best to propose to Andrew.”

Allison shrieks.

Neil turns down the volume.

A minute later, he hears her suck in a breath, and he turns the volume back up.

“Okay. Hang on. Renee’s already here, she heard me scream. We have _got_ to call Dan—and Matt, I guess—Nicky? What time is it in Germany—”

“You think Nicky can keep a secret?”

“If it’s important? Yes. It’s around 8:30—do we want Aaron in on this? Kevin _should_ be in on this, even if his input is useless—”

“I’ll grab my laptop,” Maria says. “This feels like a Skype call.”

“Yes. Yes. I will gather the crew. See you in 5.”

She hangs up.

Neil looks at Maria.

Maria shrugs. This isn’t the day she had in mind, but Riley seems excited—almost certainly only because this promises to be a good way of preventing Maria from thinking about Riley thinking about rings—but—well. Neil should insist on leaving. He’s interrupting.

But Riley sits him in a chair, and people are joining the Skype call, and then he has many expectant faces looking at him.

“Okay. Um. Turn down your volume, if you don’t want your ears to be blown out. I’m going to propose to Andrew, and I need help—”

Even with the volume down, Neil still cringes.

“ _Explain_!” Nicky shrieks. “ _Explain_!”

“Give me _two seconds_ and I _will_ ,” Neil says, and then no one is screaming, and everyone is staring at him with laser focus. “So—neither of us know who proposed to whom, due to—reasons—but it really seemed to bother Andrew that I _didn’t_ propose to him, so—I got us engagement rings for his birthday, and I’m going to propose, but I think I need help.”

“I will fly out there,” Nicky says. “I am _on my way_. Do you need someone to arrange a fan so it’ll blow your hair out the right way? Do you need backup dancers?”

“Don’t let him steal the spotlight—oh, that’ll be our job,” Matt says. “We’ll drive down and stop Nicky from stealing the spotlight.”

“No offense, but why am I here?” Aaron asks. “Do you need my blessing or something?”

Neil shrugs. “I mean, you’re here because Allison invited you, but if you want to give your blessing, I’ll take it.”

Utter silence.

“You guys have _got_ to start doing this shit privately,” Dan says.

“You have my blessing. I’ll stick around for the rest of this shit,” Aaron says, ignoring Neil’s blatant shock, “but only because I want to see you admit to needing help.”

“Honestly, right now I’m mostly feeling guilty,” Neil says. “Andrew’s the last person to find out about this.”

“As it’s supposed to be,” Renee says with a smile.

“Right. So, anyway, I kind of want to propose on the beach, but I don’t want to propose in a sweatshirt or sweatpants, and it’s really hard to hid two ring boxes in jean pockets—”

“What do they look like?” Matt asks.

“My jeans?”

“Really nice,” Maria jumps in. “I picked them out.”

“ _Oh_ thank god,” Allison says, while Nicky cheers and Matt and Kevin offer the camera thumbs up.

“But no,” Matt says, “the rings, did you get them? Also, did you get _yourself_ a ring? Is that why it’s _rings,_ plural?”

“Yes and yes,” Neil says. “It’s not fair that only Andrew gets a ring, _he_ proposed to _me_.” He pulls the rings out of their boxes and holds them, one at a time, up to the camera. “The brown one is mine, the blue one is his—”

“ _The colors of your eyes_ ,” Nicky cries. “ _Neil_ , I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Thanks. Anyway—”

“They’re really nice, Neil,” Dan says. “Andrew’s going to love it.”

“Thanks. But—”

“I can’t believe you’ve put literally any thought into this,” Kevin says. “I’m so proud, Neil.”

“Right?” Aaron says. “I always thought he was brainless.”

“I put thought into lots of things. _Anyway_ ,” Neil says loudly, “I want—”

“Not _brainless_ ,” Nicky says. “Just _oblivious_.”

“ _Unromantic,_ ” Matt adds.

“I will hang up,” Neil threatens loudly.

Everyone settles down.

“Thank you. Anyway, I want to look nice and also hide two rings. Thoughts?”

“Can anyone here see Neil in a pea coat?” Allison asks.

Heads shake.

“Neil. Listen to me. Think about it, and think hard,” Allison says. “I need you to tell me if you own a nice jacket.”

Neil shakes his head.

“You didn’t think about that,” Dan accuses. “Not for so much as a _second_.”

“Didn’t need to,” Neil says. “Guaranteed, I do not own a nice jacket.”

“You might,” Kevin says thoughtfully. “Hang on, what about the one you wore to Renee’s birthday party last year?”

“Oh yeah,” Allison says. “Yeah, that could work.”

“That _counts?_ ” Neil asks dubiously. “Also, I’ll be honest, I have no idea where it is.”

“Yes it counts. Find it.”

“Well, hang on,” Kevin says. “That was a party in New York, in September, and if I remember correctly, it was unseasonably cold, correct?”

Reluctant nods all around.

“Actually, I think Andrew had to buy me that jacket the day of,” Neil remembers. “I had arrived unprepared.”

“This is South Carolina,” Kevin says, ignoring Neil. “It’ll be too warm.”

“Who says the rings need to be in the boxes?” Renee asks. “There’s no rule requiring that.”

“Thought of that,” Neil says. “But I don’t want to just have them loose in my pocket—what if I pull my phone out and the ring comes with it? What if I do that _on the beach_ and lose the rings?”

There’s a thoughtful silence.

“Okay, hear me out,” Nicky says, before being instantly drowned out by cries of _no!_

“Guys, I’ll have to go back to work in, like, five minutes,” Matt says. “Nicky, if you’ve got something, spit it out.”

“ _Thank you_ , Matt. Neil, you wore your wedding ring on a chain, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still have that chain?”

“Andrew won’t remember what the chain looks like,” Dan protests.

“It’s mostly symbolic,” Nicky says, barreling ahead. “But—I mean, it’ll be _warmer_ , sure, but will it be _hot_? No. You could get away with wearing a shirt buttoned up, you do that all the time anyway, just put the rings on a chain, stick them down your shirt, and keep—and this is vital— _keep Andrew off your neck_. Just, all day, wear a goddamn collar if you have to. But then you could take the chain off and offer him the rings. He’d remember that _callback_ , if nothing else.”

“If I’m wearing it, he’ll see the chain, he’ll know something’s up,” Neil says.

“Don’t shoot me down, Neil, just, look—tell him it’s a good luck charm, or something. Keep it in your pocket until right before you go to the beach.”

“Actually, if they’re on a chain, that really nixes your worry about flinging them 18 miles away,” Riley says.

Neil mulls it over. He _does_ still have the chain, actually. _And_ he knows where it is—in his bedside table, where he’d put it the last time he ever took it off for the night. The morning after that, he just started wearing it, wherever he went. _Would_ Andrew recognize it? Neil’s fairly certain there’s nothing particularly special about it—it must be interchangeable with any number of chains with the same link style—but even if he didn’t realize it was the _same_ one, Andrew would _absolutely_ recognize the links. The real problem is what to do with his _own_ ring. Andrew had stuck his in his armband; Neil doesn’t wear his very often, though. Should Neil replicate that exactly? Or just give Andrew both? There’s always the possibility that Neil will stick his ring in his armband, give Andrew his, and then never get an opportunity to tell Andrew about the second ring. Neil can conceive of no situation more awkward than Andrew just— _seeing_ it, a day later.

Maria snaps her fingers in front of Neil’s eyes, and he jumps backwards. “You there? Jesus, you jumped.”

“I’m here,” Neil says. “Why?”

“We’ve been having a whole conversation about chaining the rings to your pants, and you were, just, _nowhere_ to be found,” Riley says.

“Oh. Did you come to a decision? Chaining the rings to my _pants_? Hey, guys, that’s a bad idea.”

“Oh, is this why you’re going to therapy?” Aaron says.

The only surprised people are Riley and Maria. Neil glances at Kevin, who looks unashamed.

“This, though,” Aaron says. “Where you’re just off in Neilville?”

“Neilville?” Neil asks. “Pretty good. I like it.”

“Okay, wait, if you’re not angry at us for knowing,” Dan says, “I just want to say I support all of your choices.”

“And we’re going to stop talking about it now,” Renee says. “And we’re going to _keep_ talking about the concept of you wearing pants with fifteen chains on them and the rings on different chains.”

“I am not doing that,” Neil says. “The pants would be too heavy and they’d fall off me.”

“Oh, is that supposed to be a problem?” Nicky asks.

“Gross,” Aaron says.

“Not for me, not for me! For Andrew.”

“Andrew’s my brother and I don’t know why you think I want to think about _that_ either.”

“Hey, you have a kid, which is pretty much just you walking around announcing that you had hetero sex with your wife, and just, like, shoving that in all our faces. And you bring him to _family parties_ , Aaron, and we _know_ there was no IVF involved or _anything_.”

“Sometimes I remember how we used to think the monsters were all so mean and violent,” Allison says, “and honestly, I can’t believe we ever thought that, because knowing you now, I know that you’re all just _really_ stupid.”

“Coming from you,” Kevin says with a snort.

“We’re _adults_ ,” Dan interrupts. “Shut _up_.”

“We were adults in college, too,” Aaron says. “Arguing is what fuels us, I think.”

“It’s family bonding time,” Kevin agrees.

“I’d ask if you treat your _actual_ family like that, but I’ve watched you interact with Wymack,” Allison says.

“I have to go,” Matt interrupts. “This has been fun—Neil, do something smart, and also go to therapy—but I have a meeting in 20 seconds. Bye, all. Babe, see you at home.”

They all wave goodbye, and then all eyes are back on Neil.

“I think we’ve solved this,” Allison announces. “Really, though. Just put them on the chain. Give him the chain. I think it would be better to be wearing it, but you’d have to put it on real stealthily, you’d have to put in the _work_ , Neil. Or you could just pull it out of your pocket, but, shit, what if it got tangled? Just wear it. Yes? We’ve fixed this. Meeting is therefore officially adjourned, because Dan has to go teach kids exy soon anyway.”

“And I have to put Angela to bed,” Nicky says.

“That too. I would like to swear us all to complete secrecy on this matter. Nicky, that goes double for you. Erik and _no one else_.”

Nicky holds his hand up. “On my honor, I will try—”

“Great. Neil, we’re going house hunting soon, I will let you know when,” Allison says, and Dan groans wordlessly—she’s losing her friends, Neil realizes. They’re moving away from her. He’ll have to work harder to make Wymack see sense. Or maybe just make Dan and Matt move back down, it’s not like they _need_ to be in New York. They haven’t been _exiled_. “Everyone else, I will see you in the group chat.”

En masse, they all take their leave.

Neil takes a deep breath. He closes the ring boxes and puts them in his pocket.

A whole _week_. There’s a whole _week_ before they get to see the light of day again. How is he supposed to _do_ things?

“Makeup time?” Maria asks.

Neil nods.

Maria bundles him into the bathroom, Riley trailing after him.

“Okay. Here’s your colors,” she says, and Neil focuses as hard as he’s ever focused in his life while she tells him what each object is, where it goes.

And then they do their makeup.

It’s _hard_ to do this on his own. To have stuff near his eyes and not blink.

Andrew’s going to love this, though.

Maria talks him through the whole thing, voice calm and gentle. It takes Neil three times until he’s got it passable, and then he wipes every trace of it off his face.

“Give yourself enough time,” Maria says briskly. “And _practice_ , whenever you can get him away from you. He’s going to collapse, Neil, really, and I expect to hear that your brand-new makeup skills played a major part, yes?”

“Yes,” Neil agrees, even as he turns to head out of the bathroom.

Riley looks gooey. She’s staring at Maria like Maria is a god.

Oh.

Okay, _this_ is why Maria was so willing to drag Neil into her and Riley’s day.

Neil doesn’t get it, but then, Neil also melted over Andrew starting up the shower for him, so Neil really has no place to speak on this.

Riley bundles Neil out the door, not that Neil needs the encouragement—he’s already infringed on them long enough. He thanks Maria, gets in the car, and drives to a craft store.

Fake roses. It’s hard to sneak real roses into their room to be strewn across a bed, but fake roses? That, Neil can do.

And then home.

Neil sits in the driveway, and Neil debates.

They’ve lived here for four years, and there’s never been so much as a robbery. He and Andrew will be home from now until Andrew leaves for therapy. And when Andrew goes to therapy, Neil will have a gigantic window of time—for bringing things in from the car, hiding them, practicing his makeup.

He sticks everything under the passenger seat and into the glove box and heads inside.

“So how was therapy?” Andrew asks the second Neil walks through the door.

Neil makes a face. “No _hello_? No _I love you?_ No _what’s my present_?”

Andrew shrugs. “We said hello on the phone, you know full well I love you, and _I_ know full well you won’t tell me what my present is. So how was therapy?”

Neil shrugs.

“Oh, a good and useful answer. Precisely as expected.”

Neil holds his hands up, searching. “Worse? It was somehow worse.”

“In what way?”

“Are you _always_ going to interrogate me about therapy?”

“No, I’ll stop when you don’t need it anymore.”

“How do you know what I need?”

“You don’t even know how you _feel_ about these therapists, how do _you_ know what you need?”

Neil forces out air before it becomes words. This is Andrew he’s talking to. It’s _Andrew_. Neil looks at him, beautiful and familiar and expressionless, and counts to ten.

“Do you actually not want to answer?” Andrew asks, when Neil is somewhere around five. “I can stop.”

Neil holds up a finger and finishes counting to ten. “No, I think I can answer. I’m just—I feel—” He locates the feeling.

Ah.

Guilt.

“Maybe I’m not trying hard enough,” he says. “Maybe the reason why this isn’t working is because I don’t _want_ it to work. Sabotage. I’m sabotaging it.”

Andrew shrugs. “And?”

“And, maybe the issue isn’t _them,_ it’s _me_.”

“Well, what didn’t you like about Janice?”

“I mean, probably nothing, probably it’s just me.”

“One easy way to figure it out might be if you can identify what actually bothered you about the interaction,” Andrew says patiently.

Neil takes Andrew’s hand. “I don’t know.”

Andrew shrugs. “Take your time.”

“Are you guys done being weird?” Natalie calls from the living room. “We wanna watch Mean Girls.”

“Yeah, well, I wanna watch Princess Bride,” Neil says. He opens his mouth to apologize—he’s not sure where that came from, that— _rudeness_ , but he’s too slow.

“We can watch that some other time,” Natalie calls. “It’s Mean Girls time.”

Neil submits. He leads Andrew into the living room. The girls have left them the couch, and Andrew picks Sir up so they can sit down. Sir jumps into Neil’s lap, Andrew gives her a _look_ , and then Natalie clicks play, and Neil doesn’t have to think about much of anything except Andrew’s hand in his and Sir purring like a motorcycle.


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> youtube time! lorna's in this one. also some aborted porn ~halfway through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any questions asked in the youtube part are asked by the person who put them in the comment section—i.e., untamedphoenix stuck a bunch of questions in the comments and is now a character in this story who asked a question on youtube. I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who gave them arguments to have, you’re all wonderful and I love you!! <333 I know i didn't get to all of them but there will likely be more such youtube sessions in the future, and I have all questions in a doc, so they will be gotten to in time
> 
> also: somehow, no one in my fam got covid! my dad is the one we were exposed to, but even he got it p light, he's already pretty much recovered. thank you all for your support in the event that I did get it tho, i love you all <3

Neil rings the doorbell. Notes a camera, above the door—small, unobtrusive, but placed where it can’t possibly be missed. There had been one at the bottom of the driveway, too, on the mailbox.

Andrew had declined this invitation. Had raised both eyebrows at Neil and asked if he was feeling all right. Had stood up, placed the back of his hand to Neil’s forehead, and suggested that perhaps Neil was a bit feverish, and ought to lie down.

Neil should have also declined. Should have been thrilled to say no. But he’d just gotten back from his appointment with Rebecca, who also wasn’t—something. And it had been different, and Neil had been waiting for something that would feel like it had _worked_ , but the end of the consultation had come and gone and not only had Neil not clicked with her in any meaningful way, he’d felt—frustrated. And he’d gone home, and he hadn’t had any good news or even an explanation for Andrew, except—not her. For some people, he’s sure she’s great. But not for him. Maybe just the way she kept encouraging him to talk? Which was fine, but Neil’s issue isn’t that he’s being _silenced_ , it’s that he has no idea why there’s something wrong with what he’s saying. Or _what’s_ wrong with what he’s saying. He’s not having an epiphany when he says _my dad abused me._

And then he’d gotten the text, and it had looked to Neil like an opportunity. If therapists can’t help him, he can at least try to help himself, in some way. He’d gone for another run that morning—a few people who had held out had finally put out jack-o-lanterns, and all the halloween decorations were up, and the air had smelled like autumn, and that had felt like an opportunity. And then he’d gotten this text, and that had felt like an opportunity, too—a chance to get out of the house, a chance to talk to people he doesn’t normally talk to. That’s good for him, too. 

Nor is that text the only one on his phone. He has another one, from Sandra: _She’s gotta be going broke, but we don’t want to hurt her pride. If we try to make things cheap, don’t argue and don’t try to take on some of the burden. Agree with us._

Neil has regrets. Many regrets.

But it’s too late to turn back now. Lorna is opening the door.

“Oh, you actually came,” she says briskly.

“I said I would,” Neil says, holding his poker face in place.

Lorna looks like she hasn’t quite decided what event this is. She’s not nearly as dressed up as she was for the party, but she’s wearing precisely the same amount of makeup, and her hair is piled on top of her head. She’s holding back a mastiff. She looks much better than she did last time Neil saw her.

Neil steps inside, and she shuts the door.

“Are you scared of dogs?”

“Not particularly,” Neil says. He might have to reconsider that stance, though. The dog is a puppy and its head is at Neil’s thighs.

Lorna lets him go, and the dog does not maul Neil. “His name is Spot.”

“Hi, Spot,” Neil says.

“Spot, come,” Lorna says, snapping at the dog and turning towards the kitchen. “Neil, you too.”

Neil glances into the kitchen, where he sees Harry, Noriko, and Sandra, seated around the table. He follows Spot, trotting along at Lorna’s heels, into the kitchen, and Lorna waves him into a chair.

“Drink?”

“Water, thanks,” Neil agrees.

“No Andrew?” Noriko asks.

“He’s got errands to run,” Neil says diplomatically.

“Errands? Like the ones you had to run for his birthday present?” Sandra asks, grinning.

“My birthday isn’t coming up, so I doubt it,” Neil says.

“I watched that interview, too,” Harry says. “I definitely did not fall asleep halfway through the show.”

“Were we that boring?” Neil asks.

“You started talking about sports.”

“Fair enough,” Neil agrees. “So why are we doing this today? It’s Halloween.”

“What, are the girls out trick-or-treating already?” Lorna asks. “It’s Halloween _morning_. Also, this is the first time in 10 years that I haven’t hosted a Halloween party, so I don’t really know what to do with myself, and at least party planning is _something_.”

Neil does the math. “You’ve been hosting Halloween parties since Arnie was _four_?”

“It was the first year he went trick-or-treating, so I got all the moms at his preschool together and we had a little bash to celebrate. But that’s not what we’re talking about today,” she says, placing a glass of water in front of Neil. “Today, we’re talking about our end-of-semester party.”

All involved nod. Harry’s holding a pen. She has a pad of paper in front of her marked _END OF SEMESTER PARTY_. She looks prepared. Was Neil supposed to be prepared? He wasn’t told he’d have to take notes.

“Will it be held here?” Noriko asks.

“Of course, it always is. The house is paid off, and Roland’s not getting it, even if I have to sleep with the judge to make that happen. At least _this_ year, he won’t have the TV on the whole time—”

“And maybe we could ease up on the gender divide?” Sandra suggests.

“We’ll have to, Roland won’t be here to entertain, however minimally he did that,” Lorna says. Sandra’s face twitches. Harry writes _NO GENDER DIVIDE._

“The kids will still be in the basement, though, right?” Noriko says. “I don’t mind eating with them, but I prefer large groups of teenagers to be unsupervised.”

“They will be. They’ll want to be, anyway.” Lorna says. “The first thing we need to figure out is what our theme will be for this year.”

Harry writes _THEME?_

Neil is finding himself more invested in her notes than in the conversation. “Theme?”

“We have to have a theme, otherwise we have no idea what decorations to use, what to wear—the whole thing. I was thinking _divorce papers_ ,” Lorna says, making Noriko choke on nothing, “but some people here _do_ seem to have good relationships, and I’d hate to alienate them. My next thought was _tropical_ , but I’d hate to make people dress unseasonably.”

“I like tropical,” Harry says. “It’s ironic. _Fun in the sun in the wintertime._ It’s got a nice rhythm to it.”

“Might be cold, though,” Sandra says. “And what if someone turns up in a bathing suit? Then it’s just awkward.”

“Wouldn’t that be the whole point?” Noriko says. “What, are we just going to arrive in shorts and a tank top? Nothing tropical about that.”

“Who says tropical has to be a bathing suit?” Harry asks. “People in tropical areas wear clothes.”

“Then all we’re doing is having a dress-down gathering,” Noriko counters. “The point is to dress _up_.”

“Then why don’t we?” Sandra asks. “Dress-up party. The nicest outfit you own, the one you never get to wear. Put it on and come over.”

“No one has ever willingly put on the nicest shoes they own,” Neil objects.

“Wear sneakers,” Harry says. “Dress-up, shoes-down.”

“Dress-up, shoes-down,” Lorna repeats.

There’s silence for a minute.

_The nicest outfit you own that you never get to wear._ Neil doesn’t even _own_ that. The nicest outfit he owns is the shirt he got married in, which he can’t imagine is nice enough. Andrew’s going to show up in his Eden’s clothes.

Neil reverses his opinion. That would be _hysterical_. He would pay _money_ to see that. He’s never wanted anything more. Maybe, when he proposes, when Andrew is at his weakest, Neil will extract this promise.

“I like it,” Lorna says finally, and Harry writes _DRESS-UP, SHOES-DOWN_.

“As long as no one’s looking up skirts,” Noriko says.

Sandra gives her a glance. Noriko just shrugs. “Dress-up, not up-dress.”

Lorna gives Noriko a glance, and Noriko sips her soda.

“How do we tie decorations into this? Neil, your input?”

Neil considers bolting straight out the door. “I am unprepared for this,” he says. “What’s associated with dressing up? What’s fancy?”

They watch him.

“I wasn’t setting myself up for anything,” Neil says. “The fanciest thing I’ve ever been to was a friend’s birthday party, I really have no idea what counts. Wine? There were several crystal chandeliers. She was wearing emeralds. And then she auctioned them off for charity, but I think that was more her wife’s influence than anything else.” Although Allison _had_ been pleased to the core about how much they’d gone for, just because she’d worn them.

“We could just do fancy,” Noriko says listlessly.

“But _shittily_ fancy,” Harry says. “Fake crystals. Fairy lights. That’s the shoes-down part of it.”

“So the party you want to throw is one that looks nice from a distance, but is really cheap,” Lorna says.

“Yes,” Harry says with a decisive nod. “Just like us.”

Neil nods right along with everyone else. He’s fairly certain that, any other year, the word _cheap_ wouldn’t even enter the house. The _concept_ of cheap would find itself nowhere near these proceedings. And at any other time, Neil might argue that sneakers aren’t cheap, that it’s stupid to make cheap stuff an aesthetic, but—but Neil honestly can’t see how Lorna is going to stay in the house, at all. Even if it _is_ paid off, and she _is_ going to keep it, and even if Roland pays child support, Neil can’t imagine how anything she gets in the divorce will help her _stay_ here. Pay taxes, pay landscapers—unless she does all that herself?—pay cleaning people, unless she cleans the house by herself? And he can’t see how anyone with a full-time job _could_ do those things, and even if Lorna doesn’t have a job now, she’ll need one. She might be skipping this party, but Spot is an extra expense, one that’s not going away anytime soon. Neil wants to steal her a few million and tell her to spend it slow. “Maybe we could do a potluck kind of deal,” Neil suggests. “Could be fun.”

“Gets people engaged, too,” Sandra says, pointing at Neil. “Good idea. And gives everyone a chance to show off their nicest dishware.”

Nicest dishware? Neil and Andrew _do_ have that set of china, but they’re not going to _bring_ that in the _car._ Although, actually, they’ve never used it, they may as well break it.

Harry writes _POTLUCK SIGNUP._ “So we have to come up with a list of everything we need. Lorna, what’s our main dish? Turkey? You’ll have to make that, yours is the best, and no one’s going to bring a fully-cooked turkey.”

“Will we _want_ more main dishes?” Sandra asks dubiously. “Don’t forget, we won’t have Marianna’s lasagna.”

“Andrew can make lasagna,” Neil says.

Everything grinds to a halt.

“Now, hold on,” Harry says. “Understand this: Those are big shoes to fill. It’ll probably be a disappointment. Can Andrew’s ego take that hit?”

“Andrew can make lasagna,” Neil repeats. “He doesn’t have an ego, but it doesn’t matter, no one will be disappointed.”

“Lying,” Noriko says immediately. “Everyone’s got an ego.”

Neil shrugs. He doesn’t know how to explain that Andrew’s ego only extends to those who know him, that Andrew never expects strangers to think well of him. He also doesn’t know how to explain that it doesn’t matter. “He can make lasagna, and it’ll be good.”

Harry points her pen at Neil. “Andrew’s not even here to defend himself.”

Neil pulls out his phone. He dials Andrew.

“Do I need to come save you?” Andrew says.

“No. Also, you’re on speaker. Can you make a better lasagna than Marianna?”

“If you make the sauce.”

“I’ll make the sauce.”

“You never even _had_ her lasagna,” Sandra says urgently. “You don’t even _know_. She’d bring two batches and it would _vanish_. People _begged_ her for her recipe. They offered her money for it. She’d show up at a party with that dish and the whole party would _stop_ while everyone _drooled_ in the lasagna’s general direction. Andrew, I am the president of your fan club, I believe in you all the way, but if you do this you will never attend a party again out of shame.”

“I’ll make the lasagna,” Andrew says.

Harry points her pen at the phone. “I’m getting bored, so this is your last chance, Andrew. Lasagna. Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says. “I said yes, it’s a yes, I don’t go back on my word.”

Harry writes _LASAGNA: ANDREW_. “Great.”

“See you at home,” Neil says.

“See you soon,” Andrew agrees.

Neil hangs up. “What’s next on the list?”

“Hors d’ouvres,” Lorna says.

“I’ll just add things to the list as you say them,” Harry says. “We’ll send out an email, ask people to sign up—”

“If we stick this all in Docs and just add everyone, we don’t even have to keep track of who’s got what,” Sandra suggests.

“Perfect—and we’ll let them decide how dressed-up or shoed-down they want to go with it. Keep on listing, Lorna.”

“Chips and dip, drinks, sides, vegetables, desserts—I’ll provide the coffee—and we’ll need a vegetarian main dish, too.”

“Multiple entries for each should give us enough to spread around,” Noriko says. “Multiple deserts, multiple sides, and so on.”

“I still don’t think there’ll be enough for everyone,” Sandra says dubiously, “even if people are bringing individual bottles of soda.”

“Sure, but I think we’re close,” Harry says, “and this way, anyone who’s busy or whatever doesn’t have to make extra work for themselves. What kind of music do we want?”

“Some of the usual,” Lorna says. “Christmas songs. The two Hanukkah songs. What music fits the _theme_?”

Noriko and Sandra take off, suggesting songs and bands Neil’s never heard of.

Why the fuck is he _here_?

He’d been vaguely under the impression that this must be a school-wide thing—that he and Andrew had been invited because their kids were in the same grade as Arnie. He’d expected a chair in the corner and plenty of people talking over him. He had _not_ expected to be part of a committee of five, planning a party that he isn’t even sure he’ll _be_ here for. What day does this take place? And are they _really_ planning this two months in advance?

“I’m glad we’re doing this early,” Sandra says. “Gives everyone time to think it through. We’ll have to send out a reminder of some sort a few weeks ahead of time, just to point everyone back to the Doc to make sure they remember what they’re bringing.”

“Or maybe we just let this sit for a couple weeks,” Harry suggests. “Normally we wouldn’t start planning until a couple weeks after Halloween,” she tells Neil, “when the dust from _that_ party settled, and even _then_ we’d more be planning _when_ we’re going to plan, because of Thanksgiving, so we’re pretty far ahead right now. But that’s not a _bad_ thing.”

“Gives me more time to think up decorations,” Lorna says. “Coffee?”

Everyone else says yes, and then looks at Neil expectantly.

“Sure,” Neil agrees.

Lorna turns away, and the other three give Neil approving nods and smiles. Clearly, he has said the right thing, although god help him if he knows what that is.

“Neil, I don’t know how you take your coffee,” Lorna says, pulling out matching mugs.

“Just a little creamer, no sugar,” Neil says.

Farewell approving looks, hello grimaces.

“ _No_ sugar?” Harry asks. “Are you well?”

“I don’t like things too sweet,” Neil says.

“Athletes,” Noriko says. “Committed to the job.”

Neil shrugs. “I like fruit,” he offers.

“Fruits are only sweet if you haven’t had sugar in ten years,” Noriko says.

“Also, you can add sugar without making it _too sweet_ ,” Sandra points out. “There’s a middle ground.”

Neil shrugs again. “I live with Andrew, there has to be _something_ that isn’t sweet. That’s not a commentary on Andrew’s personality. He just eats a lot of sugar.”

“Isn’t he an athlete, too?” Noriko asks.

“Yeah, look, I’m not sure if it’s a natural thing or if it just evolved as a way of pissing off Kevin, but he eats a lot of sweet stuff, and—oh, shit, we still have all those peanut butter cups—I forgot about those,” Neil realizes. Maybe he should pull one of them out for Andrew’s birthday. Crumble some up. Pancake topping. Maybe waffles instead of pancakes—chunks can slide off pancakes, but not off waffles.

“Peanut butter cups?” Sandra prompts.

“Sorry, was thinking out loud.”

“Yeah, that’s the whole point of this,” Lorna says, sliding mugs of coffee across to Harry and Sandra. “What, did you think we were going to gather just to think up a theme?”

“I had no idea what we were gathering for,” Neil admits.

“Can’t adults hang out, too?” Sandra says. “It’s a playdate.”

“Usually involves gossip,” Lorna says, passing Neil and Noriko their mugs, “but right now I’m really the biggest topic of gossip, so.”

“Oh.”

“So, peanut butter cups?” Sandra prompts again.

“When we were in New York a couple weeks back, we went to the Hershey store, because Andrew likes those face-sized peanut butter cups, and he got a bunch of them, and we just have them in our top cupboard, waiting for Andrew to think up something to do with them. Or to eat them. I think last year he put them in his birthday cake.”

“You make him cook his own birthday cake?” Lorna asks, taking her seat.

“He likes baking, and I’m not really allowed to help. I think it’s his birthday present to himself.” And, technically, it had been Bee’s idea. She had insisted that Andrew find a way to celebrate his own birthday.

“And this pisses off Kevin?” Noriko asks.

“He is—he wants—Kevin is more diet-conscious than Andrew is. And Andrew likes telling him _no_.” Kevin, after all, might throw a fit, but when Andrew says no, Kevin generally listens.

“So what’s the rest of it?” Noriko asks. “I’ve seen your name floating about on Twitter? What’s going on?”

“Oh, yeah, how much of what you told Gianna was true?” Sandra asks lightly. Neil can practically _sense_ her eagerness.

“All of it,” Neil says.

“Explain,” Noriko orders, turning to Sandra.

Sandra looks at Neil.

Neil waves her on.

“No, no, this one’s yours.”

Neil sips his coffee. “The week before Championships, I tried this move that Kevin had argued was way too dangerous. And I pulled it off, but he was right, if _anything_ had gone wrong, I’d have gotten hurt, my teammate could’ve gotten hurt, I could’ve died, whatever, and then instead of tearing me a new asshole in front of everyone Andrew dragged me off the court to detail all the things that could’ve happened to me—like those drunk driving commercials that tell you about all the people who’ve died? Which was fine, I mean, he was right, and I’d scared the shit out of him. But that day we were _also_ doing a segment for Channel 7, and they were back there and already recording, which was awkward, but whatever. And then the _second_ the season ended, they went ahead and released an edited version of the audio that sounded like Andrew was threatening to dismember and murder me, and people started campaigning to take our kids away, and then our foster agent actually _did_ try to take them away for PR reasons, and anyway, Channel 7 released the full audio on Sunday, and Andrew and I did an interview with Gianna Rosetti, in which I said everything I just said, but much more angrily.”

“Was the _anger_ a show?” Noriko asks.

“No, I’ve just calmed down a bit since then. Can we talk about something else?”

Sandra looks at Noriko. “What’s up with your husband’s secretary?”

“ _Oh boy_ , okay, so—wait, Neil, let me catch you up—anyway, my husband’s secretary—we’ll call her, oh, Kate—she’s been cheating on her husband with this guy in the legal department, and _every day_ it’s just—they were caught in a broom closet, someone found them making out in the elevator, wherever, but the _twist_ is that her _husband_ works next door, and he insists on having lunch with her every day—”

Neil smiles, nods, and zones out. He can look interested, even when he is so unbearably _un_ interested.

But it ends, eventually, and Neil finds that his brain has, in fact, absorbed a certain level of information regarding Noriko’s husband’s secretary, Harry’s friend’s five dogs and their dynamics, Sandra’s most infuriating client at work, and Lorna’s struggles training Spot.

And then they all stand, leave their mugs to Lorna after putting up a token protest, and take their leave.

“I hear I’m picking your girls up sometime in the afternoon on Monday?” Sandra asks as they head down the driveway.

“Oh, are they going to you? That would be great,” Neil says. “Also, just say the word, we’ll take Sandy. We swear we won’t abuse her.”

“I’m going to take you up on that,” Sandra says. “Our anniversary is December 6th.”

“I’ll put it on my calendar,” Neil says.

“If our kids stop being friends before then, Rick and I are fucked.”

“Eh, we’ll take her anyway, we’ll just put the kids in separate rooms. Anyway, do you do one of these _every_ time there’s a party?”

“More often, if we can manage it. Why? We won’t ask you for input next time, if that makes you feel better.”

Neil frowns at her. “Then why do I need to _be_ here?”

She stares at him. “Because you’re Lorna’s friend?”

“I am?”

“Yes? Neil? You are, yes. That’s why she invited you. Planning a party is an _excuse_ , Neil, I thought you figured that out when we started gossiping?”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t have people skills.”

“I can tell,” Sandra says drily. “But, yes, you’re her friend, and she’ll keep inviting you until you’re not. Bring a good story next time.”

“I’ll try,” Neil agrees. It’s possible that that’s a lie. Neil hasn’t decided yet.

“Good. See you Monday.”

“See you Monday,” Neil agrees.

Well, at least _that’s_ solved.

Neil gets home to find Andrew walking out of the kitchen, putting him in the perfect place for Neil to fall into his arms, which he does. Andrew catches him, not budging an inch, and, oh, wow, okay, Neil didn’t expect that.

“Yes?” Andrew asks.

“Lorna’s going broke and everyone’s trying to help her reduce her expenses. The main way of accomplishing this seems to be literally making her parties cheaper.”

“Has she considered moving?”

“Nope.”

“I can’t hold you like this, stand up.”

That’s fair. Neil stands up. “She doesn’t even—”

Andrew scoops Neil up, and Neil forgets what he was saying.

Andrew carries Neil into the living room, and settles down into one of the rocking chairs, Neil still in his lap.

Neil hopes he won’t be expected to speak anytime soon. He’s really got nothing to say.

“She doesn’t even?” Andrew prompts, arms still around Neil.

What was he saying? “She doesn’t even have a job,” he remembers. “And I have no idea whether or not she intends to get one. Or what job she even could _get_ , I mean, when was the last time she _had_ a job? How is she supposed to get money? Even if she’s going to get some from Roland, how long will _those_ divorce proceedings take?”

Andrew shrugs. “She’ll figure something out.”

“It’s kind of my fault, though. For interfering. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t be looking at divorce right now.”

“She could’ve thrown us under the bus just fine if she wanted. She’ll figure it out, Neil, and if she wants your help she can ask for it.”

Neil sighs and kisses Andrew’s temple. Was his interference helpful? Or did it just fuck her over? Neil doesn’t know, can’t tell. _Would_ she have died if he and Andrew had left her? He kisses the corner of Andrew’s eye, kisses his cheekbone. “Do anything fun this morning?”

“Listened to a podcast, read my book, agreed to bake lasagna. We’ll need to practice that. Do we have any idea what Marianna’s lasagna tasted like?”

“No clue. We have to accomplish a miracle.”

Andrew looks at Neil. “I think we can do it.”

“I fucking hope so, I _did_ volunteer us. Against advice. It was an ordeal, Drew, it’s like they don’t even _want_ lasagna.”

“Who doesn’t want _lasagna_?” Andrew asks. “Even _bad_ lasagna is still _good_.”

“We’re talking just to hear our own voices,” Neil says.

“No, we’re talking just to hear _each other’s_ voices.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek.

“Are you sure you want to do this YouTube thing?”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “I think I know why I didn’t like Rebecca. She thought I was paranoid. _Incorrectly_ paranoid.”

“Are you not?”

“No, I think I am reasonably paranoid, given the mafia.”

“That sounds like she told you her opinion, instead of asking you questions.”

“It was.”

“I thought that was what you wanted?”

“She was _wrong_ , though.”

Andrew lets go of Neil so Neil can play with his hand. Trace the bottom of Andrew’s armband. Andrew unwraps his other arm from around Neil altogether, and Neil stops, but Andrew just shimmies the one armband off. He thinks for a second, and then slides it onto Neil’s arm. He wraps one arm around Neil again and offers the other one to Neil.

Neil slides one finger up the underside of Andrew’s forearm, watching goosebumps appear, feeling Andrew try and fail to repress a shiver, feeling the familiar horizontal lines. Neil brings Andrew’s wrist to his lips.

“It would be _really_ hot if you were a vampire.”

Neil squeezes his eyes shut. “Do I not bite your neck _enough_?”

“I could stand some more neck biting.”

Neil leans in and nips at Andrew’s neck.

Andrew tilts his head away to give Neil better access.

Neil rolls his eyes. “Drama queen,” he says, but who is he to ignore it when Andrew asks for something? He licks a line up Andrew’s neck, snakes a fingernail across Andrew’s palm, smiles at the little noise that Andrew lets escape.

Andrew grabs Neil’s chin. “We could go upstairs,” he suggests.

He sounds like he hasn’t taken a breath in ten minutes, and it’s Neil’s turn to let a noise escape him. He very much likes being able to make Andrew sound like _that._ “We could,” Neil agrees, maneuvering himself into a standing position and offering Andrew a hand.

Andrew lets Neil help him up, and then he picks Neil up again.

“What kind of fetish is _this_?” Neil asks, holding onto Andrew as Andrew carries him towards the stairs.

“Not mine,” Andrew says. “You like it. I like that you like it.”

Neil grins at him. “That’s news to me.”

“That you like it? Or that I like that you like it?”

“That I like it,” Neil clarifies.

“Maybe you should do some self-examination,” Andrew says, heading up the stairs. “I’m not blind.”

Neil shrugs. That’s fair. He likes the strength of Andrew’s arms, likes being right up by Andrew’s chest, likes the easy access to Andrew’s neck. He touches the tip of his tongue to Andrew’s pulse point, once they make it safely up the stairs, and hears Andrew’s breath shift. Kisses the same place, and mouths a line up his neck, and Andrew is standing right next to the bed, but he hasn’t dropped Neil onto it yet, and Neil drops a hand down to Andrew’s chest, dragging his nails down over the cloth of Andrew’s t-shirt, and Andrew gives up, sets Neil down on the bed, and crawls after him, one hand already tugging at Neil’s jeans. The feeling of Andrew’s fingers on Neil’s skin breaks everything else down—Neil can’t think about anything else, is fairly certain nothing else exists. He taps at Andrew’s shirt, and Andrew obligingly removes it and puts Neil’s hands on his chest.

Oh, yes.

Yes, that’s good, this is good. 

Neil takes a deep breath as Andrew’s mouth finds his chest. “Can I blow you?” Neil asks. He doesn’t remember deciding to ask, but—he’s not taking it back.

Andrew doesn’t answer, pressing a kiss to Neil’s shoulder, one thumb rubbing against Neil’s ribs, and Neil accepts that, tangling one hand in Andrew’s hair.

And then Andrew scoots up and kisses Neil’s cheek. “Yes.”

Neil’s eyes fly open. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Andrew repeats.

Neil pushes gently at Andrew’s stomach, and Andrew rolls off Neil, tugs Neil over. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Are _you_?” Andrew asks.

“I kind of wish I’d practiced,” Neil admits, unbuttoning Andrew’s pants. “Jesus, I’m going to be bad at this. I’d like to apologize in advance.”

“ _Practiced_?” Andrew asks.

“With, like, a banana or something.” Neil grimaces. “Actually, that sounds gross. I don’t know. How did _you_ get good at it?”

“Practice,” Andrew says, watching Neil scoot back between Andrew’s legs, tugging Andrew’s pants down with him. “But on people.”

Neil can’t even answer that. He is—overwhelmed, a little bit, leaning down, but there’s no part of him that wants to stop.

“Stop,” Andrew says, strained, and Neil glances up at him. That’s not the right tone of voice, and not the right kind of tension in Andrew’s jaw.

Neil twists away, turns away, hears Andrew shifting behind him. “Do you need me to leave?”

“No. Just—stay there.”

A moment later, Andrew’s head hits Neil’s back.

Neil puts his hand palm up on the bed, and Andrew puts his hand on Neil’s.

“Talk,” Andrew commands.

“Harry’s friend has five dogs,” is what comes out of Neil’s mouth. “It sounds like a nightmare. How do you take them on walks? How do you _train_ them? Imagine scooping poop for _five dogs._ Who has the time? There’s only 24 hours in a day.”

“Not to mention the amount of dog hair they’d leave everywhere,” Andrew agrees. “You’d have to vacuum _constantly_.”

“I don’t remember what kind of dog they are, but what if they’re _big_? How do you break them up when they fight? Can you have _anything_ breakable in the house? I’d have to imagine you can’t even have anything cloth in the house—how do you keep a couch clean? Do you wash your bedding daily?”

Andrew lifts his head up and tugs at Neil. Neil turns to face him.

Andrew passes Neil his shirt.

Neil puts it on.

“Sorry,” Andrew says.

Neil shakes his head. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“Can I—”

Neil tugs Andrew into his lap. “Sandra’s going to pick the girls up on Monday, sometime after dinner. We’re going to take Sandy on December 6th—that’s Sandra and Rick’s anniversary—presumably for a sleepover.”

“Oh. Did you ever get my present inside?” Andrew asks.

“Yes,” Neil says, flatly refusing to think about his bedside table. The roses are shoved into the back. The rings are sitting _right there_. If Andrew opens the drawer, Neil is done for, but Andrew hasn’t gone into Neil’s bedside table since they moved in together. And the chain is in there, too. “I did. It is hidden. Don’t go looking.”

“I won’t. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’m getting better,” Andrew says. “Quicker recovery time.”

“That’s true,” Neil agrees.

“Thanks, Bee.”

“We should write her a thank-you card.”

“We should figure out our Halloween costumes.”

“I think you’re wearing the cat ears and I’m wearing the cape, right?”

“Did we decide that? I think the cat ears would look cuter on you.”

“No, I think they’d look cuter on _you_.”

“Do you even have fangs? That’s not even a real costume, no one will know you’re a vampire just because you’re wearing a cape. You should let _me_ take that ridicule, and _you_ can wear the cat ears.”

“No, I think the black cat ears with your blonde hair would look best.”

Andrew deliberates.

The front door opens, and with some surprise Neil looks at the clock, but—yes, it’s time for the girls to get home. He’d lost track of time.

“Anyway, I get the cape,” Andrew says, right before pushing out of Neil’s lap and off the bed.

Neil makes a face at him, but—he’s not going to argue. Not right now.

And then they get downstairs, and Paige holds out the cat ears to Andrew. “For you.”

Behind his back, Andrew flips Neil off. With his other hand, he takes the cat ears.

“And for you,” Paige says, holding out a cape and fangs to Neil. “These are both shitty costumes.”

Neil accepts his costume and shrugs.

Andrew puts the ears on, looks Neil in the eye, curves a hand in front of his chest, and says: “Nya.”

Neil blinks at him. “What?”

“You know,” Andrew says. “Nya.”

“I hate you,” Natalie says.

“I don’t get it,” Neil says blankly.

“And you never will,” Paige whispers, staring at Neil unblinkingly.

Neil glances at Andrew, but Andrew looks unbothered by this.

“It’s a joke,” Andrew says.

“I don’t get it,” Neil repeats.

“You’re not missing out on anything,” Natalie says darkly, and then the doorbell rings, and trick-or-treating begins.

A few hours later, when the trick-or-treaters—all wearing much more committed costumes than Neil and Andrew—slow to a trickle, they put the rest of the candy in a bowl on the doorstep, and turn off the downstairs lights.

“It’s YouTube time,” Neil says, removing his fangs.

“Not cool,” Natalie says. “Do you guys have mods?”

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Mods? “Oh. Like moderators? No. Should we? How do we—I have no idea who to ask.”

Paige and Natalie do a little silent communication, and then shrug. “We’ll do it,” Paige says. “ _Once._ Well, maybe more than that. Depends on how nice everyone is. Or isn’t.”

“If it’s bad, we’ll just stop altogether,” Neil says. “I’m not dealing with that. Who modded for you?”

“We just didn’t have one,” Natalie says. “We didn’t really need one, honestly, we were just there to be loud and angry for ten minutes. You guys are gonna do good shit, though, so, I don’t know, fucking do it, and don’t have mean fans.”

“We’ll try,” Neil agrees dubiously. “So—our room? I don’t want to do it downstairs, I don’t want people ringing the doorbell.”

Andrew nods. “Our room.”

Neil and Andrew ditch their costumes in the living room, and then the girls help them get set up. The camera. The mic. All the shit Neil had thought would only come in handy once, and here it is, serving a purpose. That’s nice.

Oh, he wants to crawl back into bed and stay there.

What is he, a coward? No. He and Andrew test the camera. Test the mic. Watch the clock as it ticks up. 6:58. 6:59. The girls go across the hall.

At 7:00, Neil leans over, kisses Andrew on the cheek, and then starts the stream.

0 viewers.

This makes sense, because it’s just started, but—

9,599 viewers.

Neil blinks. Is that wrong? “Oh, there’s people here,” he says. “Can you hear us? See us?”

_Yes_ , the chat unanimously agrees. At top speed. Messages are flying.

Fuck, Neil hopes Andrew’s paying attention, because Neil has no idea what anything says—it’s not on the screen for more than half a second. 28,855 viewers. Fuck.

“So we’re just here to—”

The door cracks open.

“Sorry, sorry,” Paige says as she runs to them. “Dad, you look terrifying, wear these,” she says, putting the cat ears on his head.

Andrew twists to look at her as she runs out of the room, and then straightens them so they’re sitting properly. He looks at Neil. “If I have to wear _my_ Halloween costume, why don’t you?”

“Apparently, I don’t look terrifying. That, or my cape wouldn’t make me look _less_ threatening. Anyway—”

“Somehow not helpful,” Paige says, bursting back in. “Hold this.”

Andrew takes King as Paige dumps him on Andrew’s shoulder.

“Also, here’s your cape,” Paige says, tossing Neil’s cape at him. “I’m done now. Bye.”

Neil ties his cape around his neck. He looks at Andrew.

King’s back feet are sliding down Andrew’s stomach.

Andrew sighs. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not,” Neil says.

“Yet. Hang on—” Andrew manhandles King into a ball against his stomach, and then holds King in place with one arm, and takes Neil’s hand in his free hand. “Okay. I don’t know if anyone can see him now, but at least he’s not trying to skin me anymore.”

“Very good,” Neil agrees, squeezing Andrew’s hand. “ _Anyway_ , we’re here for one purpose and one only: To argue about stupid shit. If you’ve got a stupid thing to argue about, stick it in the comments and we’ll do what we can, but there’s—ah—45,000 of you—holy _shit_ , I’m not looking at that anymore. We’re human, so we’re going to miss some of that. But we’ll do what we can.” Neil glances back at the chat. There’s—is that—“Are you guys _donating_ to us? Don’t do that, I _cannot_ emphasize how _much_ we don’t need that. Save your money and give it to someone else, if you want to. Donate to—to—the Trevor Project. Or, in honor of the thing that forced us here today, donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Stop giving us money. Untamedphoenix asks, _cereal first or milk first?_ Cereal first.”

“The reasoning here is that if you have a limited amount of space, you want to put the big stuff in first,” Andrew explains, nodding. “And liquids are by nature made up of particles smaller than a cheerio.”

“Also, the amount of milk you use depends on the amount of cereal you use,” Neil agrees. “So unless you know _exactly_ how much milk you use and _exactly_ how much cereal you use, it doesn’t make sense to do milk first.”

“Furthermore,” Andrew says, like he’s writing an essay, “consider the _splash_.”

“Ah,” Neil says. “The splash.”

“If you pour cheerios into a bowl full of milk, there is likely to be some splash, unless you use very little milk or a very large bowl—”

“Or if you just pour _really_ slowly.”

“But there is less risk of a splash when adding milk to cereal—”

“Have you ever poured milk into a bowl of Life? Those little squares are like bounce pads for milk.”

“Sure, but then you just have to aim right, which is way easier. Also, what the fuck is a _bounce pad_?”

“Like a trampoline?”

Andrew stares at him. “A milk trampoline?”

Neil shrugs. “Can’t milk have fun, too?”

“On—a trampoline? Sure, I guess.”

“Do you have an issue with that?” Neil asks, grinning.

Andrew makes a face. “Are trampolines the most— _enjoyable_ entertainment we can give to milk?”

Neil makes a face right back. “Probably not. How about a milk theme park?”

“A—what kind of rides would they have?”

“A bowl of Life to bounce around in.”

“That’s obvious, come up with something else.”

Neil leans back in his chair. That wasn’t the answer he expected, although he’s not sure why it wasn’t. “Bowl? Bowl-shaped skate park. Spoon-shaped tram ride. Is this an _educational_ theme park?”

Andrew looks _thrilled_. “I am so desperate to find out what you think would be in an educational theme park for milk that the answer is yes.”

“Mechanical udders, so that cow’s milk can relive the experience of being brought into this world and all other milks can be educated on how that happens.”

Andrew’s face drops. “I am so desperate to forget everything you just said that the answer is now no.”

Neil laughs. “A strainer? Is that like a massage for liquids? To work out the kinks?”

“ _Kinks_? In _milk_? Isn’t that just curdled milk? Or cheese? Would—what about, say, a butter churn? Do you think milk _likes_ being turned into butter and cheese?”

“Maybe it’s like botox,” Neil suggests. “ _Did you see Jenny? She got SO much churn surgery, she’s nothing but butter now._ ”

“Okay, what you just said implies that it is—that there’s—that milk is basically—okay, hang on, that’s what humans are too,” Andrew says thoughtfully.

Neil gives his brain a second, but his brain gives him nothing but question marks. “Andrew, I love you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The idea that milk, which is all one thing, is in fact separate entities, with a beginning and end, _but_ which can be _separated_ —thus, Jenny could theoretically be _partially_ churned into butter and partially _not_. And I was _going_ to say that that’s an odd way to think about it, but humans are a bunch of bacteria and cells that are regularly dying off and being replaced, so we’re basically milk.”

“Also, we _can_ get parts of ourselves chopped off and still survive,” Neil says, nodding. “And we _can_ only get botox in some places. So if we’re not as homogenous as we like to think we are, maybe neither is milk.”

Andrew looks straight at the camera. “So the answer to the question is that humans are milk. Moving right along,” he says, ignoring Neil’s laughter, “oh, this one is, as Riley would say, a downer. Grilledpunini—”

“Good name,” Neil says.

“—asks if nothing is something.”

“By definition, no.”

“Well, hold on—okay, the rest of the question is— _my friend argues that ‘nothing,’ or nonexistence, is something in and of itself, but I argue that nothing can’t be something because it’s NOTHING, right? Like, if I ask you what you see beyond your peripheral vision, the answer isn’t darkness or anything, you just don’t see anything! There’s nothing! The only thing about ‘nothing’ that exists is the CONCEPT of nothing, but nonexistence cannot exist. Right? But SHE’S like ‘in order for nonexistence to be a part of reality, it has to exist. It has to be something._ Anyway, by definition nonexistence doesn’t exist.”

“It’s _not_ part of reality,” Neil agrees. “By definition—hang on. Hang on, I’m googling—” He pulls his laptop closer. Types as fast as he can. No one’s watching this so they can watch him type. “Okay. Reality, by definition, is _the world or the state of things as they actually exist._ Or _the state or quality of having existence or substance._ So by definition reality _is_ only things that exist.”

“I would argue that the idea that nothingness is a thing that can be experienced is where your friend’s argument goes off the rails,” Andrew says. “And yours, actually. The example of things behind my head—I can’t _see_ anything, for sure, but the fact is that there _is_ something behind me. There’s not _nothing_ there, it’s just that I don’t know what it is, or can’t see it.”

“Can babies comprehend nonexistence?” Neil asks.

Andrew gives Neil a look that suggests that Neil has lost his mind. “ _What?_ ”

“I mean—you know there’s something behind your head even when you can’t see it, because you have object permanence. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s _nothing_ , it just means you can’t see it. But babies have no sense of object permanence. How far does that extend? If they aren’t actively looking at it, does it not exist, at all? Do they think that literal _nothingness_ is behind them? As adults, we can’t comprehend nothingness, because there must be _something_. We know about air, and gasses taking up space, and I know that our bedroom door is behind me even if I can’t see it. Once I know that things can exist without me seeing them, it becomes much harder for me to imagine the concept of _nonexistence_ , because I can’t imagine anything at all without thinking about it as taking up a certain amount of space. It’s like—how we can’t really imagine something that is _only_ two-dimensional, because we can’t conceive of something so thin it doesn’t have a third dimension. But babies just _live_ with nothingness.”

“Maybe that’s why babies do dangerous things. The idea of death doesn’t scare them because nonexistence is their whole life.”

Neil and Andrew stare at each other.

“I mean, probably they do dangerous things because they don’t realize that some things are dangerous,” Neil says.

“Maybe kids don’t understand death because they are the only thing that they know exists.”

“I mean, that’s something that’s mostly said of teenagers, who do generally have object permanence.”

“I think we’re getting off-topic.”

“Are we?”

Andrew considers, and then nods. “Anyway, nothingness doesn’t exist, because by definition it can’t. We as human beings have no idea how to handle that concept, and wouldn’t know it if we saw it. Even in _The Neverending Story_ Bastian could _see_ that there was nothingness, but I don’t think that would be possible—if we were aware of it at all, we’d just know that reality had gotten smaller. We would notice if our house went from two stories to one room, but we wouldn’t describe the space where the rest of our house had been as _nonexistent_ —the house would simply cease to exist. Next.”

“Is there a difference between a fracture and a break?” Neil reads. Why is _he_ the one trying to pick a question from the chat, when the second a message appears, it vanishes? Andrew’s the one with the photographic memory, not Neil. “That’s from theicequeenwrites.”

“Fracture is partial, break is complete. Fracture is your friend called you rude and now you’re not going to hang out for three weeks until you’ve calmed down; break is your friend yelled at you for three hours straight and now you’re not friends anymore.”

“Seconded,” Neil says. “Next.”

Andrew glances at the screen. “Illusionistweiss says: _Okay so an ongoing argument my friends and I have is the fact that at one point we were making s’mores and I was lazy and didn’t heat it up, so 2 of us started calling it a raw smore. Another friend says that it’s not a s’more if it’s not heated up, but I stand by the fact that by me adding the descriptive word raw, it counts. Like, a raw hamburger is just an uncooked hamburger, but it is still a hamburger even if it’s raw. So tl;dr if I have all the ingredients for a s’more, I make it into a s’more, and don’t heat it up, is it still classified as a s’more? And does saying it’s raw change anything?”_

“Okay. So, by definition, according to Oxford Languages,” Neil says, following some frantic typing, “it’s chocolate and toasted marshmallows between graham crackers. Wikipedia agrees, but says that some people wrap the whole thing in foil so the chocolate melts a little. But. Illusionist, you might not be meeting the definition, but if your friends are heating up the whole thing, they’re _also_ not meeting the definition. I think you can call yours a raw s’more, but they have to call theirs an _overcooked_ s’more.”

“Counterpoint,” Andrew says.

Neil waits.

“Hmm. Nevermind. I don’t have a counterpoint. I think I just agree with you. On the other hand, if Illusionist’s friends _aren’t_ heating the whole thing up and _are_ making proper s’mores, is it still a raw s’more? I say yes.”

“Your argument?”

“Saying no feels pedantic.”

“This whole thing is pedantic. That’s the whole point.”

Andrew nods a concession. “It’s a raw s’more. _Raw_ means _uncooked_. Very specifically, that’s what you’ve got—an uncooked s’more. I like the hamburger point. At what point does raw beef stop being raw beef and start being a raw hamburger? When you’ve shaped it into a circle. Similarly, if you have all of the ingredients in the proper shape, I think that you _stop_ having graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate when you stack them appropriately, at which point they become raw s’mores.”

“What’s next?” Neil asks.

“Accioice asks _is letting your kids swear good parenting or bad parenting_?” Andrew reads. “Neither, it’s neutral parenting.”

“I don’t care if the kids swear,” Neil agrees. “It’s actually irrelevant to me. It’s not like the word _fuck_ is a slur. I think they’re smart enough and considerate enough not to curse in front of people who would be particularly offended by it, but we are not those people. If that’s how they feel like expressing themselves, I’d rather they curse than shut up.”

“I’ve never known a person whose willingness to curse was a reflection of their general goodness as a human being,” Andrew adds.

“I’m also not big on controlling kids,” Neil adds. “There aren’t many adults that I could tell not to curse; unless they were employees of mine, I really don’t think there are _any_ adults that I could tell not to curse, and have that hold. So I don’t see why I should apply a harsher standard to kids, given that the situation won’t cause anyone real harm.”

“They have a follow-up question,” Andrew says. “ _Should parents check their kids texts/internet history/et cetera?_ No.”

“Nope,” Neil seconds. “Have my kids gone missing? Then I’m not checking their shit.”

“If your kids talk to you, you’ll probably have a reasonably good idea of what’s going on, anyway. And if they don’t, it’s probably because they don’t trust you, a problem which is unlikely to be solved by you checking their phones.”

“I have a problem,” Neil announces. “We agree on all this shit. I need something we can _argue_ about. Um.” Neil scrolls up through the chat. “Untamedphoenix asked if tomatoes are a fruit or a vegetable—which, obviously a vegetable—”

“Incorrect, they’re a fruit.”

Neil stops scrolling.

He looks over at Andrew.

“Yes?”

“A _fruit_?”

“By definition.”

“The definition of _tomato_ is _fruit_?”

“Not the definition of _tomato_ , the definition of _fruit_. A tomato is a fruit as per the definition of fruit.”

“Make me a fucking fruit salad, Andrew, what’s in there?”

“When have you _ever_ seen a fruit salad containing _every fruit_?”

“When have you ever seen _any_ fruit salad containing _tomatoes_?”

“Give me an hour and a half to go shopping, I’ll make something.”

“No, you won’t, because I won’t eat it.”

“Look it up,” Andrew says. “You’re literally on your computer now, look it up.”

Neil does.

“ _Tomatoes are fruits that are considered vegetables by nutritionists,_ ” Neil reads. He can’t look at Andrew. Andrew’s giving him that smug look of his. “It says that zucchinis are fruits, too.”

“I’ll accept it,” Andrew says.

“On the other hand,” Neil says, not done reading, not willing to give it up, “ _‘Vegetable’ is used to indicate a wide variety of plant parts that are not so high in fructose_. And vegetables are used one way, in culinary dishes, and fruits are used another.”

“But _by definition_?” Andrew says smugly.

Neil closes the tab. “Now, _anyone_ can look up a definition and win an argument, but that’s not the _point_ , the point is that we’re supposed to argue.”

“You have been looking up definitions through this whole thing, you don’t get to change the rules now.”

“It wasn’t _in_ the rules that I have to look up definitions, I just did that to give us a starting point.”

“And the starting point says that I’m _right_. No need even to go anywhere. Starting point for what? Not an argument, because I’ve already _won_ it.”

“Are you going to put tomatoes on pancakes?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t lie to me, you would _never_. Tomatoes aren’t sweet enough.”

“There are sweet tomatoes in this world. I’ll find them. I’ve heard something about Jersey tomatoes?”

“There are no tomatoes in this world sweet enough for you to top your whipped-cream-sprinkles-powdered-sugar-pancake skyscraper with _tomatoes_.”

“Okay, fine, that’s true, but you can’t just say that tomatoes are a vegetable when botanists, who actually know what they’re talking about, say—”

“Botanists aren’t _real_ ,” Neil says scathingly, grinning as Andrew smiles, looks down at the ground, shakes his head.

“You are the _dumbest_ man alive.”

“You’re the one who married me, though, which I think makes you dumber.”

“The _most_ unoriginal response.”

“ _You’re_ unoriginal.”

“ _I_ am absolutely _unique_.”

“There’s—there’s literally—Andrew, there’s literally two of you. You have a doppelgänger.”

Andrew looks offended to the core. “Two of—Neil Josten, are you judging us by our _looks_? You have _known_ Aaron and me for _11 years_ —more than that, going on 11 and a half—and you’re judging us by our _looks_? That is _shallow_ , Neil, it is—”

“I mean, I am a little bit judging you by your looks—”

“And more importantly than that, I _definitely_ came out first, fuck whatever the alphabetical order nature of our names would imply, which makes _me_ original and _Aaron_ a copycat.”

Neil cackles. “And what makes you think _that_? For all we know, Aaron could very well be the older brother—”

“He absolutely is _not_. First of all, does Aaron give off an older brother vibe to you? No, not even a little bit, I got all the older brother vibes in this family. Second of all, it is known that the firstborn gets the biggest helping of their parents’ genes, and—”

“That is _not_ how science or genetics works.”

“You’re not a geneticist. Are you going to say that geneticists aren’t real?”

“No, they _are_ real, and the argument you are making is _not_ a scientifically valid one.”

“Okay, Mr. Tomatoes Are A Fruit Because I Feel Like It.”

“Okay. Okay, fine, but what makes you think _you_ got more of your parents’ genes?”

“Twins run in the family, but only in _my_ family, not in _his_ family.”

Neil nearly falls out of his chair.

“And,” Andrew says, ignoring the fact that Neil can’t breathe, “just like with Aaron and me, _our_ twins were an accident.”

Neil regains some kind of composure after a minute. “A happy one,” he gasps at the camera. “Our twins were a _happy_ accident.”

“That’s true,” Andrew agrees. “They were.”

“We didn’t get natural twins, though, we basically GMO’d twins.”

“We were the Bear Grilles of having twins. We need a new question.”

“You pick, I picked the last one.”

Andrew looks at Neil, and Neil cringes. Something’s coming. “Thousand_autumns asks: _which sport, excluding exy, is the sexiest._ ”

“Easy, none of them, all non-exy sports are horrible.” Neil says. He glances at Andrew, but Andrew’s just nodding along. “Yes? No?”

“Go on, go on,” Andrew says. “Go ahead, get it all out.”

“Exy is violent and requires strategy. And, also, every other sport in the world is boring. Andrew?”

Andrew holds up a finger.

Neil waits.

“Baseball,” Andrew enunciates. “It’s baseball, which is _clearly_ the sexiest sport—”

Neil drops his hand and gets up.

“With their little pinstripe uniforms,” Andrew says, twisting in his chair, projecting his voice loudly in Neil’s direction. “And their sportsmanship, no one is _ever_ mean in baseball, and their strict rules—no kicking the ball, and only one person at a time gets to hit the ball—and how everyone takes turns so _nicely_ , baseball players _understand_ homoeroticism—”

Neil flies back to his seat so he can speak into the microphone. “Okay, hang on, so to reiterate, that thing pitchers do where they lean over and squint behind two pairs of sunglasses and under a baseball cap while chewing tobacco and then they just _spit in the dirt_ because they’re _chewing tobacco_ , that’s _sexy_? That’s _homoerotic_? I _beg_ to differ. They run around that fucking diamond, sliding around in the dirt—what the fuck are they playing outside for? Get an indoor stadium, join us in this century, _then_ you can talk to me about _baseball being sexy_ —look, I always new sexual attraction was a scam perpetrated by Big Sexy—”

Andrew puts his head down on the desk.

“—but if you’re going to sit here and look me in the eye and tell me that _sexy_ is _baseball_ I’m going to have to take you to a deprogramming center, something is _extremely_ wrong, I—”

“I’m not _sexually attracted_ to _the concept of baseball_ —”

“Feel _free_ to explain to me what that question is _about_ , then, or how the _fuck_ we’re supposed to answer it—where’s Justin Timberlake, I need someone to bring sexy over here and give me the fucking _rundown_ about _what it is_ —”

“You know, if I’d played baseball instead of exy we never would’ve met—”

“No, because you’d have been a totally different _person_ , I could _never_ love a baseball player.”

“See, I was going to say it’s a good reason to get over your prejudice.”

“You don’t even _care_ about baseball! You don’t care about it at _all_ and you _know_ it, you picked this question _explicitly_ so you could pretend that people who run in neat little circles like the rules tell them to are _anything_ you’d ever be into just so that I’d rant about it.”

“You wanted something to argue about.” Andrew says, a smile there and then gone.

“There is no argument to be _had_ here. There is only the _real_ answer, which is that the word _exy_ is literally in the word _sexy_ , and the _fake and wrong_ answer, which is _baseball_. Jesus. _Baseball_. They barely even need _helmets_.”

“I will concede,” Andrew announces.

“ _Concede_? No, you will _never_ live this down—”

“I will agree that tomatoes are a vegetable.”

Neil lifts his hand, and then realizes Andrew is holding it. “Let go of my hand.”

Andrew lets it go, looking shocked.

Neil holds his hand out. “Shake on it.”

“We were literally holding hands,” Andrew says.

“Not a handshake. Shake on it.”

Andrew twists so he can shake Neil’s hand. “This is it, this is holding hands, there is no difference.”

“Incorrect,” Neil says, dropping Andrew’s right hand and taking his left again. “No one ever goes _aw, look at that cute couple, walking down the street shaking hands._ ”

“No one ever says that about people _holding_ hands, either.”

“Shake involves _movement,_ holding hands does _not_.”

Andrew swings their hands back and forth between them. “Movement.”

“No one shakes hands _sideways_. You’re just arguing because you didn’t want to let go of my hand.”

“What, am I supposed to apologize for that?”

Neil grins at him. “No, I guess not. We can keep holding hands.”

Andrew turns back to the chat. “Okay, we need another question before we get too sappy and gross out our kids. IneffableWolfstar asks _how many holes does a straw have?_ The answer is infinite, I’m picking that and sticking with it.”

“Explain,” Neil orders.

“Each ring of atoms in the straw has a hole in it.”

“Then wouldn’t, say, a ring also have infinite holes?”

“Yes.”

“My answer is one, because that’s how many a ring has and a straw is just a long ring,” Neil says.

“On the other hand, the mouth and anus are considered two different holes, so.”

Neil makes a face. “That’s—okay, look, it’s accurate, but—well, maybe it’s because the intervening material is different, like there’s your intestines, your esophagus—”

“Would your argument be, then, that each time the material changes, it’s a new hole?”

“Maybe. I guess that’s the argument I’m making. The alternative is that whether a tube has one or two holes is dependent on _length_ , and that feels a lot harder to argue. At what point does a thing start to have two holes?”

Andrew considers. Neil watches and waits. He likes the way Andrew furrows his eyebrows, just a little bit, when he’s thinking.

“A cube,” Andrew says. “Once the thing is longer than it is wide, it has two holes. A piece of penne has two holes, but a cubed bead has one hole.”

“Alternatively, it could just be one, because if you pass a string through it there’s nowhere else for it to come out. Does a train tunnel have one hole or two?”

“See, I think you’re actually proving my point, though, because if a train tunnel has only one hole, you’re probably fucked.”

“At what point does that stop being a _divot_ and start being a hole, though?”

Andrew opens his mouth, but there’s a second before anything comes out. “I was going to say if it doesn’t go all the way through, it’s a divot, but no one plants a tree in a _divot_.”

“You dig a hole,” Neil agrees.

Andrew hums.

Neil hums right back.

“I say we go with none. I mean, what _is_ a hole?”

“Don’t do this,” Neil says. “Don’t go there.”

“Isn’t it just a space where a space is not expected to be? No one says that a room is a hole in a house. No one calls a doorway a hole in the wall. What’s the difference between a half-wall and a hole? One is supposed to be there, the other is not. And it’s not like the space in the middle of a straw was punched out, like with a donut. So is there a hole in the straw at all?”

“Okay,” Neil says, “we need to go, now.”

“You haven’t answered me, Neil. Neil? Do you think there’s a hole in the straw? Neil, are we born with holes in our bodies?”

“And on that note,” Neil says, “I wanna thank all—oh, jesus, that can’t be right—it says 200,786 viewers? That’s wrong. Anyway, thanks for watching and giving us questions, sorry we couldn’t get to them all—”

“Is the earth’s atmosphere just a hole in the void of space?”

“I need to go have an existential crisis, I think. Happy Halloween, goodnight—”

Andrew drops Neil’s hand so he can lift King into the camera’s view. “King says goodnight.”

“And, depending on how bored we get in the future, talk to you later.” Neil stops the stream and puts his head down on the desk.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand. “No one ever says there’s a hole in a mug, not unless the hole was put there accidentally. Who decided that there’s a hole in a straw, at all?”

The door opens, and Paige and Natalie burst in.

“That was fun,” Paige says, grinning.

“I don’t know how to talk to other human beings,” Neil says.

“Eh, you did just fine, pops,” Natalie says, waving him off. “And anyway, you’re not the one who called us an accident.”

Neil laughs.

Andrew just shrugs. “We didn’t know we were getting two of you. I’m not saying I’m not happy about it—”

“But, _by definition_ ,” Natalie says, making Paige howl with laughter.

“Exactly,” Andrew agrees.

“Anyway, was it a good idea?” Paige asks. “Doing this? Was that a good idea we had?”

“Ask me again when Neil pulls through.”

Neil lifts his head up. “It was a good idea,” he agrees. “It was fun.”

Paige and Natalie cheer.

“But right now, I want chocolate,” Andrew says. “It’s Halloween, we didn’t even go to Eden’s this year, and I want chocolate.”

“Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!” Paige and Natalie chant.

They lead the march downstairs.

Between the four of them, they eat a whole Reese’s cup.

“Are you doing all right?” Neil asks, that night, Andrew curled up on top of him.

“Yeah. I really—I really thought I could handle it,” Andrew says. “I just—”

Neil tugs gently on his hair. “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain, love, I just want to know if you’re okay.”

Andrew takes a deep breath and kisses Neil’s palm. “I will be. In the morning, I will be. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Drew.”

Neil closes his eyes. In his experience, going to sleep usually makes the morning come faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to baseball, the one and only sport I know anything about, and apologies to anyone who plays/enjoys baseball, i am sorry for writing a character who hates it
> 
> and FURTHERMORE would like to apologize for accidentally posting this chapter twice lmao


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh 1. trauma talk 2. youtube reaction videos 3. twinyard dinner 4. tw for them talking about puking a bunch? not like in detail or anything it just comes up more than once which is odd
> 
> TW TW: discussion of CSA—(spoiler alert) andrew talks about blowjobs and it’s fucked up, and later talks more about csa but in less detail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys for the first time in my life I did some research, because I was trying to figure out if Aaron would have an eidetic memory as well (it’s not mentioned in the books? But they’re identical twins, so if it’s genetic I’d think Neil would have pointed it out? Maybe it’s NOT genetic? Maybe Neil just doesn’t care at all about Aaron?) and wikipedia told me the following:
> 
> 1) Eidetic and Photographic are not interchangeable
> 
> 2) Eidetic memory is when a person can essentially ‘see’ a remembered visual or auditory stimulus, as though it’s projected outside of them, with incredible—but fallible—amounts of detail. It fades a few minutes after the stimulus is removed. It has only been documented in children, and is nonexistent in adults.
> 
> 3) Photographic memory doesn’t have the visualization element. It also, incidentally, is a myth, and has never been documented anywhere.
> 
> So I did all this good good wiki-based research to make sure I wasn’t misrepresenting this thing, only to find out it doesn’t exist. All information in the chapter is me bullshitting, and should not be taken as anything resembling fact or even informed speculation. Yknow. The usual.

“Probably Earth’s atmosphere isn’t a hole in space,” Neil says.

Andrew blinks sleepily at him, and then frowns. “Have you been thinking about that since I said it?”

“No,” Neil says, smothering a yawn. “Just woke up thinking about it.”

Andrew blinks at the clock.

It’s early, Neil knows, he can tell by the light on the wall. He has a vague, sleep-muddled memory of hearing water running in the bathroom down the hall, so the kids must be up, but he’s fairly certain they’re not on the bus yet—it’s probably not late enough.

He could just look at the clock. Or ask Andrew what time it is. There’s a weird line down Andrew’s face—a wrinkle in Neil’s shirt must have made that. The sunlight is turning Andrew’s hair into gold, Neil’s favorite version of alchemy. Andrew’s eyes are a shade of brown that Neil is certain is captured in the topaz in his engagement ring. Andrew still looks sleepy, which Neil likes; it’s a far cry from the Andrew who would go from sleeping to fully awake in a split second. It’s an Andrew who feels safe, in spite of yesterday, in spite of everything.

Neil curves his hand around Andrew’s cheek.

Andrew glances at him.

“You’re pretty in the morning,” Neil explains.

Andrew puts his head back down on Neil’s chest, but he kisses Neil’s hand before releasing it. “Explain.”

“It’s—your hair is all fucked up, which is nice, and it really looks so nice in the sun—” Neil runs a hand through it, watching the way individual strands catch the light. “And I swear your eyes are lighter in the morning, which, not that they’re not pretty regardless, but it’s really nice. And I just—what, can’t I just like looking at you? First thing in the morning?” Andrew presses his face into Neil’s chest. “I don’t know, you’re just _pretty_ , that’s not my fault,” Neil says defensively. “And I like your nose, and your face, and your earrings. And the way you move in the morning, where, instead of being immediately awake, it’s like you’ve forgotten how to use your body, it’s just—I don’t know. I have a confession, Drew, I think I like you.”

Andrew rolls on top of Neil, folds his hands on Neil’s chest, and props his chin on his hands, looking absolutely amused. “Neil, I was asking you to explain why the Earth isn’t a hole, not why you think I’m pretty in the morning.”

Neil stares at the ceiling. “You could’ve stopped me five minutes ago.”

“I could have,” Andrew agrees. “But I wasn’t going to. And did not.”

Neil looks back at Andrew. What’s he going to do, be embarrassed about thinking his husband is pretty? “Anyway, the Earth isn’t a hole in space because you said holes are accidental.”

“What makes you think Earth was intentional?”

Neil’s brain stumbles to a halt. “I don’t know,” he says after a minute. “It _seemed_ like a worthwhile argument when I woke up.”

Andrew waits.

Neil chases down whatever thought process had led him to open his mouth as soon as he was physically capable of doing so. “We’re here. _We_ as in humans in general, not as in the two of us.”

“Who made us?”

“Why did we have to be made?”

“If we were intentional, there had to be someone who intended.”

“Why are you smart in the morning? Tell your brain to stop functioning.”

Andrew kisses Neil’s cheek. “One of us has to be intelligent.”

“It’s early.”

“ _You_ woke _me_ up, I would like to point out.”

“Not on _purpose_.”

“You literally opened your mouth and told me I was wrong.”

“I did do that,” Neil admits. The front door opens, closes. “But it wasn’t on _purpose_.”

“You know, the idea of you accidentally opening your mouth and making word-shaped noises really explains a lot.”

“Don’t we make our own intent? I mean, if we wanted to destroy the planet, we would. We’re halfway there as is.”

“You are changing the subject, and also, depressing me. And also, that proves _my_ point—we are rapidly trying to fill this hole.”

“Not changing the subject, just thinking.”

“You’ve never once thought.”

Neil snorts. “That explains a lot, too.” He reaches out, slaps around, locates his phone. Checks it. “The kids are on the bus.”

“Back to bed?” Andrew suggests.

“No, it’s taking them to school.”

Andrew rolls off of him and gets comfortable facing the window.

Neil throws an arm across his face, trying to muffle his laughter—not that there’s anyone here to hear it, but—can’t do it, gives up, and rolls and scoots over to Andrew. “No, come back,” he whines, still laughing, pressing his face to Andrew’s back, wrapping an arm around Andrew’s stomach. “Come _baaaack_.”

“No,” Andrew says obstinately.

“But I love you.”

“That sounds like a personal problem,” Andrew says, reaching over his shoulder to mash his hand into Neil’s face. “Go away, you’re not funny.”

Neil sighs against Andrew’s neck, and then rolls away to face the wall.

He waits.

He hears Andrew shift, and then feels Andrew’s hand tugging at his waist. Neil rolls over to face him.

“This isn’t because I forgive you for that,” Andrew says. “It’s just because the sun is in my eyes.”

“Yes, it is,” Neil says, taking Andrew’s face in his hands. “Looking at you is blinding.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sweet or making a shitty joke.”

“Can’t it be both?” Neil asks, sliding his forearms around Andrew’s shoulders.

“I didn’t grab mints when I was over there,” Andrew murmurs.

Neil shrugs. “And?”

“We’ve tried this before.”

“And?”

Andrew kisses Neil’s cheek, which Neil expects, and curls up against Neil’s chest. “Wake me up when you’re ready to brush your teeth.”

Neil nuzzles into Andrew’s hair, and decides he can wait a little longer.

When he opens his eyes again, the sunlight is farther along the wall, and Neil is ready to brush his teeth.

He checks his phone. 8:45. _Well_ past the time when he’d feel guilty for waking Andrew up. He rubs Andrew’s shoulder. “Hey.”

“Mmnf.”

“Wake up.”

“No.”

Neil rubs his shoulder a little bit harder. “I want to get kissed.”

Andrew swats at Neil’s hand. “Ask someone else,” he mumbles.

“I may be the first man in the world whose husband lovingly tells him to go cheat. Or are we in an open relationship? I don’t remember having _that_ discussion.”

Andrew twists his head a little. “Kissed your chest. Go back to sleep.”

“It’s almost 9,” Neil whines.

“Fucking _morning person_ ,” Andrew grumbles. “Just let me sleep on you.”

“You know, there used to be a time where you _wanted_ to kiss me. A time when you _loved_ me. When you wanted to meet my _needs_.”

“Need to _sleep_.”

“I have to tell you how hot you are when you drive, but you won’t even kiss me? Me, your husband?”

“If I kiss you, will you let me go back to sleep?”

“Yep.”

Andrew twists, pushing an elbow into Neil’s ribs to do it, but Neil isn’t complaining, because Andrew is kissing him, and what’s Neil going to do, be unhappy about that?

Andrew pulls away and pats Neil’s chest. “ _Sleep_.”

“What was that for? What’s my chest got to do with it?”

“Fluffing my pillow. If you don’t sleep I’ll knock you out.”

Neil wraps his arms back around Andrew and settles in, reasonably content.

His phone rings.

Andrew growls.

“Want me to answer that, or?”

Andrew waves a hand. Neil answers the phone.

“Good morning, Neil!” Eliana says. “Hope I’m not waking you up.”

“Nope, I’m awake,” Neil says cheerfully, ignoring the sound of protest Andrew makes. “How can I help you?”

“Just had a couple notes on last night’s YouTube session. It was great!” she says. Neil doesn’t believe her for a second. “People really seemed to like it, there’s a lot of social media buzz, and it’s largely positive. Next time, though, if you could _avoid_ bashing a major sport for ten straight minutes?”

“Well, I’m not straight, so I don’t think I ever did that in the first place,” Neil says.

Andrew looks up at him.

“Right,” Eliana says. “Regardless, there’s no need to offend baseball fans across the country. Second, when someone asks you what you like about exy, don’t say _the violence_. Please, Neil, for the sake of all you hold dear, don’t say you really love the violence.”

“I can agree to that one,” Neil says. He _does_ like the violence. But. She’s not wrong.

“Also, maybe don’t have your mods be your 14-year-old children.”

“They volunteered, and we didn’t know it was something we’d need.”

“Next time, I can do it, if you give me enough warning.”

“Was someone bothering them? I didn’t see it, but I think there was a lot I missed.”

“No, but it’s still not a great look, Neil. Just—be careful. Think before you speak. I know that in the past your rants and rages have gotten you plenty of positive attention, but I think that now it’s in your best interest to present a more calm, thoughtful persona. You don’t want people moving from hating Andrew to hating both of you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever in my life done something in order to obtain positive attention, but I’ll think about it.”

There’s a brief pause. Neil can practically hear her repressing a sigh. “I’ll take it,” she says after a minute. “Like I said, the response has been largely positive. Just—just let me know before you do your next one, all right?”

“Will do,” Neil says. “Was that all?”

“That’s all. Have a great weekend, Neil.”

“You too, Eliana. Thanks. Bye.”

Andrew releases a world-weary sigh. He drags it out for several long seconds, even after Neil has hung up.

“Yes?” Neil asks.

“I guess we can just take a nap later,” Andrew grumbles, pushing himself into a seated position.

Neil shrugs as he gets up. “You told me to wake you up when I was ready to brush my teeth. You didn’t specify _but only if that’s after 9_.”

“Didn’t think I had to. Usually you’re good at reading my mind. Meeting my _needs_.”

Neil grins as he follows Andrew into the bathroom. Should he feel guilty for waking Andrew up? Maybe. But he doesn’t.

He brushes his teeth. He doesn’t rush. He’s an adult with self-control.

And then he’s done brushing his teeth and tired of having self-control. He turns to lean against the counter, pulling Andrew to stand between his legs, grinning as Andrew reaches for his face.

“Insufferable,” Andrew grumbles. “Smug.”

“Are you going to kiss me, or just stand there mouthing off?” Neil asks, smugly, insufferably.

“That’s usually my line,” Andrew mutters, but he leans in and kisses Neil, slides his tongue inside Neil’s mouth, and really, that’s all that Neil has wanted for hours, and he wraps his arms around Andrew’s neck and holds him close.

After a few minutes, Andrew stops kissing Neil, but doesn’t go anywhere—doesn’t even press his forehead to Neil’s. Just stays there, right there, which is fine by Neil.

Adult. Self-control. Having Andrew’s lips right there, right within kissing distance, is nothing. No problem, not for Neil.

Actually, though, Andrew looks—odd. “What are you thinking about?” Neil asks. “Is it—yesterday afternoon?”

One of Andrew’s eyebrows twitches. “No, I’ve set that aside to talk about with Bee on Tuesday. I’m thinking about—how much I wanted to kiss you, when we met, and how stupid it seemed to _want_ that, and how I didn’t let myself want it because—why would I? Why would the man with the gorgeous eyes who _didn’t swing_ ever want anything to do with _me_ —”

“The man with the gorgeous eyes is me, right?”

Andrew stares at him. “You know, right now, I wish the answer was no.”

Neil snickers. “Sorry, you were saying?”

Andrew closes his eyes, shakes his head. “I was saying that I never—I—never mind.”

“No, what?”

Andrew closes the half-centimeter between them, effectively shutting Neil up.

When Andrew sees fit to stop scrambling Neil’s brain, though, Neil grabs the question again. “Never mind, what?”

“Nothing, that’s what the _never mind_ means.”

“Is this something you actually don’t want to talk about?” Neil pushes, rubbing his thumb over Andrew’s cheekbone. “Or can I push?”

Andrew looks at Neil for a second, and then, deliberately, closes his eyes. Leans into Neil’s hand. “It never occurred to me to want _this_.”

Neil’s heart contracts. He kisses Andrew’s forehead. “Well, you’ve got it, so stop complaining when I wake you up at 8:45.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Andrew says, but he looks amused.

“It’s why you love me.”

“It is. Come here.”

Neil doesn’t have to go far.

It’s nearly 10 by the time they make it downstairs and pour themselves some cereal. Andrew retrieves milk and blueberries; Neil obtains spoons.

He’s _starving_.

Once Neil is no longer starving, though, he starts having thoughts, thoughts only Andrew can resolve. He throws a blueberry at Andrew, who looks up just in time to snatch it out of the air.

“Yes?”

“Did you want to talk about yesterday?”

“About YouTube? Or about the aborted blowjob?”

“Blowjob.”

“You thought the best way to initiate this conversation would be to throw a blueberry at me?”

“Did it work?”

“Maybe.”

Neil waits.

Andrew eats the blueberry.

Neil eats his cereal.

“I think—maybe it was just—being in a bed.”

What Neil feels isn’t—disappointment. Close, but not quite. Sadness? Not quite that, either. Fury? That’s there, for sure—Neil knows how to recognize that one. Neil can’t get away from his dad, and Andrew still exists underneath everyone who ever trapped him in a bed. “Oh,” is all he says.

Andrew clinks his spoon against his bowl.

Neil eats his cereal. He knows better than to stop. Knows better than to show how upset he is. Andrew will shut up and shut down, and Neil doesn’t want that. Wants anything but that.

“I don’t want to hurt your knees.”

“My knees will survive,” Neil says calmly. “We can try standing up. Or, with you standing up, anyway. I don’t think it would go as well with me standing up.”

Andrew shoots a look at Neil that says that his attempt at humor did not go unnoticed, but was also not particularly appreciated. “Maybe you _should_ practice on a banana.”

“We’ve got those condoms, right? I don’t want to put the _peel_ in my mouth, that feels gross.”

“I’ll get a whistle. Wear some white shorts. Sports coach. Blow the whistle when you fuck up.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Constructive criticism.”

“That might be useful.”

“Wait, really?”

“I mean, maybe,” Neil says, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t want to—to puke on you.”

“If you puke on my dick, I—actually, I’ll be very concerned about you.”

Neil laughs. “You were going to say you’d get up and head out, weren’t you.”

“I was, and then I remembered that I love you, so I’d be a good person about it.”

“I wouldn’t be offended. I’d probably do the same in the reverse situation.”

“You wouldn’t, don’t lie to me. And I wouldn’t leave you like that.”

“I know you wouldn’t. This is oddly adorable, given we’re talking about me quite literally vomiting on your penis.”

“Don’t do it, though. Neil. Look at me. Look me in the eyes. If you start gagging, just stop. Just back off. For both of our sakes.”

“You know, it’s not often anymore that someone tells me something I’ve never heard, but _don’t blow me so hard you puke_ is a new one.”

“Neil Josten, don’t blow me so hard you puke.”

“I won’t. That’s a promise. Now, I do need you to go out or run some errands or something so I can find out how far I can shove a banana down my throat.”

Andrew closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.

Neil waits.

Andrew doesn’t call him an idiot.

“Wait,” Neil says, understanding dawning on him, “Is—are—did that _turn you on_?”

“No?” Andrew tries.

“A _banana_?”

“Not the _banana_ , shithead, the _concept_. What do you want from me? You _know_ I want you to blow me, that’s not a _secret_ , if you’re going to sit there and _talk_ about it I can only do my best to sit here and not jump you, it’s _natural_.”

Neil shoves down the impulse to make fun of Andrew. He’s not going to sit here and tell Andrew that it’s _un_ natural for him to experience sexual attraction. “Okay, okay, but also, I am _not_ letting you watch me practice.”

“Neil, Neil, are you _serious_? Not that you won’t let me watch, but that you’re going to practice on a _banana_?”

“Maybe,” Neil says defensively. “What else am I going to practice on? I don’t _have_ people.”

“I’m _right here_.”

“To clarify: I don’t have _willing_ people. And don’t say you, because that’s a future hypothetical and not a current reality. And I’m going to see _you_ again, I can’t just get out of juvi and vanish.”

“I didn’t _vanish._ I stayed neatly in the news cycle. And then I became famous.”

“Sure, but how many people do you have to face _daily_ knowing you gave them your first blow job and it was _bad_?”

“None, because he’s in jail for child sexual abuse.”

Everything in Neil evaporates. “Drew.”

Andrew waves a hand. He looks annoyed. Shakes his head, too quick. “It’s—maybe you shouldn’t—”

“No,” Neil says, before his brain can catch up with his mouth.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“I know that if you’re saying it in this mood, it’s probably not productive.” He’s doubling down. He shouldn’t do that.

“What, so I’m not allowed to say anything?” Andrew snaps.

“You can say whatever you want, but it’ll be wrong,” Neil snaps right back.

“What, just because I’m sitting in my fucking trauma? I let _you_ talk when _you’re_ —” He snaps his mouth shut.

Is Neil pushing too hard? Not hard enough?

He suppresses a sighs. He doesn’t need to push.

Neil scoots his chair over, a little closer to Andrew. Holds out a pinky. Andrew doesn’t take it. Neil takes his pinky back and takes a breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stopped you.”

Andrew is silent, practically vibrating, and then he scoots his chair over to Neil, lifts Neil’s arm, and puts it around his shoulders. “No. You were right. Nothing I said would’ve been—productive.”

“You let me be horrible when I was having _my_ mental breakdown, I can let you say some shit when you’re upset.”

Andrew puts his head on Neil’s shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t try this,” he says. “I don’t want to traumatize you.”

“You won’t,” Neil says.

“And when you gag so hard you puke? Drool all over—” Andrew shuts his mouth again.

Neil is cold. And hot—or, no, that’s just rage. He counts to ten. One number per breath. He can’t look at Andrew, not yet, not with this new—knowledge? Andrew hasn’t _said_ that this is knowledge, but—but Neil knows better. Neil knows what a spilled secret sounds like. He sits there, with his arm around Andrew, _Andrew_ , and doesn’t dare hug him any tighter.

It’s been silent for too long.

“I won’t,” Neil says. Neil is a liar, and he can’t lie to Andrew, not really, but he can sound calm when that’s the biggest lie he’s ever told and Andrew won’t call him on it. “If I gag, I’ll just pull back. If I get grossed out, I’ll stop. If my knees hurt, or I’m uncomfortable, or I don’t want to do it, I won’t do it. It won’t traumatize me, Andrew, I _want_ to do this.”

“This sounds like a conversation about something way more serious than a blowjob,” Andrew mumbles.

“A blowjob is plenty serious.”

“We can’t even call it by its proper name.”

“I _want_ to give you oral sex.”

“Oh. We can. That’s good to know.”

“ _I_ can be a serious adult, who can have serious discussions about oral sex.”

“I wish I’d known you as a teenager. You’d have been just as impassive then. Someone would’ve thrown a tampon at you and you’d have told them not to litter. Mr. _Drugs aren’t cool._ ”

“That sounds like something I’d do,” Neil agrees. “I’d have given them a nice dirty look, too.”

“This is why I usually talk to Bee about this shit before I talk to you about it.”

“Why, so we don’t end up talking about a hypothetical case of past littering?”

“So I don’t say terrible shit to you.”

Neil shrugs—just a little shrug, though. He doesn’t want to dislodge Andrew. “That’s not the worst thing in the world.”

“It’s definitely up there, though.”

“It’s okay. I know what’s going on.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t. Bee is _supposed_ to know more about our sex life than you do.”

Neil looks at Andrew. “No, I—I don’t know if—okay.”

Andrew huffs. “Fucking _nothing_ gets a rise out of you.”

“I can be angry,” Neil says. “Hang on. No, your therapist shouldn’t know anything you haven’t told me about first.”

They sit there in silence for a couple minutes.

“But also, it won’t be bad for me, Drew. I know better than to think that it’s deepthroat or nothing. I’ve learned from you. I’ve got a tongue and I know how to use it.”

“You have _got_ to stop saying things,” Andrew says after a minute. “Also, don’t you have therapy in half an hour?”

Neil makes a face that Andrew doesn’t see. “Yeah. Also, I have an appointment on your birthday, I didn’t think it through when I made it.”

“She didn’t have another available slot for a week and a half,” Andrew says. “You took what you could get.”

“You could’ve stopped me.”

“From making a therapy appointment? Absolutely not. Go to therapy.”

“Don’t really want to leave you alone, right now.”

“I’m going to call Renee,” Andrew says. “Go.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s head. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

Andrew is on the phone with Renee when Neil leaves.

He’s still on the phone with her when Neil returns, deep in a debate about a book Neil has never read, which is fine, because Neil doesn’t have any good news—this fourth attempt at therapy has gone no better than the first three.

They pass the rest of the day on the phone—they call Wymack, Abby, Matt and Dan, Nicky. Natalie and Paige come home, and dip in and out of the conversation as desired.

Saturday morning they spend reading—Andrew is absorbing the next book in his and Renee’s series at top speed, desperate to find fuel for his argument about the source of magic the characters use, an argument that Neil isn’t following at all and has no desire to understand.

And then they gather the twins and bully them into a family lunch.

“I wanna watch reaction videos,” Natalie says, pulling the crust off her sandwich.

“Reacting to what?” Neil asks.

“To your YouTube thing.”

“Go at it.”

“No. With _you_.”

“You want to watch them with us?”

“There’s some good memes out there,” Paige says. “I wanna see the _videos_.”

Neil glances at Andrew, who waves a hand. “Sure,” Neil agrees. “ _After_ you eat your sandwich, I don’t want bread crumbs on the chairs.”

“That’s fair,” Paige agrees.

She and Natalie glance at each other, and then it’s a race to the finish, and she and Natalie have clean plates while Andrew and Neil move at the slowest speed imaginable.

Natalie gives Neil laser eyes.

“I’m old,” he tells her. “I have to chew each bite 100 times, or else I might die. Do you know how _many_ things old people have to be scared of? Bad teeth. Or choking. Or—”

“You’re making us wait _longer_.”

“Maybe. What of it? Patience is a virtue. But you’re young, I know you don’t have much—it’s something you gain as you get older, because you’ve spent so much time existing, you know?”

“I have to agree with you, Neil,” Andrew says seriously. “Youth these days don’t understand the importance of patience. Always on their phones—”

“Offensive,” Natalie says.

“What happened to the willingness to _wait_?”

“You guys are millennials!” Paige cries.

“Millennials these days,” Neil says seriously. “They have _no_ respect for their elders, _no_ respect for their elders’ dental health. If I chew too fast, you see, my teeth will break—”

“They will _not,_ you are _thirty_ and _rich—_ ”

“I’m not thirty yet,” Neil says, glancing at Natalie. “But this is a perfect example of what we’re talking about, see—it’s more respectful to wait silently than to speak and be wrong—”

“If you say _children should be seen and not heard_ —”

“I’ll knife you,” Natalie threatens.

Paige nods.

“The disrespect,” Andrew says, shaking his head.

“We’re going to go start without you,” Paige declares, standing.

“We are? We are,” Natalie agrees, carrying her plate to the sink. The two of them put their plates in the dishwasher, turn as one, and leave the room.

Neil leans back a little in his chair to make sure they’re gone, and then he turns to Andrew. “Do we wanna—”

Andrew pulls him in for a kiss, and Neil shuts up. “Eat,” Andrew orders when he pulls away.

Neil complies.

By the time they make it into the living room, the TV and laptop are already set up, and Neil is looking at a video titled _Humans Are Milk—Backwards Compilation._

Natalie clicks play.

It’s a clip of Neil and Andrew, arguing—soundlessly. A voiceover says, at top speed, “So Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard, two S-tier exy players and husbands of a few years now, livestreamed themselves arguing other people’s questions. One of the questions was: Cereal first or milk first? The thing about this one is that they didn’t actually argue the actual question, they both agreed there that it was cereal first. The problem is that over the next five minutes they held a conversation that ended with Andrew deciding that humans are milk. If you haven’t seen it, just go watch it, it is batshit insane. If you have seen it, you’ve probably fast forwarded through this part and should probably start listening now. Within 10 minutes of the stream ending, the hashtag _BackwardsChallenge_ was already trending on Twitter. The idea is that you take some of the Minyard-Josten conclusions to someone who didn’t watch the stream, and ask them what question could have gotten them to that conclusion. This is a compilation of the video responses to _Humans are milk_. Enjoy.”

On-screen Neil cackles and says: “And what makes you think _that_?”

And then it’s a video of an old lady sitting on a couch. “Grandma,” the person recording says, “can we play—like—Jeopardy? I give you the answer, you give me the question?”

“I guess so,” Grandma says. “What’s the answer?”

“Humans are milk.”

Grandma blinks at the camera. The person recording is snorting laughing. “And where did this come from? Who came up with that? What—did _you_ think of that? Is this hypothetical?”

“No, no, some people on the internet answered a question, and their answer was _humans are milk_. What do you think the question was?”

Grandma looks around, one hand attempting a wave and failing miserably. “Uh, I don’t know. Are humans milk?” Natalie laughs. “If humans weren’t mostly water, what liquid would they be? I can’t—I can’t think of a question that would lead me to that answer. I think maybe these people on the internet need some help.”

“Do you want to know the question?” The person behind the camera asks, the camera visibly shaking as the person tries not to laugh.

“Yes, yes I do.”

“ _Cereal first or milk first_?”

Grandma gives the camera a look that suggests that Andrew and Neil need more than a little help. Paige cracks up, fist pounding her thigh. The person recording cracks up, the video goes blurry as they bend over, and then it switches to someone else.

“Bro. Bro. Backwards challenge. Do you wanna take the backwards challenge?”

A man who wouldn’t have been out of place in a frat house at Palmetto State looks at the camera. He points to his baseball cap, which is on backwards. “Already am. I already am. I’m on _top_ of this.”

“No, no, the—okay, bro, look, listen, the challenge is—I’m gonna tell you a conclusion to an argument, and you tell me what the argument was,” the person recording says. “Wanna do it?”

“Fuck, sure, I’m in, I’m down, never say no, right?”

“Right. Right. Okay. The conclusion is _humans are milk_. What was the argument.”

“ _Humans are—_ okay. Wait. Wait. Hold on, man,” the guy says, holding a finger up, bouncing in place, doing half a turn. And then he turns back to the camera. “Okay. Aliens, right?” Andrew looks at Neil and mouths, _aliens?_ “Diagrams, they’ve got diagrams, _here’s what humans are_. What _are_ humans? You know? Like, how we study biology, and find out that platypi—platypuses—whatever—are mammals. They’re like, _what are humans_ , and they’ve got pictures of grocery stores, because you are what you eat, so, like, what do we _eat_ , what we eat is _milk_ , we have that whole _Got milk?_ campaign, we have cereal for breakfast every day and kids get milk at lunch—so, you know, they conclude that humans are milk—why are you laughing so hard?”

The person operating the camera turns the camera back on the man answering the question, takes a deep breath, and says, “Cereal first or milk first. That was the question, dude, it was— _aliens_? Cereal first or milk first, that’s it—”

“Mom, mom,” says someone new, approaching a woman at a desk. “Are you playing Solitaire?”

“I’m working,” Mom says. Paige reaches around for a tissue to wipe her eyes—she’s laughing so hard she’s crying.

“Cool. Mom, look, if I tell you a conclusion to an argument, will you tell me what the argument was? Like, trace it back? Backtrack to the original question?”

“Will you let me work if I do that?” Mom asks, distracted.

“Yeah, yeah. Are you ready?”

“Sure. What am I doing?”

“I’m going to tell you the conclusion of an argument, and you’re going to tell me the initial question. Are you ready?”

“Sure. Go.”

“Humans are milk.”

“Humans are milk? I have no idea,” Mom says, clicking away, utterly uninterested. “Maybe the question was _are humans milk_ , and it was answered by an idiot.”

The person filming snort-laughs. “The question—the question was _cereal first or milk first_.”

That gets Mom’s attention. She looks over at the camera, frowning. “Sally Anne, who are these people?”

“Who are what people? Like, who’s watching this? No one, yet.”

“No, who are the people who answered _cereal first or milk first_ with _humans are milk_? Are these your friends online? I don’t think I want you hanging out with them.”

“No, no, they’re not—”

It switches back to the voiceover, but Natalie has already clicked pause. “Holy _shit_. And we have to _live_ with you,” she says.

“Sally Anne, those people are our parents,” Paige says solemnly. “Unfortunately, they have brain rot—hey, click that one, that one.”

 _Andrew Minyard Facial Expressions UPDATED_ begins playing.

The video is set to _Mad World_ , and consists of snapshots of Andrew—in the goal, on the court, in the inner ring, in any one of the few interviews he’s done, that one shot of him looking at Gianna. The majority of it comes from videos, and the person who put it together seems to have a sense of comedic timing—two seconds of the video for context, and then the frame freezes, flips to black-and-white, and zooms in on Andrew’s face. Foxes cheer and jump around, celebrating—freeze frame, _Maaaaad worrrrrrld,_ Andrew’s blank face, Neil in the real world poking Andrew in the ribs.

Except for one shot. Three-quarters of the way through, the soundtrack stops, Neil says “botanists aren’t _real_ ,” and then a freeze frame on Andrew smiling— _Ode to Joy_ plays in the background—the image of Andrew’s face flips 90 degrees, flips again, does a full circle, rights itself, and then unfreezes. Andrew looks down, shakes his head. “You are the dumbest man alive,” he says, and then—freeze frame— _Maaaaad worrrrrld—_ zoom in on Andrew’s now-blank face, while Natalie hunches over laughing.

“That one, that one—” Natalie says.

“Sure, click it—”

 _Obtuse rubber goose_ pops up.

Natalie snickers.

There’s no intro to this one—it’s just Neil saying “There are no tomatoes in this world sweet enough for you to top your whipped-cream-sprinkles-powdered-sugar-pancake—” and then an immediate cut to a cartoon opening, a little boys voice saying “obtuse, rubber goose, green moose, guava juice—”

Natalie and Paige drown the rest of it out.

“Do you know what show that’s from?” Neil whispers.

“ _Fairly OddParents_ ,” Andrew whispers back.

“At least it’s appropriate,” Neil whispers.

Andrew gives him an amused glance, but there’s already a new video up— _(Ex?) Gay Icon Andrew Minyard: Causes of Smiling_.

“I recognize that guy,” Neil says. “Hang on—we watched his videos last time we did this. He’s the one who thought Andrew was homophobic.”

“Oh, right,” Paige says. “And then he did the apology video—”

The man—Lavar, according to his channel name—spins to face the camera. “Hi all! Welcome back. Today’s topic: Things that make Andrew Minyard smile. This is gonna be a short one, guys, because there’s only one thing that makes Andrew Minyard smile, and it’s—” He taps a whiteboard just behind him, and the words _Neil Josten_ appear on it. “Neil Josten. Now. Here’s the thing. We’ve all _wondered_. Andrew isn’t exactly _open_ about pretty much anything, but I think he’s been rightfully accused of being pretty severely traumatized, so you know, maybe he was just turbo-depressed? We have watched this man win games, win championships, win _gold Olympic medals_ , and his facial expression _hasn’t changed_. Some have argued that his expressions _do_ change, but no one’s been able to prove it.

“So now we have _this_. We have Neil Josten saying _botanists aren’t real_ , and we have Neil ranting about how Andrew doesn’t care about baseball, and both of these things resulted in a noticeable change in expression that could absolutely be called a smile. So what _does_ make Andrew Minyard smile? The easy answer seems to be Neil, but more confusingly, _neither smile happened while Neil was actually saying anything funny._ Or even anything _nice_. He was saying things that are _stupid_. Which brings me to my conclusion: Andrew Minyard is not a homosexual. He is a _moro_ sexual.” Lavar holds his pen up and drops it. “ _Boom._ Andrew, come talk to me and tell the world the _truth_.”

“What’s a morosexual?” Andrew asks.

“Someone who’s attracted to stupid people,” Natalie explains.

“Oh,” Andrew says. “Oh, hey, hang on, I have to tell that guy he’s right.”

Neil raises an eyebrow at Andrew.

“Because you’re stupid,” Andrew explains.

“No, I got that, but also, he’s right, you never laugh when I make a joke, you only smile when I do dumb shit.”

“Well, I’m a morosexual,” Andrew says, like it’s obvious.

Neil points a finger at him. “Do you _not_ think I’m funny?”

“Sometimes, I think you’re funny. Sometimes, I think you’re an idiot. It all evens out.”

Neil narrows his eyes at Andrew. “Okay. Sure, sure.”

Paige takes a deep breath, wipes her eyes. “Oh, that one, let’s watch that—nope, nope, Arnie’s calling.”

“Did we say we’d talk about the homework with him today?” Natalie asks, words tumbling out of her mouth.

Paige nods frantically, makes apologetic hand gestures in Neil and Andrew’s direction, and then heads upstairs.

“Sorry, sorry, we forgot about him,” Natalie says.

“No, go, go,” Neil says, pleased. He likes that they have friends. The look on Andrew’s face says that he does, too.

And then it’s Sunday, the first one of the month, and twenty minutes before Aaron and Katelyn are scheduled to arrive, Paige steps onto the porch carrying a notebook. “I have transcribed my questions for Uncle Aaron,” she announces. “I don’t want to turn my phone on every time I want to ask a new one. I will have this notebook at the table with me.”

Neil glances over at her. She’s looking at him and Andrew. There’s a certain defiance in her eyes. This must be something she wasn’t allowed to do, in some house, somewhere. “That’s fine,” he says, and she relaxes.

She takes a seat. “Aren’t you guys cold?”

Andrew and Neil shrug. They blow more bubbles.

“I’m naturally padded,” Andrew says, poking his stomach.

“And I’ve spent time in colder places,” Neil says. “This is comparatively pretty warm.”

“Sure, but, like, I’d think that once you’d been here for a while, you’d get used to it, right?”

“Eh. What about you?” Neil asks. “Are _you_ cold?”

“I’m from Colorado. This is comparatively pretty warm.”

Neil grins. He notices the pleased look on Andrew’s face and doesn’t mention it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one you gave! How is it not an answer?”

“My answer is no, I’m not cold. If we stay out here long enough, I’ll _get_ cold, but I’m not there yet.”

“Same,” Paige agrees. “Once the sun goes down. Although it’s not exactly hitting the porch anymore.”

“No, it’s not. Gets some nice sunlight in the morning, though.”

Paige looks at Neil. “Is that what you talk about, all the time? When the porch gets sunlight?”

Neil shrugs. “What do _you_ want to talk about?”

Paige shrugs right back. “I don’t know. I’m sure Natalie’s got some big questions about life, though. Want me to bring her out here?”

Natalie opens the porch door. “Oh, _here’s_ where you are.”

“Got any big questions about life?” Paige asks.

Natalie blinks at her. “What the fuck?”

“We need something to talk about,” Paige explains. “Got anything?”

“Not really. Can I have bubbles?”

“They’re right behind you,” Neil says, nodding at the bottles.

“Oh.”

Paige declines one. Natalie opens one.

They blow bubbles until they hear a car pull into the driveway.

Neil blows one final bubble, caps his bottle, and heads inside to let Aaron and Katelyn in, the rest of his family on his heels.

Aaron is leading the way through the door, bearing toys and other things intended to keep Freddie occupied. Freddie himself makes it inside in Katelyn’s arms, before freeing himself and running, screaming, after Sir, who runs away so fast Neil doesn’t even see her go. Neil scoops Freddie up, jiggling him around, making him hiccup with laughter.

“Should do this at your place,” Neil mutters, glancing at the toys.

“I know,” Aaron mutters back. “You think I _want_ to gather up all these toys every month? He doesn’t even play with them, he just wants to eat your cats.”

“How did your YouTube thing go?” Katelyn asks.

“Oh, you didn’t watch it?” Natalie asks. “It was good, though. It was funny.”

“No, we took Freddie trick-or-treating,” Katelyn says. “I’m glad! I’ve always thought more people should get to see a nicer side of Neil and Andrew.”

“Maybe we should watch that video,” Aaron says. “I’d like to see that side.”

Andrew flips Aaron off. Aaron flips him off right back. “Are we cooking?” Andrew asks Katelyn.

“We’re cooking,” Katelyn agrees, sensibly saying nothing about the middle fingers flying. Andrew gestures her into the kitchen, and she leads the way.

“Go go go go go,” Aaron mutters, shooing Neil into the living room.

“Why?” Neil asks.

“I have questions,” Paige announces. “From our visit.”

“Paige?” Aaron says.

“Yeah?”

“Give me _ten_ minutes with Neil, and then you’ve got me the rest of the evening.”

“Can we go sit in our room?” Paige asks. “Or do we have to stay in the kitchen?”

“You can sit in your room,” Neil says, and she and Natalie flee up the stairs.

“Go go go go go,” Aaron says, shooing Neil towards the garage.

“It’s cold in there,” Neil says.

“We’re not going _in_ , I just need—okay, Neil, this is fucking stupid, but you have the rings, right?”

“Not _on_ me.”

“No, that’s not—okay, look, fuck you, but whatever, you’re not going to fuck this up, right?”

Neil stares at Aaron. Is he allowed to admit that he knows Aaron and Andrew give a shit about each other? Is that legal? “I don’t intend to, no.”

“I just—” Aaron looks lost. It’s odd, looking at him. Not that Neil never does that, but—the years haven’t made a big enough difference. Aaron and Andrew still look alike. Neil is so used to the way Andrew’s face moves that Aaron emoting looks to Neil like he’s exaggerating every facial expression. “I don’t know. It’s fucking stupid—I’m not supposed to curse around Freddie,” he says suddenly, giving his son a guilty look. Neil shrugs and sets Freddie down. “We shouldn’t—fuck it. I don’t usually curse this much anymore. I didn’t like you for a long time, you know that—”

“Ditto,” Neil says drily.

Aaron waves it off. “I’m trying to say something, here. I’m _saying_ that I didn’t like you, I didn’t trust you, I didn’t like that you made Andrew think he could trust you and then went and got kidnapped and let that be how he found out you’d been lying to him. I’ll be honest, I don’t really believe that you’ve told him everything even fucking now. And I’ll be _more_ honest and tell you that I have no idea if an engagement ring is even something he’d care about, and maybe he’ll be disappointed tomorrow. I don’t know. I know know anything. But if you fuck it up I’ll wreck you. Yes?”

“Yes,” Neil agrees, grinning. “And if I _don’t_ fuck it up?”

“Then I _won’t_ wreck you, asshole. Don’t go looking for more than you deserve.”

“I won’t,” Neil agrees.

“And stop looking so fucking _smug_.”

“I won’t,” Neil repeats.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Aaron warns. “It just means you don’t get to hurt my brother.”

“I won’t,” Neil says again, a little more seriously. “Should I send Andrew to have this same talk with Katelyn?”

“I’ll destroy you.”

“Okay. Can we go find Freddie before he destroys my house?”

“Yes,” Aaron agrees.

They find Freddie halfway up the stairs, and Neil tosses him over his shoulder and walks carefully down the stairs with Aaron begging him to be careful in strained whispers the whole way down. They set up some blocks; Freddie knocks them over. They set up more blocks; Freddie knocks them over.

“Where’s Paige?” Aaron asks desperately. “Doesn’t she have questions for me?”

“Don’t you want to spend time with your son?” Neil asks, handing Freddie a Barbie doll, which Freddie promptly chooses to use as a wrecking ball, knocking over the most recent stack of blocks.

“Can’t I want to spend time with my niece?” Aaron asks.

Freddie stands, waving the doll around over his head, and takes off, chubby little legs carrying him faster than they should. Neil takes off after him, but Aaron catches his elbow.

“Don’t chase him too fast,” Aaron says. “If we do this right, he might wear himself out.”

Aaron and Neil chase Freddie back and forth, catching him around corners, and Neil takes a deep breath. He’s in-shape enough for this. _And_ he just got Aaron’s blessing, for a second time.

That’s not bad, for one evening.

Eventually, though, Katelyn steps out into the hallway, takes a deep breath, and calls in a voice once used to cheerlead loud enough to be heard across a whole stadium: “DINNER’S READY!”

Aaron grabs Freddie and carries him into the kitchen.

The girls jog silently down the stairs.

“Hey!” Paige says. “You never told me it was time for me to ask questions!”

“I told you I—I’m sorry,” Aaron says, catching the look Neil is giving him. If Aaron says he only needed 10 minutes, Andrew will ask what for, and Neil is fairly certain that neither he nor Aaron have a useful lie prepared.

“That’s fine, but now we have to wait until after dinner,” Paige complains, leading the way into the kitchen.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t talk and chew at the same time.”

“That’s a lie,” Natalie says. “It’s absolutely a lie.”

“It is _not_ , I am older now.”

“You spit _soup_ into my _hair_ once.”

“That was _three years ago_!”

“My hair still remembers.”

“I don’t even think hair _lives_ that long.”

“Hair is dead,” Natalie says. “It doesn’t live at _all_.”

“Then it can’t have memories.”

“Says who? Computers have memories, and _they’re_ not alive.”

“Don’t say that,” Paige warns. “Or they’ll come after you in the uprising.”

“Right,” Natalie says.

Neil looks at Andrew, who looks about as concerned as Neil feels, but then the kids start eating, and Neil isn’t going to stop them.

Paige finishes eating, takes a deep breath, pushes her plate away, and replaces it with her notebook. “Do you have to know every medication that exists?”

“No,” Aaron says. “I can always check, if I get a patient with something I don’t often see, and I try to stay up-to-date with medications as they become available. But there are some diseases or other issues that come up often and have one or two medications, and I know most of them off the top of my head.”

Katelyn pulls Freddie into her lap.

“Katelyn, do you pull people’s brains apart? Like splitting a chunk of ground beef in half?”

Aaron grins at Katelyn, who looks lightly surprised to be dragged into this, but she’s never been one to not speak when asked. She dives into an explanation of how brain surgery works, which Paige looks absolutely absorbed in. Natalie looks bored nearly to tears, but she seems to find some amusement in watching Freddie’s head droop closer and closer to the pile of mashed potatoes on Katelyn’s plate. Neil and Aaron must have done their job too well—he’s worn out, for sure, but now he’s going to nap, and he won’t be able to sleep through the night.

Well, that’s not Neil’s problem. He sees it on Andrew’s face when Andrew reaches the same conclusion, and on Aaron’s face when he, too, realizes he’s fucked.

And then Paige turns on Aaron with a question about how med school works, and Aaron is distracted. He takes a second, trying to remember.

“You don’t have to pretend, you know,” Paige says. “You can just say it.”

This completely derails Aaron, who gives her a look of pointed confusion. “Pretend what?”

“To have a bad memory? I mean,” Paige says, visibly backtracking, “I mean, I assume you have a photographic memory, too? Unless… you don’t. Oh, better question, how the fuck is that even _possible_? Since you’re identical?”

“What are you…”

Neil watches as Aaron and Katelyn visibly put together the dots, and turn as one towards Andrew.

“What?” Andrew asks.

“A—photographic memory,” Aaron says. “You have a photographic memory?”

Paige blanches, rearranges her face into an apology, and turns it on Andrew.

“Yeah,” Andrew says.

“Photographic memory doesn’t exist,” Katelyn says. “It’s a myth.”

Andrew shrugs. “Sure.”

“You don’t have a photographic memory,” Aaron says.

“He said he does,” Paige insists. “Pops says so, too.”

“He doesn’t,” Aaron says. “He can’t. It’s a myth.”

“And why can’t I?” Andrew says abruptly. “And just because it’s never been _documented_ doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“Because—you can’t, Andrew, you can’t, that would mean—you’ve never forgotten anything, it would mean—”

“Here,” Katelyn says, calmly, trying to halt the rising panic in Aaron’s voice. “I can solve this. Hang on.” She dives for her purse, pulls out her wallet, and hauls out a wad of business cards. She retakes her seat. “Here.”

Andrew takes a business card from her, glances at it, and hands it back. “What about it?”

“What did it say?”

Andrew sighs. And then he recites, word for word, what the business card said.

Katelyn hands him another.

And another, and another, and another. Andrew gives her phone numbers, addresses, spellings when he’s not sure how to pronounce a name. Slogans. Aaron is white as a sheet.

“Eleventh grade,” Aaron says, after Andrew has run through fifteen business cards without missing so much as a letter. “We were in history class. Mr. Shelham. It was—a couple days before Christmas break—”

“Three,” Andrew says. “Three days before, if you’re talking about when he flashed his personal email across the screen?”

“What did it say?”

“Why?”

“It was up there for half a second. Brent—the computer kid—do you remember him?”

Andrew raises one sardonic eyebrow.

“Yeah, okay, photographic memory and all that bullshit. He hacked Shelham’s email, and we saw what it said. Neither of us ever told anybody. You’re shit with computers and you had no friends, I know you had no way of figuring it out. What did the email say?”

Andrew snorts, closes his eyes, and reels off—“ _You fucking bastard, you stupid cheater, you really thought I’d never figure it out_ —she misspelled _figure,_ missed the r— _you really thought I was that dumb? You thought I’d miss the lipstick? I found her fucking underwear IN MY CAR, you jackass, you dipshit, did you_ —and now I’m going to stop, because my kids are in the room. Or, I guess I could just skip that part, and pick up at— _if you think you’re gonna get off easy in the divorce you should quit your shitty job because you’re stupider than the kids you teach, I’m going to bleed you dry, you’re gonna be living out of that bitch’s underwear for the rest of your fucking life_ —and then the screen cut it off. You really managed to keep that a secret? _Both_ of you?”

“Who else knows?” Aaron asks, hands fisted.

“About the email? I have no idea.”

“About your _memory_ , jackass.”

“Kevin, Wymack, and Bee. And Neil, obviously.”

“ _Wymack_? I mean—I guess Kevin I get—”

“I didn’t tell either of them,” Andrew says, cutting him off at the pass. “The only person I ever told was Bee. Kevin figured it out when Neil did, and Wymack probably knew before they did. And then Neil told the kids.”

“So what the fuck else don’t I know?”

“Aaron,” Katelyn says. He waves a hand at her. “Keep it down. Freddie.”

Aaron strangles a couple words, and then tries again, at a lower volume. “What else don’t I know, Andrew? What other shit should I know that I don’t? That your kids just kinda spit out, like it’s common knowledge, like, _oh, hey, your brother has a form of memory previously considered mythical_? Is it just going to be, every single time I come over, I learn something new about your life that apparently bunches of people consider common knowledge?”

Andrew shrugs. “Who cares?”

“I do! I’m your _brother_ , Andrew, and _I_ care, so you’d better fucking suck it up and get used to it!”

“What difference does it make, if I remember things?” Andrew snipes. “So what?”

“Because—I’ve said so much shit to you, Andrew, I’ve said—and _done_ shit—”

“So what? I wasn’t exactly the ideal brother either,” Andrew says sardonically.

“But I can _forget_ most of it,” Aaron says, voice strained. “You remember _every goddamn thing_ I’ve ever done to hurt you.”

“And? You weren’t that bad, Aaron,” Andrew says. It’s a lie. Neil knows it’s a lie. It wasn’t that bad, compared to everything else Andrew remembers—but Aaron is Andrew’s brother.

“But I’m your _brother_ ,” Aaron says. “I’m not supposed to—siblings are supposed to forget that shit, not remember it _forever_.”

And then Aaron shuts up. He and Andrew are wearing precisely the same expression of surprise.

Andrew and Aaron had gone to high school together, held a job together, and from their stories, they talked and spent time together, but—somehow, they’d gone from that to never talking to each other in college. Neil feels pretty certain that the reason for that is sitting next to him with her and Aaron’s son in her lap. Aaron trying to get out of his deal with Andrew in order to date someone Andrew didn’t trust or like—Andrew wouldn’t let Aaron out of that promise, and they’d ended up the way they were when Neil had met them. And Neil can extrapolate that the relationship they had in high school was born of necessity, a bandaid slapped over the gorge that was their mother.

“I just want to point out,” Paige says tentatively, ignoring the warning look Natalie is giving her, “Natalie and I—we remember the shit we’ve done to each other.”

“But that’s—spitting soup into each other’s hair isn’t—that’s not what we did,” Aaron says, and Paige falls silent.

After a couple seconds, Andrew shrugs. “There’s not much else they know that you don’t,” he says thoughtfully. “Unless you want to hear about how my favorite color is the color of Neil’s eyes, and all that romantic shit.”

Aaron throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know! What does _romantic shit_ encompass? Is there some horrifying shit hidden in there that Paige and Natalie are just gonna blurt out next month, couched in a question about twin genetics?”

Andrew shrugs again. He looks absolutely lost. “I mean—sometimes, I smile, pretty much solely because of Neil. I can’t hold it very long, I don’t have the—the facial muscles, the experience. Neil and I know how to waltz. What else do you want to know? There’s plenty of horror back there. The kids don’t exactly know _details_. Most people don’t. Neil does. Bee does. Presumably, Wymack knows more than I think he knows, because he always does; Kevin probably knows more than I know he knows, because he’s not as oblivious as he likes to pretend he is. Renee knows—well, she’s probably figured out more than anyone’s told her, because she gets it. So what do you want to know? You want a day-by-day rundown of the past 26 years?”

“You were four when it started, then? Your memory?” Katelyn asks.

Andrew looks at her.

“Kids use a—ah—somewhere between the ages of three and seven, your brain—it’s like if you had a rural road, and then paved right over it and then built a big highway system right over that. The original road functioned, but as you age, your brain grows, and at some point you start storing memories differently. _Forming_ them differently. So I guess—probably, your brain developed differently than most people’s, although I can’t say why.”

Andrew shrugs at her.

“I don’t know,” Aaron says helplessly. “I just—If there’s shit you’re willing to tell me, I don’t want to find out about it over dessert next month.”

Andrew looks at Paige and Natalie. “Go hang out upstairs for a little while.”

They put up an immediate outcry—why can’t they stay, they’re old enough, they _know_ enough, they’re not _babies_ —

“I don’t want you to know,” Andrew says, overriding them. “I don’t want to tell you.”

Paige and Natalie stand as one, giving Andrew distrustful looks, and head upstairs.

Andrew stands. He heads for the cabinet, pulls out the whiskey, pours himself a shot, and drinks it. And then he drinks two more. He turns and raises an eyebrow and the bottle to Katelyn and Aaron. “If anyone wants any, tell me now.”

They shake their heads, although Aaron looks unhappy about it.

“Katelyn? Do you want to leave?”

Katelyn looks at Aaron.

“You can go,” Aaron says.

Katelyn shakes her head firmly.

Andrew leaves the bottle on the counter. Instead of returning to his own seat, he heads for Neil, so Neil pulls out his chair. Andrew sits in his lap. “Tell me when you’re done,” he instructs Aaron. He takes a deep breath.

Neil sits there and listens, arms wrapped around Andrew, as Andrew recounts, clinically, dispassionately, an overview of his childhood, his families, his life. Why the word _please_ was off-limits for so long; why it no longer is. Why he decided, time and time again, against telling people things about himself. Andrew doesn’t go into much detail, unless Aaron asks, which he does rarely. Halfway through the 20-minute ordeal, Aaron pours himself a shot of whiskey. Andrew doesn’t so much as pause.

Neil rests his cheek against Andrew’s back. He can feel Andrew’s apathy in every relaxed muscle, every even breath—Andrew doesn’t care about this. It’s not the act of _telling_ that Andrew needed to get drunk for; Andrew has told it all before, to both Bee and Neil. It’s the act of telling _Aaron_. Aaron, and Katelyn, with Freddie sitting there fast asleep, abandoned dinner plates strewn across the table.

“We should’ve done this with Bee,” Aaron mumbles when Andrew falls silent.

Andrew shrugs.

“And you just—how can—you shouldn’t have to live with all that,” Aaron says.

“Unless you have a magic spell that’ll make me forget, I don’t really have a choice,” Andrew says. “And I’m used to it. It’s not the end of the world.”

“It should be.”

Andrew laces his fingers through Neil’s. That’s nice. It’s a good sign. A good sign that Andrew wanted to be here, sitting on Neil, for this. That Andrew isn’t so far down the rabbit hole he can’t breathe, can’t touch Neil.

Neil picks his head up and looks at Katelyn and Aaron. Katelyn is hugging Freddie, and the look on her face has Neil wanting to bring her a trash can to vomit in. Aaron’s head is on the table.

“I don’t want—I don’t—you really _didn’t_ give a shit when mom beat you, huh.”

“I’ve told you that,” Andrew says patiently. “Several times. Last time I did, you said you believed me.”

“Sure, but I didn’t understand—that was _faith_. This is— _concrete_ , Andrew, I thought there was something—I don’t know, I thought—fuck, Andrew, why didn’t you—why didn’t you ever tell me to fuck off? Why didn’t you just let me go, when I was a piece of shit? You were dealing with all of _that_ , and I was being an asshole—”

“I had problems back then,” Andrew says.

“No shit.”

“We won’t tell,” Katelyn says. “Not about—of course we won’t tell anyone about anything you just said, obviously, but we won’t tell anyone about your memory, either.”

Andrew and Neil stare at her.

“Why would you?” Andrew asks.

Katelyn stares right back at him. “Andrew, it’s never been documented. _Ever_. There have been people who claimed to have it, but she married the person performing the tests—”

“And then refused to repeat the tests, I know,” Andrew says. “I’ve done some research on it.”

“You are a medical marvel living in the age of the internet. You could make someone’s career. I’m not telling anyone.”

“Thanks,” Andrew tries. It comes out more like a question than a statement, but Katelyn doesn’t seem to mind. “Anyway, is there anything else you want to know?”

“Is there _more_?” Aaron asks.

“Sure,” Andrew says. “There always is.”

“We _cannot_ make this a monthly tradition. I can’t handle—well, but you do, don’t you.”

“I do,” Andrew agrees. “But I _can’t_ handle it. I _couldn’t_ handle it. I _used_ to smile, you know, when I was a kid. This isn’t—this isn’t just _how I am_ , or _who I am_ , or _what_ _I am_ , it’s trauma. There are people who don’t smile because they don’t smile, and then there’s me, Aaron, I’m not Superman, I am who I am because I _can’t_ handle it. Bee doesn’t handle it, either, before you ask. She made me start journaling, early on. I wrote down all the details, everything I couldn’t say. I can’t make other people live with my life.”

“You _wrote it down_?” Aaron asks.

“If you ever saw me studying, that’s what I was doing. I never needed to study. Remember? I never forget anything. I just burned the journals when I was finished with them. I didn’t want anyone finding them. Knowing they existed. Anyway, if we’re done, I want dessert,” Andrew says, standing.

He sways.

He looks at Neil, the expression on his face something akin to offended. “I misjudged how much alcohol I could handle,” he says.

“You don’t drink often enough anymore,” Neil says, grinning.

“Don’t laugh at me, I’m supposed to have a high alcohol tolerance, _and_ I just ate. Fuck.”

Neil stands and puts Andrew in his chair. “I’ll get the ice cream.”

“I can get the ice cream,” Andrew says.

“You can sit right there, too. Aaron? Katelyn?”

“How can you _eat_?” Katelyn asks.

Neil shrugs. “Heard it all before. I’ll be horrified later. Andrew wants ice cream, so we’ll eat ice cream. Andrew, right now, is fine, so—ice cream. Want any?”

Aaron and Katelyn shake their heads.

“I’ll call the girls down, if you’re all done.”

“How much of this do they know?” Aaron asks.

“They got the gist,” Andrew says. “They know about Drake. I haven’t told them details. They don’t need to know.”

“Sure, call them down,” Aaron says listlessly.

“Nat! Paige!” Neil calls. “Ice cream!”

It’s two very subdued twins who enter the kitchen. They look at Aaron and Katelyn and veer around the opposite end of the table.

“Is that—whiskey?” Paige asks. “Where did that _come_ from?”

“The whiskey hiding place,” Andrew says promptly.

“I didn’t even know you guys drank,” Natalie says, moving dishes to the sink. One plate clinks against another and she flinches

They’re reading the room, Neil realizes, and they’re not liking what they’re finding. “We don’t, usually,” he says casually, helping Natalie with the dishes. “Anymore. But we have whiskey. For whenever it’s necessary.”

“What constitutes _necessary_?” Paige asks.

“When I need help telling a story,” Andrew says.

Paige starts scooping ice cream. She glances at Katelyn and Aaron. “I don’t know how much you guys like ice cream, so I’m just going to give you a normal amount.”

“That’s fine,” Katelyn agrees, voice fully under control.

Neil sets to work making Andrew’s sundae, and passes it to him.

“It’s not my birthday yet,” Andrew comments, but he takes the bowl nonetheless.

“Better feel okay by morning,” Neil says. “If Aaron managed to ruin your birthday, I’ll wreck him.”

Andrew waves a hand. “No, I’ll feel okay as of ten minutes ago. It’s fine.”

“I mean, it is my birthday, too,” Aaron says. “This may have ruined _my_ birthday.”

Neil pauses. Looks at Aaron. “Is it bad that I forgot?”

Aaron rolls his eyes. “No, that’s about par for the course. Pass the whipped cream, asshole.”

Neil passes the whipped cream.

“Sorry for cursing at you in front of your kids.”

“I’m not concerned,” Neil says.

“What do you think Nicky got us this year?” Andrew asks, leaning back in his chair.

“Well, we got watches last year—what’d we get the year before that?”

“Blankets,” Andrew says. “The fuzzy ones.”

“Right. And the year before that?”

Andrew raises an eyebrow at him. “Cologne. The year before that was Christmas ornaments, because we finally both had houses. The year before that, he got me the world’s biggest box of chocolates and got you gourmet coffee—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Aaron says. “Perfect memory. Is it _just_ photographic? Or is it auditory? Do you—do you _see_ the image?”

“Auditory as well,” Andrew says, after swallowing a bite of ice cream. “I don’t—store the memory in photographic form, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t, for instance, have to picture a business card and read the phone number off the card in order to remember the phone number. But I can remember everything well enough that the difference is moot. If I could draw, I’d be able to recreate anything and everything I’ve ever seen with photographic accuracy. I’ve tried it before with simpler things—things that don’t require much artistic talent. It’s easier for me to copy 2D things than make my own painting based off of a scene I’ve just existed in. I’m no good at mixing colors, though, so Bee just gave me some colored pencils and let me go. I can also—she brought in a book one day, and when I closed my eyes and knew where the edges of the book were, I could point to details on the cover. Could trace them. I knew how far away the details were from the edge of the cover.”

Katelyn seems to have forgotten her ice cream—her spoon is frozen two inches above the bowl. “How does it affect your learning process? You said you don’t need to study?”

“It doesn’t make me smarter,” Andrew says. “It doesn’t make me better at writing an essay. It doesn’t mean that I can _understand_ anything I have memorized. But with something like learning Russian—vocabulary is the easiest thing in the world. Learning their alphabet. Even the grammar isn’t hard. But I could read something right now written in Greek and I wouldn’t know what it meant. I’d be able to copy it down, but I don’t speak Greek, I don’t know how to pronounce it, I don’t know how to translate it. I was never better at physics than Aaron was—it’s not just about knowing the equations, it’s about being able to apply them, and I was never as good at that as he was.”

“Can you— _forget_ to remember? I mean—do things always exist at the front of your mind?”

“I might not think of something,” Andrew says. He seems unconcerned by the questioning. Neil is waiting for that to change. “If I make a grocery list—in my head or on paper—then when I’m in the grocery store, I know everything that’s on it and I know to get it. But if I use the last onion and it doesn’t occur to me put that on my mental list, I can walk out of the store without it. _Having_ the memory and _retrieving_ it are two different things. I always have a memory, and I can always retrieve it, but I don’t do that automatically. It’s possible for me to not think of something.”

“If you were trying to recreate Aaron’s outfit right now, would you— _not_ think of something?”

“Unlikely,” Andrew says, watching a blob of ice cream melt off Katelyn’s spoon. “I would picture him, and then there wouldn’t be anything I wouldn’t think of, because I’d be looking at it. I’m going to eat my ice cream now.”

Katelyn purses her lips, and then turns on Natalie and Paige. “How is school going?”

Paige jumps on it, feeling the atmosphere lift, happy to chatter it into a happier place.

Neil walks Aaron and Katelyn out, after dinner, and wishes Aaron a happy birthday. He comes back in to find Natalie and Paige dealing with the dishes, and Andrew downing an entire glass of water.

“I am _not_ going to have a hangover on my birthday,” Andrew says.

“If you want to take him upstairs, we can wipe down the table,” Natalie offers.

“Probably we’re just going to go to bed,” Neil says.

Natalie nods, making a face that tells Neil that that’s obvious.

Neil follows Andrew upstairs. Andrew seems fine—steady on his feet, now.

“I’m not really drunk,” Andrew says when they get into their bedroom.

“I know,” Neil agrees.

“I was three inches past tipsy, and I am rapidly getting over it.”

“Yup.”

“I’m still going to bed early.”

“Yes, we are.”

“God, I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Drew. Are you doing okay?”

Andrew shrugs. “He took that well, so I’m fine. I think—I don’t think it’ll be an issue. I think I took care of myself through it.”

“Alcohol doesn’t count as self-care.”

“No, but sitting in your lap and holding your hand does. The alcohol was just so that I wouldn’t freak out if Aaron and Katelyn freaked out.”

“They’re gonna get home and freak out.”

Andrew waves a hand. “As long as I don’t have to see it, I don’t care. Katelyn’s going to murder me and steal my brain for science.”

“That’s true.” Neil passes Andrew his toothbrush.

“ _That’s true_ ,” Andrew mutters a few minutes later, pulling on his pajama shirt. “Not even going to protect me?”

“Oh, I will, but she’ll kill me before she gets to you,” Neil says. “Stopping that woman isn’t possible.”

Andrew grimaces, curling up against Neil. “I know, I tried.”

“And look how things turned out.”

“I know, I know, all for the better. Your self-righteousness must be intoxicating.”

“I’m not the one who’s drunk.”

Andrew kisses Neil’s cheek. “Shut up.”

Neil brushes a hand through Andrew’s hair, shuts up, and closes his eyes. He feels Andrew take a breath—in for one, two, three; out for one, two, three, four—and is asleep before Andrew takes the next.


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you know what it is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to anyone who doesn't like porn: i apologize but the whole ending is porn. to anyone who does like porn: you're welcome
> 
> ALSO while i've got you here: if you ever feel like a chapter should have a tw or a cw please let me know! or even if you feel like the tags on the whole fic should be updated? i'm working without a beta so i don't really have anyone telling me things that should be obvious. but anyway you can stick it in the comments or message me on tumblr @ youreyestheyglow, either will work--I know it takes me forever to respond to comments but i do read them usually within an hour, unless i'm literally asleep, so i'll be able to fix it pretty fast.

Neil presses his face into Andrew’s hair and goes back to sleep.

When he wakes up again, Andrew is still asleep, breathing deep and slow. Neil blinks until his vision stops being blurry and maneuvers as best he can until he can see Andrew’s face—Andrew looks peaceful, which is a relief.

Hopefully Aaron won’t spend too much of the day thinking about last night. That’s a losing proposition, Neil knows that well enough, but—still. And to be fair, Aaron _did_ ask Andrew to tell him everything. And then requested further explanation on top of that.

Neil rubs Andrew’s back. Andrew hadn’t woken him up last night, a good sign—no nightmares.

He watches the sun scoot across the wall, a centimeter at a time, his hand measuring the rise and fall of Andrew’s back until one of Andrew’s legs straightens, stiffens, releases, Andrew coming awake one muscle at a time.

Neil just rubs his back.

It takes Andrew a few minutes, but eventually, he looks up at Neil. Slides a hand over Neil’s cheek. “You’re awake,” he mumbles.

“Yeah,” Neil says softly. “Good morning, my love, and—”

“Wait, wait, pretend to be asleep,” Andrew says, cutting off Neil’s _happy birthday_.

“Okay,” Neil agrees, closing his eyes. What does Andrew want to do?

“You’re sleeping… sleeping… not even dreaming, nice and comfortable…” Andrew’s voice drops off.

Is this a ploy to make Neil go back to bed? He’s down for that. Andrew isn’t moving, anyway, so it’s not like Neil can get up.

He can go back to sleep. If that’s what Andrew wants. It’s his birthday, after all.

Neil takes a deep breath, squeezes Andrew a little. Sleep isn’t hard to find.

“I think the Earth _is_ a hole in space,” Andrew says loudly.

“ _Dick_ , you’re a dick,” Neil says, jumping.

“ _Happy birthday tooo meee,_ ” Andrew sings, quietly, jubilantly.

“I was all ready to go back to sleep if that was what you wanted—I didn’t even _question_ it—”

“Now you know how I felt when I was _dragged_ out of a comfortable sleep by you saying stupid shit.”

“I dragged _myself_ out of a comfortable sleep by me saying stupid shit, you weren’t alone there. We suffered _together_.”

“But I suffered _more_.”

“I let you go back to sleep after that!”

“Your PR agent called you!”

“Why doesn’t _your_ PR agent ever call _you_?”

“ _My_ PR agent knows better than to think he has any kind of control over me whatsoever.”

“Eliana thinks I act out to get positive attention.”

“Is she wrong?”

“Yes?”

“ _You know, I get it—”_

“That didn’t get me _any_ positive attention.”

“It did, however, undeniably get you _some_ attention.”

“All very negative.”

“If I recall correctly, Riko already _knew_ who you are. You already _had_ his negative attention. Are you ever glad he’s dead?”

“Always.”

“Me too,” Andrew says meditatively, cuddling back into Neil’s chest. “You haven’t even said happy birthday to me yet.”

“I was _literally about to_ when you _interrupted_ me so you could be _rude_.”

“Okay, Neil, see, that was an opening for you to say happy birthday to me. My therapist says you should, she wants me to be excited about this. All I’m saying.”

“You are an asshole,” Neil says, grinning. “But happy birthday, my love, I hope it’s good.

“ _I, am, an ass_ ,” Andrew says in a stilted voice. “ _Remember that I am an ass, though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass_ —”

Neil snorts. “ _Much Ado About Nothing_ this early in the morning?”

“ _No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness—_ ”

“You’re going to go all the way through the _hot piece of ass_ part, aren’t you—”

Andrew smacks a hand into Neil’s mouth, ignoring Neil’s laughter. “ _I am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an officer and, which is more, a householder and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to, and a rich fellow enough_ —”

“I will write you down an ass,” Neil says, squirming away from Andrew’s hand. “I’ve never forgotten and I’ll write it down now.”

“You didn’t let me say that I have a lot of expensive possessions.”

“I’m sorry. But now you’ve said it, right?”

“Yes.”

“You _are_ as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

Neil shrugs. “Why not?”

“I didn’t say I was unhappy about it. It’s a shitty pickup line, though.”

“Fortunately, I don’t have to pick you up. I’ve already got you in my bed.”

“ _Your_ bed? Now, _if_ I remember correctly—”

Neil covers his face with his free hand.

“ _I_ picked out _and_ purchased the bed _and_ the mattress _and_ the pillows—”

Neil grabs Andrew’s hand—Andrew is jabbing a finger in Neil’s general direction—and pulls Andrew’s finger into his mouth.

Andrew shuts up, and Neil releases him.

Neil waits.

“That’s not cute,” Andrew says, voice rough, after two long minutes.

Neil gives in and starts laughing, shaking so hard he dislodges Andrew. “You, just, had—a _crisis_ ,” he gasps. “ _Not cute—_ didn’t have to be. There are—” He pauses to catch his breath. “There are men in this world who put _effort_ in, who _try_ , who go _out of their way_ to be hot, and I have gross morning breath and bedhead and I _put your finger in my mouth_ and you had a _crisis_.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, it’s cute, it’s cute—”

“I am a _grown man_ , I’m not _cute_ —”

“You are _adorable_ , like a little kitten—”

“I am a _Jaguar_ ,” Andrew grumbles, catching Neil off-guard.

“I _knew_ you liked exy,” Neil says fondly.

“I _hate_ it,” Andrew says, crawling back on top of Neil. “And I hate _you_.”

Neil kisses the top of his head. “I love you too.”

Andrew snuggles in. “Thoughts on going back to bed?”

“I could do that,” Neil agrees. “Unless you’re lying to me.”

“No trust. No faith.”

“Rational,” Neil counters. “Intelligent.”

“Both of those things describe _me,_ not you. Although I did _marry_ you, so god knows if I get to call myself intelligent anymore. Go to sleep,” Andrew says, putting a hand over Neil’s mouth as Neil tries to provide a retort. “ _Sleep_.”

Neil obediently closes his eyes.

An hour or so later, they stumble out of bed.

Neil’s legs feel like they don’t work, for a minute, and judging by the two full seconds Andrew spends standing there, blinking at the wall, neither do his. Neil takes Andrew’s hand, though—for balance—and they make their way into the bathroom.

They don’t bother getting changed. They’re not doing anything yet, not going anywhere.

“I was promised breakfast in bed,” Andrew mumbles as he pours himself a bowl of cereal.

“And then you made me go back to sleep. Here, put the cereal back in the box and get back in bed, I’ll—”

“No, I want cereal now.”

“Well, get in bed, I’ll bring it to you—”

“No, I want to eat at the table.”

“Well, at least lie down on the table, I’ll get a really wide straw—”

“And what, _waterboard me_ with cinnamon toast crunch?”

“I was thinking more like the equivalent of sticking your face under the soft drink thing and pouring pepsi straight down your throat—”

“Not even _coke_? It’s my birthday and you’re going with _pepsi_?”

“Pepsi is just carried in more restaurants,” Neil says defensively. “Clearly I didn’t plan ahead, you don’t have to rub it in.”

“I don’t know what I expected, you told me a week ago that you didn’t have anything planned.”

“I guess I should just keep a list handy. Of all the restaurants that offer coke.”

“Or you could just ask me, the man who has it all memorized.”

“Do you—do you know _all_ of them?”

Andrew gives Neil a look. “Did you _forget_ about my memory?”

Neil gives him a look right back. “No, but you’re not _wikipedia_. And I _know_ you haven’t been to every restaurant. So do you know _all_ of them? Is this something you’ve taken care to find out about?”

“Well, no,” Andrew says thoughtfully. “But I _do_ know which of the restaurants I _like_ carry coke. So—”

Andrew’s phone rings, earning it the world’s dirtiest look for a split second until he sees Renee’s name. He answers, but doesn’t even get a hello in—Allison is already singing Happy Birthday, Renee’s laughter echoing in the background.

Neil conducts with his fingers, which neatly captures Andrew’s attention, preventing him from objecting.

“So how’s your day going, Andrew?” Renee asks pleasantly, once Neil has applauded Allison’s performance.

“Was going pretty well until two minutes ago,” Andrew says drily. “I’m going to stop answering when you call, if I have to hear Allison singing every time.”

“I have _blessed_ you,” Allison says. “I have _graced_ you with the lovely sound of my—hey!”

“I’ll muzzle her if that makes it better for you,” Renee says, tone still perfectly pleasant.

“She’s _beating me_.”

“At pretty much everything,” Renee agrees. “GTA, Mario Kart, arm wrestling—”

“Monopoly, which is weird because I’m rich—”

“Being a good friend—”

“Never claimed to be that—”

Neil grins at Andrew. Andrew settles in, looking happy, and he gets happier as Allison and Neil argue—Neil, after all, is the reigning L.A. Noir champion, and Allison had needed to cheat the whole way through—until Renee interjects with a joke that only Andrew gets, something about the series they’re reading, and Andrew leans in close to say, in the most deadpan voice he can manage, “I’m laughing,” and Allison’s laugh bursts their eardrums until she falls away from the phone.

It doesn’t last, because it’s a Monday and Renee has to work, but when they hang up, Andrew looks happy.

“What were we saying?” Neil asks.

And then Roland calls.

It’s Monday morning, so he has errands to run, but he’s in the car, he’s got a 15-minute drive—Andrew spends the whole thing interrogating him about bar patrons, most of which Neil vaguely remembers hearing about. Andrew is following the life stories of at least five of Roland’s regulars.

“I’ve gotta go, but—Thursday? Thursday afternoon? Thoughts? I’ll invite Aaron.”

“You say that like Aaron being there is a prerequisite for my presence.”

“If I could get Nicky over here, I would. What’s Kevin doing that day? We’ll go to a regular restaurant, not a bar.”

“Ask him. I am no longer Kevin’s keeper.”

“I know, I know—but yes?”

“Yes,” Andrew agrees.

“Good. Happy birthday, Andrew.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

Andrew glances at the clock as he hangs up, and then turns a pointed glance on Neil. “You have to leave for therapy in 10 minutes, and you are in your pajamas.”

“I don’t _have_ to go,” Neil says. “I could pay the cancellation fee.”

“You do have to go. Go see Erika.”

“It’s your birthday,” Neil whines, but that’s the worst argument he could’ve chosen, because—

“For my birthday I want you to go try another therapist.”

Neil’s already out of his chair. He presses a kiss to Andrew’s forehead and goes to change.

He gives Andrew one more pleading glance on his way out the door, looking over his shoulder to show off the fact that he’s wearing his nice jeans, and doesn’t his ass look good in them, Andrew, maybe Neil can just not go—but Andrew isn’t even looking at him.

Neil gets in the car, grumbling to himself. Andrew knows him too well. There’s no other scenario in which Neil would walk out the door without even getting a kiss goodbye.

He grumbles the whole way to the therapist’s, too. He’s missing nearly two hours of Andrew’s birthday. For _therapy_. Not even real therapy—a _consultation_.

But he checks in, fills out familiar paperwork, waits five minutes until the door opens and a patient walks out and Neil is told to go in.

Erika doesn’t bother shaking his hand. She waves him through the door and into a chair, already talking before he sits down. “Neil Josten?”

“Present,” Neil says, sitting.

“Oh, good. Your name rang a bell with me, so I looked you up and now I know things about you. I think there’s some things we should establish right up front. First: I don’t know much about exy. If you want to talk about it, you can go at it, but you’ll have to explain it to me. Second: Running under the assumption that there’s some shit you can’t tell me about, given your past and the existence of the FBI, I’ll say right up front that unless you are a danger to yourself or others I’m not required to report anything to anyone and I don’t intend to. I say this because I can’t imagine that whatever you’re here to see me about is entirely unrelated to your general life up until the age of 19. Third, I’ve been called brash, rude, forward, and brutal in the past, so it’s very possible you won’t want to stay the entire consultation, in which case, no hard feelings, but you will still have to pay full price, or your insurance will. Good?”

“Good,” Neil agrees. “Have you checked this place for bugs recently?”

“Insects, or microphones?”

“I was thinking microphones, but insects work too.”

“Is that paranoia? Or is it deserved? We’ll figure that out if you stick around. But yes, I checked this morning. Didn’t check the whole office, because I’m assuming that anyone who wants to listen to you already knows you’re coming here, but I checked the office, I don’t know many details about your case and don’t want to find out the hard way that your case is still open. I’m not prepared to fuck around with the FBI. Do you ask everyone that?”

“No,” Neil says, surprised. “Honestly, I was joking.”

“Were you? We’ll figure that out later too. So, Neil, talk to me. You play exy for a living?”

“Yes.”

“Enjoy it?”

“Very much.”

“Like your boss?”

“Don’t care about him at all.”

“As in, you don’t like him? Or as in you don’t care?”

“I don’t care,” Neil says. “He doesn’t have much to do with my work or life, except in terms of how much I get paid, which I’m fine with.”

“Any problems with work you can think of off the top of your head? Do you feel stressed every day when you go in? Do you want to quit? Anything?”

Neil suppresses a sigh. One of them—the second one, Janice—had wanted desperately for him to have problems with work. The fact that he loves his job had thrown her off.

Well, Erika already said that if he wanted to walk out, she wouldn’t care. And it’s Andrew’s birthday. And Neil wants to go home.

He stays seated. He’s supposed to take these seriously. “No. Work isn’t a problem.”

“Okay, moving on. Family? I’m assuming parents aren’t in the equation? Any in-laws?”

“None,” Neil says.

“You’re married? Fostering two kids? I saw some uproar about adoption?”

“Yes. And yes, we’re adopting them, and no one is happy about it.”

“I feel safe in assuming that social media animosity is an issue?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll talk about that. Husband? You like him?”

“I love him.”

“Why? What about him do you love? You don’t have to wax poetic, I just know nothing about him.”

How is he supposed to take everything he loves about Andrew and stick it into a soundbite? He lifts his hands in half a shrug. “It’s not that I don’t know, it’s that I—I don’t know how to—say it in short-form. It’s—he—he makes me feel safe,” Neil says, finally. That’s inadequate. It’s meaningless. But being around Andrew brings Neil the same feeling of peace and safety that he once felt walking into their house.

“You value safety heavily? Understandable, given what google things of you. Your kids?”

“No,” Neil says. Maybe if he antagonizes _her_ , she’ll kick him out and he can go home and say he tried his best. “I don’t care about my safety, pretty much at all. The reason why I’m here, at all, is because I tossed my safety down the drain for a chance to play exy. And then dumped it again to protect my team. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at _not_ caring about my safety.”

Erika sits back in her chair and looks at him, eyebrows up. “Run that by yourself again. You love your husband, in a word, because he makes you feel safe, but you’re going to sit here and tell me you don’t care about your safety? If the greatest reason why you love your husband is because he gives you something you don’t care about, you don’t love him.”

Neil narrowly avoids flipping her off. “That’s not the _greatest_ reason why I love him, it’s just—”

“Just what? When asked why you love your husband, you don’t say _he makes me happy_ or _he makes me laugh_ or blah blah whatever, you say he makes you feel _safe_. When you distill it down, given two minutes to think about it, given time to wave your hands and consider, what you’ve got is that he makes you safe. So do you actually care about your safety? Or do you not care about him? I’m not saying that there was _not_ a time in your life when safety was your last priority, I’m just saying that it’s possible that’s changed, somewhere along the line.”

“I—”

Neil disagrees. He disagrees absolutely. What about the way Andrew slows down when he’s reading a good book, just to make sure he’s giving each word its due, even though he knows it the second he looks at the page? What about the way he looks when he’s thinking hard, when he’s focused on a problem, when he’s working on a new recipe, when he’s trying to block shots in goal and has to actually work at it? What about effort Andrew puts into his clothes, into his car, into his music choices? What about how happy Neil feels when he talks to Andrew?

The problem is that her logic is much too close to the logic of Neil and Andrew’s superpower game. And she’s right.

Somewhere down the line, something that Neil _knows_ about himself changed drastically, and he didn’t even notice. “Shit.”

“Indeed. That’s an issue you’ll wanna discuss, with me or whoever else. But not right now. This is just a consultation. Your kids, who are they?”

“Wait, I think I need to apologize to my husband,” Neil says. Did he make their happiness second to their safety? All while insisting he wasn’t paranoid, just rational, and that his safety isn’t his concern—but then, it’s not just _his_ safety, it’s Natalie and Paige’s safety, too, and it’s not like his concerns are unfounded—“but, I mean—what’s the difference between that and the fact that—I feel calm when I’m around him, I feel like—I can laugh around him _because_ I feel safe, I can hold a conversation with him _because_ I feel safe, I can—I can love him because I feel safe enough to _do_ that. What’s wrong with _that_?”

She stares at him. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with that, Neil. There’s nothing wrong with your answer. The issue isn’t that you feel safe around your husband. That’s a _good_ thing. And you’re right—safety is a basic need. You can’t do much of anything unless you feel safe, and you certainly can’t form lasting or worthwhile relationships with a person you do _not_ feel safe around. The only reason I commented on it at all is because there’s a lot of people who don’t realize that that’s at the base of many of their most important relationships, because they’re used to having that safety. Or they don’t call it _safety_ , they call it _trust_ , or _respect_. You called it _safety_. The problem there is that you think that’s an issue, not that it _is_ an issue. Do you want to talk about this now? I can toss the rest of this in the trash and we can deal with it another day.”

He stares at her.

She clicks her pen three times at top speed. “Neil, if this is urgent, we can discuss it today. If not, I’m thinking it’s gonna take several sessions to address, and my suggestion would be we finish the consultation.”

Urgent? Well, no. More _surprising_ than _urgent_. “We can finish the consultation,” he agrees.

When he walks out of her office, he goes to the desk and makes a second appointment. Is therapy _supposed_ to send him reeling? He has no idea, but it’s the first time a therapist has made him feel anything other than annoyed, so that’s something.

He gets in the car.

The hardest part, he supposes, had been figuring out his goals. With the other therapists he’d tried, he’d reeled off the basics—anxiety, paranoia. By the time they’d gotten to that point, he’d already known he wasn’t going back to them. But—when it comes down to it, his goal for therapy has been to fulfill his promise to Andrew. Now, though—that’s not _it_ , but now he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

Erika had waved it off. “I’ll write down _has issues_ and we’ll go from there.”

Neil had very nearly laughed.

Jesus. He has a _therapist._

He should tell Kevin.

He’ll tell Kevin tomorrow.

He pulls into the driveway, parks, and sticks his head on the steering wheel for a second. No more Therapy Neil; now it’s Andrew’s Birthday Neil.

Andrew is in the kitchen, making pasta dough. He holds up flour-coated hands when Neil walks in. “Five therapists is a milestone,” he says by way of hello. “Thought I’d make pasta.”

“I mean, it’s also your birthday,” Neil says.

“ _And_ another day proving you’re taking the therapy hunt seriously.”

Neil wraps himself around Andrew like a koala and kisses behind his ear. “I am,” he agrees. “And also, it’s your birthday. We’re not eating for a couple hours, though, right?”

“Yeah, but I also have a cake to bake.”

“Mm. I’ll make sauce when you’re done with the flour.”

“Okay. While you’re not doing anything, though, did you want to call the next few therapists on your list?”

Neil shoves his grin deep, deep down, and rests his chin on Andrew’s shoulder. “No, I don’t think I will.”

Andrew’s eyebrows, mouth, and nose perform a complicated dance that indicate that he is reserving judgment on this decision. “All right. Are you—are you still going to keep trying?”

Neil hums. “I don’t think so,” he says slowly, feeling Andrew take a deep breath. “Since I’m going to see Erika again next week, I don’t see much point in continuing the hunt.” Andrew freezes. Neil keeps going. “If I see her a couple more times and change my mind, I guess I’ll keep trying, but I don’t see the point right now.”

Andrew turns, nearly twisting Neil’s head off, and Neil leans back a little to give him some room. “You—you’ve made a second appointment with her?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, losing the fight against his grin.

“Not just because you didn’t feel like calling more people, right?” Andrew demands suspiciously. “Do you actually want to work with her?”

Neil nods. “I like her style. Not afraid to call me out.”

Andrew, flour-coated hands held well away from Neil, pushes up to kiss him.

Neil laughs breathlessly when Andrew pulls away a minute later. “Yes?”

“Neil, I need you to undo your pants so I can blow you,” Andrew says. “Probably shouldn’t stand against _this_ counter, you’ll get flour all over your back, but—”

Neil cackles. “This _is_ a turn-on for you, isn’t it. Me getting therapy turns you on. That’s—”

“Maybe it does,” Andrew says defensively. “It’s none of your business, though, is it. Are you going to let me blow you or not?”

“No,” Neil says, grinning. “But you can ask me again later.”

“Is this a prank?”

“Would I do that to you?”

“No, but you _could_.”

“No, it’s not a prank.” Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek.

“Oh my god,” Andrew says, tugging away to look Neil in the eye. “Is this my birthday present?”

“What?”

“Is this it? Is this the big one?”

“What?” Andrew looks _serious_. “No. No? How would I even—how could I have _planned_ this?”

“That’s why you kept leaving for long periods of time. You were doing _extra_ therapy.”

Neil takes Andrew’s face in his hands. “You are wrong.”

That gets an almost-laugh out of Andrew. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“What’s my birthday present?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“It’s literally my birthday! Today! Today is my birthday!”

Neil grins. “But I’m not giving it to you yet.”

“But—”

Andrew’s phone rings.

Andrew frowns over his shoulder at his butt. “I can’t get it, you need to.”

“Since when do you keep your phone in your back pocket?” Neil asks. “I feel like I’m groping you.”

“Less chance of getting flour on it back there.”

“That’s never mattered before. It’s Dan. And, probably, Matt.”

“Cool.”

Neil answers the phone and turns it on speaker. “Hi, Dan.”

“You’re not the birthday boy,” Dan accuses.

“He’s right here, he’s just got flour on his hands.”

“I’m here,” Andrew says. “Don’t call me birthday boy.”

“We have this argument every year and I haven’t lost it yet,” Matt says.

Andrew considers. “Matt, _you_ can call me birthday boy. _Dan_ can’t.”

Matt’s laughter is nearly drowned out by Dan’s indignation.

“Oh, birthday boy,” Dan says, silencing Matt, “did Neil give you the big present yet?”

“Oh, yeah,” Andrew says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Neil blanches. If Dan and Matt spill—“I didn’t—”

But Dan and Matt are laughing again. “Liar,” Matt accuses. “He did _not._ ”

“You wouldn’t react with _oh, yeah_ , if he’d given it to you,” Dan says, still laughing. “Did you think we’d _believe_ that?”

“If he’d— _do you know what it is_?” Andrew asks, dropping the pasta.

“Oh, yeah,” Matt says casually.

“Yeah, he told us all a few days ago,” Dan agrees, casually.

“ _Us all_?” Andrew asks, not casually, not casually at all. “Who’s _us all_?”

“Um, the two of us, Allison, Renee, Kevin, Nicky, Aaron, Riley, and Maria,” Matt reels off.

Andrew’s head swivels to look at Neil.

Neil feels like he’s about to be punished. “I needed help,” he says. A flimsy defense.

“I’m honestly torn,” Andrew says a few seconds later. “Should I be annoyed that everyone else knows what I’m getting? Or should I be proud that you asked for help?”

“I’ve asked for help before,” Neil says indignantly.

“Not often,” Matt counters. “It was a very proud moment for all of us.”

Neil flips off the phone, never mind the fact that Matt and Dan can’t see him. “Eat me. Tell Andrew he’s a birthday boy again.”

Thirty minutes later, Matt has to go back to work, and they hang up.

“Wymack, Abby, and Bee called,” Andrew says. “I called Aaron, like a good brother—”

“Is he a wreck?”

“He and Katelyn are supporting each other, which is very sweet, I guess. Nicky called, so you got out of _that_ one. Kevin called. I feel like a fucking phone operator.”

“It’s because you’re the birthday man.”

“That’s not better than birthday boy,” Andrew says.

Neil kisses his cheek and decides not to respond.

Andrew bakes. Cake. Bread. Neil makes icing.

“We’re home!” Natalie calls, pushing through the front door. “Happy birthday!”

“Happy birthday!” Paige calls, closing the door. “Oh. You’re right here.”

“We’re right here,” Andrew agrees. “Thank you.”

“We didn’t know what to get you,” Natalie says, “so we didn’t get you anything. I could give you a hug, though.”

“I’ll take a hug,” Andrew agrees.

Neil considers running out the back door. His kids walked in and _yelled_? Unconcerned about the possible reaction? Hugging Andrew? Andrew happy to be hugged?

Natalie pokes him in the shoulder, and Neil jumps. “What’s out there?”

Neil glances out the window. “Nothing. Just zoning out.”

Natalie gives him a look that informs him that he’s old, and then she hugs him, and Neil pulls himself together. What kind of person has he become? The kind of person who cries because his kids are hugging his husband?

Well, not yet, but he’s getting there.

“Sandra is picking us up in a couple hours,” Natalie says. “So we need help with our homework. When is Kevin going to start coming over again?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Andrew promises. “He probably forgot.”

“Hey, how old were you when you realized other people forgot things?” Paige asks.

“Eight.”

Neil glances at Andrew.

Andrew shrugs. “I thought it just meant that they didn’t want to do what I’d asked them to do. Oh, they _forgot_ to buy milk? _Riiiiight_. And then I realized that I didn’t know much of what had happened when I was a baby, and I spent a whole afternoon suffering from the realization that other people actually _forgot_ things.”

“Is that why you never break promises?” Paige asks. “You never forget them.”

“No, I don’t break promises because it’s all I can do, usually.”

Natalie pauses with her math book half open. “What’s that mean?”

Andrew shrugs. “I couldn’t hurt anyone, I couldn’t run away for any period of time, I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t get revenge, I couldn’t protect myself, I couldn’t—I couldn’t do anything. I was a kid. But I _could_ keep promises. Tell the truth. Other people didn’t do that. It was—they lied, and I didn’t want to do that,” he says quietly. “So I’ll keep secrets, but I won’t lie. And half of that is keeping promises. If I tell you I’m going to do something and then don’t do it, isn’t that lying?”

Paige and Natalie stare at him for a minute, and then Paige nods decisively. “It holds up.”

Natalie nods. “Pops, I didn’t understand _shit_ about what we did today.”

Neil gets comfy.

Once he’s done teaching them math, he turns it over to Andrew for English. He makes sauce to the sound of Andrew explaining the arc of short stories. Sticks water on to boil. Adds the pasta to the pot to the sounds of schoolbooks being returned to book bags.

“We haven’t heard anything about the weed, by the way,” Natalie says. “But Dave _did_ almost get detention for sticking pencils up his nose.”

Neil turns to stare at her. “Is that a detention-able offense?”

“Well, that’s what _we_ said,” Paige tells him. “He’s not hurting anyone but maybe himself. I mean, isn’t that how Egyptians mummified people? Like, removed their brains through the nose?”

“But when Paige said _that_ , Tina was like _oh, Dave’s safe, then, he’s got no brain_ ,” Natalie jumps in, making Paige laugh. Neil laughs, too. He’ll figure out who Tina is later. “And then Mr. Miller nearly gave Tina detention for _that_ , and Dave—”

“Dave was like _no, I’m not offended, it’s not bullying_ ,” Paige interrupts. “And Mr. Miller was like _but it’s not how we behave here_ which, I mean, that’s a lie, but—Dave offered to stick pencils up Tina’s nose to make up for it, but—”

“Tina was like _no, I_ have _a brain, it’ll be bad—_ ”

“Mr. Miller was _pissed_ , because what do you _do_ , refuse to let Dave have _pencils_? In _school_? Send him to detention? How do you put that on a detention slip? He gave Dave extra homework.”

“Told him it all had to be in pencil and if there was _any_ snot it would be a zero.”

“Dave promised to _wash it_ ,” Paige says, sending Natalie into hysterics.

Neil doubles down on the laughter. What else is he going to do, tell them he doesn’t think it’s that funny? Probably, if he’d been there, it would have been.

“Tina gave him three pencils at the end of class,” Natalie says, throwing her hands into the air. “ _Right in front of Mr. Miller_. Told him to put them to good use, we were _dying_.”

“If he wants more, I’m happy to supply them,” Andrew says. “Did he just get one up each nostril, or?”

“Yeah,” Paige says, sounding disappointed. “But he said all he could smell for the rest of the day was eraser, so.”

Neil nods understandingly. He doesn’t understand at all. He shoves that down. Based on his experiences as a teenager, teens can sense mockery from three miles away. “Maybe instead of pencils, we should supply him with some nasal rinse.”

“Or something better to smell,” Andrew suggests as Neil brings the pasta and bread to the table. Andrew grabs bowls as Neil gets forks; Andrew grabs the bread knife and Neil grabs the butter.

“Oh, did you get your birthday present yet?” Natalie asks, serving herself a heaping bowl of pasta. Neil watches with an amount of joy he can’t fully grasp.

“ _Yes_ ,” Andrew says. “It’s _incredible_.”

Natalie and Paige perk up. “What is it?” Paige asks. “Where is it?”

A dead, disappointed look flows over Andrew’s face. “You don’t know?” He asks quietly.

Natalie and Paige, looking vaguely distressed, glance around.

“He hasn’t gotten it yet,” Neil says. “He was trying to trick you into telling him what it is.”

“Oh,” Paige says, relaxing. “I thought it was something we were supposed to notice.”

“No, he’s just trying to squeeze it out of people.”

“I want to know!” Andrew protests. “There’s nothing wrong with curiosity.”

Neil kisses his cheek. “There isn’t,” he agrees cheerfully. “Still won’t let you find out until it’s time.”

Paige and Natalie take their time eating, regaling Neil and Andrew with tales of high school—Mrs. Tanning giving a series of lectures on sexism, the girls caught vaping in the bathroom. Andrew cuts the cake, blows out the candles with little ceremony, and the litany continues—the boys caught making out under the bleachers, someone named Stevie’s broken leg and the scooter they’re using to get around.

Paige and Natalie help clean up, and Neil glances at Andrew. “Did you want to go get changed for the beach?” Neil asks.

“I—now?” Andrew asks, glancing down at himself. “Am I not dressed appropriately? I guess it’ll be cold.”

Neil shrugs.

Andrew takes the hint, and heads upstairs.

“Did you need to talk to us about something?” Paige asks after a minute.

“Hmm? No. Why?”

“You sent Andrew upstairs.”

“ _Oh_. No, I just need to get ready without him, so I need him to be ready before me.”

“Ah,” Natalie says. “That’s weird.”

“It’s—maybe a little,” Neil agrees. “But not _very_ weird.”

“Weird,” Paige says.

The doorbell ringing makes them all jump a little.

Neil places the pot on the drying mat and leads the way to the door, checking out the window first—but it’s just Sandra and Sandy.

“Hello!” Sandra says as Neil opens the door. “Where’s—oh, there he is. Happy birthday, Andrew!”

“Thanks,” Andrew says, descending the stairs. “How are you?”

“Doing great—are you about to go out?”

“Yeah,” Neil says.

Sandra nods. “I’ll schedule a time for us to hang out. I won’t hold you.”

“Okay,” Andrew agrees, while Neil mouthes _thank you_ in her direction.

“Let’s go, kids,” Sandra says, shepherding her three charges out and down the walkway. “Have fun, adults!”

“Thank you!” Neil calls. He shuts the door and turns to Andrew. “I need the bathroom.”

“We have three in this house,” Andrew says seriously. “I can offer you any of them. Fuck, you can even _start_ in one, pause, run to another—”

Neil puts his hand on Andrew’s mouth. “Shut up. I also need our bedroom, actually.”

Andrew shrugs and pulls away from Neil’s hand. “Take your time, I’m ready.”

“You won’t come up?”

“I won’t come up.”

Neil heads upstairs. He can practically _feel_ Andrew’s curiosity following him.

He closes the door behind him.

Okay.

First thing’s first. Neil pulls the roses out of his bedside table, scatters them around the edge of the bed. He doesn’t want any in the center where they sleep—the concept of waking up in the middle of the night with a fake flower digging into his back is unappealing. He arranges a couple candles, too, and removes the lids. He can’t exactly light them yet, but—easy access.

Easy part done, Neil grabs the rings and the necklace and brings it all into the bathroom. He shuts and locks that door, too, like maybe Andrew will go back on his word and come looking for Neil.

He can’t even put the necklace on yet. He hasn’t done his makeup.

He arranges the tools.

It’s just makeup. He’s done face makeup before, and he’s practiced his eye makeup before, just like Maria taught him.

He looks himself in the eye in the mirror. “Andrew’s going to lose his mind,” he says, out loud, to no one, a sure sign that he himself is losing it, and he gets to work.

He doesn’t stab himself in the eye. He’ll have to tell Maria later.

He changes—fast, to make up for the time lost to the makeup. And then he plugs up both sinks, just in case, and slides the rings onto the chain.

They look so _nice_ together.

Neil should stick to the plan, and wear his armbands. Or maybe he should stick the chain in his pocket.

How nervous would Neil be about this if he and Andrew _weren’t_ already married? Is it possible that he’d be _more_ nervous than he currently is?

He refrains from rolling his eyes at himself. What’s Andrew going to do, divorce him for this? What the fuck is Neil scared of?

He clasps the chain around his neck and tucks it under his shirt. He’s wearing a thicker shirt than usual, and it comes up higher than usual—it’s still a _nice_ shirt, he’s fairly certain Kevin bought it for him, but it should hide the chain and the rings on it.

Neil swears he can see the rings, clear as day.

No. He can’t. He can’t, and Andrew doesn’t have laser vision.

He turns off the lights and heads downstairs.

Andrew glances up from his phone and freezes, gaze raking across Neil’s face.

Oh, yes, _there_ it is. Neil grins, and his grin gets ever more shit-eating as seconds tick by, Andrew knocked silent.

“Oh,” Andrew says, eventually.

“Happy birthday,” Neil says.

“You learned how to—shit, Neil—”

Thrown off the scent.

“Had Maria teach me,” Neil says carelessly. It’s not a _lie_. It’s just that now Andrew thinks that this is _it_ —that _this_ is what Neil needed help with.

Neil catches Andrew’s hand before Andrew can wrap it around Neil’s neck, and leans down for a kiss of his own volition. _Keep him off your neck_ , Nicky warns in the back of Neil’s head. _Wear a collar if you have to_.

Neil pulls away, and Andrew is staring at him again.

Neil didn’t need to worry about Andrew seeing the rings. Andrew has forgotten about everything below Neil’s chin. Neil could wave the rings around and Andrew wouldn’t notice.

This was _extremely_ good planning on Neil’s part. Accidental, for sure, but _very_ good.

“I—you might need to drive,” Andrew says.

“I do?”

“We’ll get in a car crash. I won’t look at the road at all.”

“Do you really want me to? I can.” Neil _can’t_. He can’t drive the whole way there with Andrew staring at him. There’s only inches between Neil’s eyes and the rings.

Andrew just stares at Neil for another couple seconds. “Do we need to go out, at all? We could stay in.”

“No, we need to go out,” Neil decides. He has a beach scene to act out. He’ll just have to be careful to keep Andrew distracted, is all.

“It’s my birthday,” Andrew says.

“Trust me?”

Andrew takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll drive.”

Oh, thank _god_. “Okay,” Neil agrees.

Andrew takes one more look at Neil, shakes his head, swallows in a way that has Neil rethinking his beach proposal, and then leads the way out the door.

Andrew keeps the music quiet, on the way there. They don’t talk, except for when Neil has to tell Andrew that a light has turned green.

Parking is nearly empty. It’s a Monday night in November, after all. Andrew gets a spot right next to one of the walkways.

Neil gets out of the car. His heart is beating faster than it ought to. They’re _already married_. This is the _least_ terrifying thing he’s ever done.

What if Andrew _laughs_?

This is possibly the only circumstance in which Neil does _not_ want Andrew to laugh. Would, in fact, be absolutely miserable if Andrew laughs.

He stretches out his hand to take Andrew’s, and another possibility strikes—Andrew might not _care_. Fuck, _Neil_ isn’t supposed to care, why should _Andrew_? What if Neil gets down on one knee, pulls out the ring, and Andrew just—accepts it and moves on? What if the same thing that had Neil sticking his head on his steering wheel and calling his whole family and friend group for help gets a shrug and a _thanks_ from Andrew?

Andrew gives Neil a look—he must be able to feel how fast Neil’s pulse is going through Neil’s fingertips, his palm. Neil just ignores it, though, and starts heading up the walkway, and Andrew follows his lead.

They crest the dune, and sure enough, there’s a streetlamp right there. Just past the lamp, they can see the beach, the whole ocean, spread out in front of them. Dark, the light from a half-moon playing along the water, the crash of the waves beckoning them forward.

Neil stops.

Andrew stops, too, and raises an eyebrow at Neil.

“What, can’t we enjoy the view for a second?” Neil asks casually.

“Of course we can,” Andrew says, but he’s not bothering to pretend to look at the ocean, so Neil doesn’t either.

“You know, it’s a good story,” Neil says. It’s nonsense. He doesn’t need to be saying this. He could say anything else, anything else at all, and it would be better, but it’s too late—he’s said it, now. “The story of how we managed to get married.”

“It is,” Andrew agrees.

“Probably, if we hadn’t done it on accident, we never would’ve gotten married at all.” Why is he saying _that_? Right before he _proposes_? There were mistakes made in his upbringing, somewhere along the road, that led directly to that line.

“Almost certainly,” Andrew agrees again. “We’re not really the type to care about paperwork. I’m sure I’d have gotten tired of waiting for hospital visiting hours eventually, but you haven’t been to the hospital in a while.”

Paperwork? Does a ring count as paperwork? “I think I’ve found a way to settle that,” Neil says. “The question of which one of us proposed.” Oh. This is smarter than he expected it to be.

Maybe he shouldn’t feel like a passenger on the ride of the words coming out of his mouth, but there it is.

“Well, it was you, but go on. Are we going to arm wrestle?”

Neil grins. The nerves are starting to resolve into something closer to excitement. “For your birthday, this is your present: You can tell people that I proposed, and I won’t argue.”

Both of Andrew’s eyebrows go up, now. “Oh? Quite the concession. I’ll take it, though, no argument here.” He can’t figure out what’s going on—he’s trying to lead Neil into just saying it.

“But.”

“Ah, there it is,” Andrew says, a little happier now that he knows Neil’s getting to the point. “What’s the _but_?”

“You have to tell them that I proposed _after_ we were already married.”

Andrew turns to face Neil head-on. “You didn’t. You proposed _before_ we got married. Indisputably—Neil?”

Neil gets down on one knee.

He understands, for a second, how Andrew felt when he realized Neil hadn’t actually proposed. What if—what _if_? But he reaches behind his neck, unclasps the chain, and pulls it out of his shirt. He slides the appropriate ring off the chain, and puts the necklace and his ring back on. This is taking too long, he knows, but he also knows he’s got Andrew’s full attention. Andrew is standing perfectly still. Silent. The hand Neil had been holding is still floating out in the air—Andrew had forgotten to take it back when Neil released it. That’s a good sign.

Neil holds onto the ring. He doesn’t drop it. He looks back up at Andrew, who is absolutely blank, staring at Neil. Neil holds up the ring so it catches the light—not that the lamp is sunlight, or even a very _good_ light, but—“Andrew Minyard, you are the light and love of my life, and you always will be. I am grateful, every day, that we got married, and I don’t really care that it was an accident, but—but maybe it’s time to rectify that. Drew, I realize that I’m several years too late, but will you marry me?”

Andrew looks at the ring.

He looks at Neil.

Seconds tick by.

Neil’s heart settles. This isn’t an apathetic response—it’s exactly the opposite. Andrew cares. He cares a _lot_.

Andrew nods—once, barely, and then twice, noticeably, and Neil reaches out and takes Andrew’s hand. Tugs his wedding ring off, slides the engagement ring on—it fits, it fits perfectly—and then replaces the wedding ring on top of it. Andrew grabs Neil’s hand when he’s done, tugs him to his feet. Still seems incapable of speech. Reaches out, pulls the chain out from under Neil’s shirt, stares at the ring. Stares at his own ring. Stares at Neil, at Neil, at Neil, and isn’t that all Neil wanted?

It was. And it is.

Neil had nothing to worry about. Andrew cares about this.

Andrew reaches around Neil and unclasps the chain. Shakes the ring off into his hand, and gestures until Neil holds out his left hand, so Andrew can perform the same switching of the rings that Neil had.

Neil exhales as Andrew pushes the rings into place. _That’s_ it. That feels—right. He rubs his pinky against the diamonds, the topaz, and—yes. He looks up at Andrew, but Andrew is staring at their hands—twisting them, just a little bit, to watch the topaz sparkle.

Neil grins.

Oh, _yes_ , this is _good_. He did a good thing, this time.

Andrew looks up at Neil and stares at him. Stares, and stares, and stares.

Neil leans in and kisses Andrew’s cheek. “Want to walk?”

Andrew nods and takes Neil’s hand—Neil feels Andrew’s fingers twitch, where they brush up against Neil’s rings. Neil can’t stop grinning. He won’t lie and say he’s only happy that Andrew’s happy. He’s happy because he likes his ring, too. But the fact that Andrew is this happy—

Andrew trips a little, stepping off the ramp and onto the sand, jerking on Neil’s hand. Catches himself, but—since when does Andrew _trip_?

Andrew glances at Neil and away and back again, and Neil understands.

“Were you staring at me so hard you forgot to watch where you were going?” Neil asks, gooey, grinning.

“ _You_ are very self-satisfied.”

“And _you_ haven’t stopped staring at me in five minutes.”

Andrew doesn’t bother answering that. When Neil looks at him, he’s staring at Neil again. If Neil started flying right now, he wouldn’t be surprised—his feet are barely touching the ground as is.

Andrew barely lasts 30 seconds before he stops, tugs Neil closer, wraps a hand around the back of Neil’s neck, and pulls him down for a kiss.

Neil does his level best to stop grinning enough to make it worthwhile.

It doesn’t work.

Andrew doesn’t seem to mind, though.

“They’re diamonds and topaz,” Neil says. “Blue topaz, for you, and brown topaz, for me. They’ll hold up to water but not to rough treatment. The diamonds are a little bigger, to help protect the topaz, and I was warned to be extremely careful with them.”

Andrew breathes in. Breathes out. Rests his forehead on Neil’s shoulder for a second. “You put—who _chose_ —”

“They’re custom-made,” Neil says.

Andrew looks away, down the beach.

“The woman who helped me design them—she asked what your favorite color was. I figured that as long as my ring was the color of your eyes, it wouldn’t be weird to give you a ring the color of _my_ eyes.”

“Oh,” Andrew says. It sounds like that’s all he can say.

“I got Aaron’s blessing. Twice, appropriately enough. The first time was kind of a joke. The second time he threatened to wreck me if I fucked this up, so if he asks, tell him I did all right.”

Andrew nods, takes a breath that hitches three times on the way up. “Aaron’s blessing,” he repeats quietly.

“To be fair, I’d have done this regardless. I already had the rings before he gave it. I just thought it was nice.”

Andrew shakes his head, takes half a step away, looks down the beach, shakes his head again. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

Neil can’t think of anything else he’s supposed to tell Andrew. Not about this, anyway.

He and Andrew stand there, Andrew staring down the beach. Andrew’s breath still isn’t even.

“Drew, I—I love you,” Neil says. It’s all he’s got. “I don’t know if this is—if this is what you expected, or wanted, or—but I just wanted you to know—I know we didn’t really make it here on purpose, I know I didn’t—I know I didn’t take the fucking initiative and ask you to choose me, I know that us being married was the world’s biggest misunderstanding, but—it wasn’t a _mistake_. I chose you, and that wasn’t an accident. You’re it, for me. And I’m staying with you until we die of old age.”

Andrew takes a deep breath. “Pikachu,” he says quietly.

Neil can feel the sand sucking his body down to hell. “What?”

“I choose you, Pikachu.”

Neil considers falling backwards and waiting for the tide to find him. “Oh.”

Andrew shakes his head, huffs, and looks up at Neil—are his eyes wet, or—? Neil doesn’t have time to think about it, though, because Andrew reaches up and tugs him down, pulling Neil into a kiss so thorough he almost forgets about Andrew reacting to his declaration of love by saying _Pikachu_.

Neil rests his forehead against Andrew’s.

“I can’t believe I said _Pikachu_ ,” Andrew whispers.

“I am happy to forget about that,” Neil whispers back. “Especially if there’s something else you wish you’d said.”

Andrew hums, releases Neil’s neck, takes his hand. Neil feels Andrew’s fingers move against his engagement ring, and takes it as a sign that Andrew likes feeling the ring on Neil’s hand.

Andrew starts walking down the beach, tugging Neil with him.

“I should have said that I love you, too. And that I’m glad I misunderstood you, the first time around. And that—there’s no one else around, right?” Andrew asks, glancing around. Neil does his part, too, searching the empty beach. “No one else is allowed to know that I have feelings, but, Neil—I—”

Neil waits. He elects to ignore the way Andrew swipes at his eyes. He’s fairly certain he’s never seen Andrew cry for a good reason.

“You’re it for me, too,” Andrew says, eventually.

Neil squeezes his hand.

They walk, and walk, and walk, until Neil’s calves are starting to burn from walking in the sand, and then they turn around by unspoken agreement.

When they make it to the car, Andrew pulls Neil in again.

By the time they separate, Neil is absolutely _thrilled_ that he’s not the one driving. He’s fairly certain he’d crash before they made it out of the parking lot, the way his brain is functioning right now.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand within seconds. Squeezes a little. Neil feels Andrew’s pinky move against the engagement ring.

Neil grins at Andrew’s profile. He did a good fucking job. He _earned_ this.

When they get home, Andrew pulls Neil in for another kiss.

“Can’t keep your hands off me, huh,” Neil says, grinning.

“More like my mouth,” Andrew says, clearly unbothered by Neil’s teasing. “And no, I can’t.”

“Gonna leave you here, though,” Neil says, getting out of the car.

“Why?” Andrew asks, following Neil up the walkway.

“You need to lock up. I’ll meet you upstairs.”

“When was the last time we locked up _separately_?” Andrew calls, but Neil is already halfway up the stairs.

He moves fast. It won’t take Andrew long to double check the back door.

He lights the first candle, and then turns off the bedroom lights—the candle isn’t particularly bright, but it’s bright enough that he can light the rest of the candles by its light. Can adjust the position of the candles for optimal lighting.

Andrew appears in the doorway and stops dead as Neil lights the last candle.

It’s very possible that this was too much.

Andrew looks down at his ring, and then steps forward. Neil meets him in the middle. Takes his hand. Andrew looks overwhelmed again.

“I had plans for today, you know,” Andrew muses, staring at the rose-strewn bed.

“Oh?” Neil asks, taken aback. “Did I—get in the way of them?”

“You didn’t. _I_ did. I wanted you to fuck me.”

Neil keeps his eyebrows down and his confused blinking to a minimum. He stops just short of blinking for help in morse code. “Oh?”

“And then I couldn’t even handle a blowjob. I don’t really know what I expected.”

“Why does one negate the other?” Neil asks.

“What? Oh. Because anal penetration is more intense than a blowjob.”

“But—is it something you want?”

“I won’t be able to handle it.”

Neil rubs his thumb against Andrew’s. “Is that something you’re saying because you _think_ it’s true, or because it _is_ true?”

Andrew takes a breath like he’s about to respond, but he lets it back out unused.

Neil waits.

“Would you even tell me no?” He asks abruptly. “If you didn’t want to do something?”

“Have you ever known me to agree to something I didn’t want to do?”

“We are standing _right_ in front of the bed you didn’t want—”

“Untrue,” Neil says. “I thought it was ridiculous, and I still do. But it’s not that I _don’t_ want it. It’s just that you cared, and I didn’t, so you got to pick. I was not and am not opposed to the bed. Drew, I don’t say yes to things I don’t want to do, and sure as fuck I wouldn’t agree to sex I didn’t want to have. And honestly, I’m up for whatever. If you wanna shove me against a wall and finger me until I come, that sounds good to me. And if you want to flip that, I’m down to try that, too.”

Andrew puts a hand over his face. He’s—red? Is he _blushing_? Neil tries his level best to hide a grin. He’s not particularly successful.

“You can’t just _say_ things,” Andrew mutters. “You can’t just—you _know_ what you’re saying, you _know_ what you’re doing, it’s just—it’s _rude_.”

“Have I _always_ had this power?” Neil asks. “It feels very recent.”

“It’s _not_ ,” Andrew says, a little louder, perhaps, than called for. “I just used to be much better at not letting you _know_ about it.”

“I think I _like_ knowing about it.”

“I’m fucking sure you do.”

Neil squeezes his hand. He knows full well he’s got the world’s most shit-eating grin on his face, but Andrew is only blushing harder, which looks very nice by candlelight. “You’re not even drunk.”

“Don’t have to be, you just _say_ shit. Just—fucking—fuck. Finger me?”

“Wait, really?”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

“No, this isn’t me saying no—it’s a yes from me—is it a yes from _you_?”

“Yeah. We should get gloves, using condoms as gloves is uncomfortable.”

“I’m sure I’ll live,” Neil says, watching Andrew. “How do you want to do this? Do you need a minute? Do you want to talk about this real quick?”

Andrew shrugs. “Put your fingers in a condom, lube it up—”

“I got that part,” Neil agrees.

“—and I figure you’ll listen to whatever I say after that, anyway, so, fuck it, fuck me.”

“Are you sure?”

Andrew offers Neil a raised eyebrow. “We didn’t exactly have a lengthy discussion before I stuck my fingers up _your_ ass.”

“See, that’s the kind of thing you say when you’re nervous.”

“I _am_ nervous, that doesn’t mean my dick isn’t hard.”

“Which doesn’t mean you’re not nervous.”

“I know that better than you do, trust me.”

“Oh, wait, is _this_ what’s been bothering you all day?” It all falls into place for Neil—the general rudeness, the Shakespeare. “You’ve been building up your own expectations for today, and now you’ve spent the past 12 hours putting pressure on yourself.”

Andrew flicks Neil. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“ _Saying_ things.”

“No, I’m going to keep saying things, and the things that I’m going to say are: If this is some weird thing where you’re trying to prove to yourself that you’re capable of doing this, I don’t really want any part in it.”

“Do you _not_ want to do this?”

“There’s two questions here. One: Do _I_ want to do this? Yes. Two: Do _you_ want to do this? I don’t know. Stop answering the second question by asking the first.”

Andrew looks around. The tension in his shoulders is visible. “I don’t want to hurt you, while I’m trying to decide what I like. What I want. I don’t want to— _use_ you to figure out if my boundaries have moved. Or where they are, now.”

“I’m volunteering,” Neil says. “If you don’t want me to _be_ here, if you want to do that on your own, let me know, but I am very much volunteering for use.”

Andrew considers that for a couple seconds, and then relaxes. “Then yes, I want you to finger me. For now.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

“You will tell me if you don’t want to participate.”

“I will.”

Neil waits.

Andrew shrugs. He lets go of Neil’s hand, pulls his own shirt off, and then tugs at Neil’s until Neil removes his shirt.

Andrew places his palm on Neil’s stomach, a move Neil is more aware of than he ought to be. It shouldn’t make Neil’s breath slip out of his grasp like that. “You know, I know every inch of your skin that I’ve touched?” Andrew’s hand slides upwards. “And every single place I’ve kissed? Still haven’t touched everywhere, but I’m getting closer.”

Neil leans in to kiss his forehead. “Better keep working on that. Skin cells die, you know, I probably have new skin you haven’t touched.”

“Don’t talk dirty to me about skin cells dying.”

“Too late. What’s dirtier than dust?”

“I don’t know. Come here, we have setting up to do.”

Neil obediently follows him to the bathroom for a towel, the bathroom lighting standing in harsh contrast to the candlelit bedroom, and then back to the bed.

“We have been married for _years_ ,” Andrew mutters. “This shouldn’t be _awkward_.”

Neil shrugs. He takes the towel from Andrew and spreads it over the bed and grabs the lube and condoms from the bedside table. He strips down, and glances to his left to find Andrew staring. “Trying to make it less awkward.”

Andrew looks up at Neil’s face for a moment, and then closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You are fucking _unbelievable_.”

“In a good way?”

“You know, it’s very possible that you’re _still_ a hallucination.”

Neil considers that.

Neil doesn’t understand sexual attraction. This is a fact, and he’s fine with that. He _does_ understand libido, though, and has spent _years_ studying Andrew’s libido, specifically. And while he’s generally content to let Andrew take the lead, happy to be pushed up a wall and kissed until he loses track of every thought he’s ever had, he _does_ know how to destroy Andrew, too.

He steps closer to Andrew as Andrew opens his eyes. Slides a hand up Andrew’s throat until he can tilt Andrew’s chin up, and grins—Andrew’s lips are already parted, his pupils already blown wide, and Neil has done nothing, nothing at all. He moves in for a kiss and stops, half an inch away, waiting—Andrew’s eyes flick back up to Neil’s, searching for him, and Neil closes the distance, licking into Andrew’s mouth.

10 years of kissing this man have not passed without Neil learning _anything_. And he’s not an idiot. He keeps his hand on Andrew’s neck, thumb stroking a line up and down the front of Andrew’s throat, and when one of Andrew’s hands finds Neil’s hip, Neil covers it with his free hand, his ringed hand, tugging, pulling, until Andrew slides his hand around to rest on top of Neil’s ass, until Andrew breaks away, hands practically shaking as he strips down.

“Neil,” he says, voice deep and rough, sending Neil reeling, “I want—I want—”

Neil reaches out and takes his hand, tugging him onto the bed. “How?”

Andrew blinks at Neil, like this is an impossible question to answer—Neil recognizes the particular brain deadness that comes with being unbearably turned on, desperate, and Neil takes a deep breath and stops thinking about that. He’s in charge, right now. He can’t let himself be destroyed by Andrew’s destruction. He has to be _here_. He pulls out a condom. “Do you want to be on top?”

“On—no, I don’t—your arm would get tired,” Andrew says, words a jumbled mess.

“My arm will be fine. Do you want to be on top?” Neil repeats.

Andrew shakes his head, reaches for Neil’s face, pulls him in for a kiss. Neil hopes it’s a reminder, too—he’s here with _Neil_ , just Neil, no one else, _now_. Neil hears Andrew take a deep breath when he pulls away, and Neil opens his eyes, and Andrew looks at him, and all the air in Andrew’s lungs rushes out of him. “Your _eyes_ ,” Andrew says, half a groan, “I can’t— _Neil_.”

Neil has no idea what that means, is barely holding himself together at all. “Are you still—are you still good?”

“Good? I’m—” Andrew almost laughs. “Yes, Neil, I’m—fuck—come here—”

Neil scoots as instructed until he’s between Andrew’s legs.

He inhales. Glances at Andrew’s thighs, skin soft, warm.

He exhales. Closes his eyes.

He’s between Andrew’s _legs_.

“Neil? Are you—are you okay?”

Neil opens his eyes, locates Andrew’s face, watches Andrew catch his breath. “Trying not to come immediately,” Neil says.

Andrew’s eyes are so dark Neil can practically see his reflection in them.“Oh,” he says.

Neil drags his fingernails lightly up the insides of Andrew’s thighs, watches goosebumps form, listens to the way Andrew’s breath hisses out. Strokes his fingers up Andrew’s cock. Glances up at Andrew, but Andrew doesn’t look distressed—he looks like an absolute mess, flushed, chest heaving, eyes blown wide—

“You have _got_ to stop looking at me,” Andrew says, breathless. “Every time you do, I lose my whole goddamn mind—”

“All it takes is a little eyeshadow, huh,” Neil says, but he can’t imagine it sounds teasing, not when he’s just as breathless as Andrew, just as wrecked.

“Doesn’t even take that,” Andrew murmurs.

Neil takes a deep breath.

He’s going to lose his mind.

He rips open the condom, flips open the lube, watches as Andrew reaches over his head and grabs a pillow. Offers Andrew a curious look.

“If you’re going to be reaching down, it’ll be easier,” Andrew says by way of explanation, before lifting his hips to slide the pillow under his butt.

That’s almost the end, for Neil.

“I’m going to be reaching down?” He asks, by way of distracting himself. He sounds like he’s being strangled.

“If I can’t kiss you, this is off.”

Neil rearranges his mental picture of how this is going to work, which serves the dual purpose of calming him down a little. “Ah,” he says.

The experience of putting a condom on his hand would be the world’s best mood-killer if it weren’t for the fact that everywhere he looks is Andrew, Andrew’s skin, Andrew’s body, Andrew—he extends a finger and the condom stretches, that’s fine, he grins—

Andrew makes a curious noise.

“First time I’m wearing a condom and it’s on my hand,” Neil says, lubing it up.

Andrew rolls his eyes. Shuts them. Runs a hand through his hair. Does he have any idea—Neil can’t handle this, can’t live like this, can’t comprehend the fact that he’s _here_ —the luckiest human being in the world—

He takes a deep breath. Presses a kiss to the inside of Andrew’s knee, and smiles a little when he hears Andrew’s breath stop. Runs his condom-clad finger up the underside of Andrew’s cock, just to watch it twitch in response.

Andrew still has his eyes closed.

Neil isn’t sure if that’s a good sign or not.

He wants Andrew to know exactly what’s happening, and who’s doing it.

“Drew,” he says quietly.

Andrew opens his eyes and looks at Neil.

Neil pulls his finger down Andrew’s dick, down, down, watches Andrew’s eyes roll back, feels Andrew’s thighs tense, circles Andrew’s hole, and it’s too much, Andrew reaches for Neil and pulls Neil to hover over him, drags Neil down for a kiss.

Neil is immediately grateful for the pillow putting Andrew’s ass at the right height, and immediately distressed by the fact that he can no longer see what he’s doing.

Although, actually, he probably doesn’t have to, does he.

He presses, gently, feels Andrew’s breath flutter across his chin, feels Andrew relax, and pushes forward.

Jesus.

Neil’s brain is liquid, his dick is rock solid. “Are you ok?” He asks.

Andrew nods, one arm wrapped around Neil’s shoulders—Neil can feel Andrew’s rings against his shoulder—the other hand on Neil’s hip. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good, I’m good,” he says after a moment. “Keep going.”

Neil pushes in a little farther, pace excruciatingly slow, watching Andrew’s eyelids flutter shut. He leans in the half-inch it takes to nip at Andrew’s bottom lip, and Andrew manages half a kiss before losing track of Neil’s lips.

And then Neil’s middle finger is buried inside Andrew as far as it’ll go.

“Drew?”

Andrew blinks his eyes open and looks at Neil.

Neil stops breathing for a minute.

“You can move it,” Andrew whispers.

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek, his nose, his temple. And then Neil begins moving his finger. His thumb is a little constrained by the condom, but it’s stretchy, and he’s fairly certain it doesn’t matter too much if the top of the condom breaks anyway, so he pushes his thumb out to rub the rim every time his hand bottoms out.

Andrew tugs on Neil’s hair, and Neil freezes, waiting for orders. This, actually, is kind of a problem—he can’t exactly whirl away when he’s got one finger inside Andrew, he’ll have to pull it out, and he’s reasonably certain that doing _that_ at top speed wouldn’t be—“you can add a second finger,” Andrew says.

Oh.

Neil dips to mouth at Andrew’s jawline, extends a second finger, and presses forward. Andrew’s head tips back, and Neil takes his exposed throat as an invitation—Andrew swallows, hard, and Neil decides he was right.

Andrew picks his head back up, moves to kiss Neil.

It’s not a great one, Neil assumes—he’s distracted. He doesn’t want to _dig_ , that would probably be weird, but—where—experimentally, Neil curls his fingers.

Andrew’s head snaps up, but Neil is fairly certain that wasn’t it. He rearranges, tries again, and—

Oh.

_Oh._

Oh, _Neil_ made Andrew make that noise. _Neil_ made Andrew’s body jump like that, tense like that, squeeze Neil’s fingers like that.

“I could watch you like that forever,” Neil murmurs in Andrew’s ear. “Holy _shit_ , Drew, I would love—I want—” Neil’s dick grazes Andrew’s, and Neil loses track of what he was saying. He can only focus on so much, on slowly pulling his fingers out, pressing back in, moving his thumb, curling his fingers, on the way his dick is almost accidentally touching Andrew’s, on Andrew’s _hand_ —

Neil and Andrew make almost the same exact sound as Andrew wraps his hand around both of their dicks, which, in the back of Neil’s mind, feels unfair—Andrew knew he was going to do that, and Neil did not, which feels like an issue for a full quarter-second until Neil syncs his finger movements with his hip movements and Andrew _moans,_ all of his muscles squeezing, and Neil forgets everything else. Andrew actually pauses for a second, looking surprised at himself, but he doesn’t say to stop, and he doesn’t take his hand away, and he doesn’t look stressed, or tense, or—he says _Neil_ and _god_ in the same tone, and Neil knows it’s okay, keeps going. Neil is saying words, he knows he is, and he hopes that they’re the right ones, and he can’t tell if Andrew is even listening, but Andrew will remember, Neil knows full well he will, and he hopes—Andrew kisses Neil, and Neil shuts up, and when Andrew stops to breathe, Neil sets his teeth against Andrew’s neck, and, jerking like he’s surprised, Andrew’s legs squeeze around Neil’s hips, his head tilts back, and he comes, his ass squeezing Neil’s fingers and his hand squeezing Neil’s dick and—and that’s all Neil can handle, too.

Neil rests his lips on Andrew’s shoulder for a second, until his vision swims back into focus. He can feel Andrew twitching, and he gathers whatever brainpower he’s got left—how did Andrew get his fingers out of Neil’s ass, at what point? Neil pulls out when Andrew relaxes a bit, rolls the condom down and ties it inside out. He focuses on where he’s fairly certain the garbage can is and tosses it in—a wet slap lets Neil know he was right, and he forgets about it immediately, turning back to Andrew, who is an absolute mess, which Neil can only imagine Andrew hates. “Drew? Drew, are you—are you okay?”

Andrew blinks up at him. “I need a towel.”

Neil nods, kisses the back of Andrew’s hand, and heads to the bathroom at a speed just short of running. He dampens a wash cloth, grabs a dry one, and returns to Andrew, who looks almost frozen in place. “Do you want to do it? I can,” Neil offers.

Andrew’s jaw twitches, and he waves a hand at Neil, turns his face away.

Neil works quick—this, at least, he’s no stranger to, since usually it’s _his_ stomach that’s covered in come. He wipes Andrew down. Dries him off. Has no idea what to do next. Andrew isn’t talking, and it’s not the same type of silence as when Neil proposed—it’s different, tenser.

Was there any point in there when Andrew had wanted to stop? Had Neil missed it? He reviews it—Andrew’s flushed face, his hooded eyes, _yesses_ and requests for _more_ and _faster_ that Neil barely remembers fulfilling. “Drew?”

Andrew puts his hand on his stomach, just for a second—his hand bounces back up, and Andrew turns a surprised look on it. The rings. Andrew isn’t used to the engagement ring.

Andrew pulls the pillow out from under him, pulls the blanket up over himself, and then he reaches out and grabs Neil’s wrist. “Get in here?”

Neil can make fun of him for phrasing that as a question some other time. Right now, though, he turns and slides under the blankets with Andrew. Andrew takes Neil’s hand, plays with his fingers.

Neil awaits the verdict.

Andrew scoots a little closer. That’s a good sign, if ever there was one.

“I liked it,” Andrew whispers, eventually.

Neil smiles at him. “I’m glad.”

“Didn’t think about the ending, though.”

“Maybe two towels. One to cover your stomach.”

“I think, next time,” Andrew says, slowly, “I’ll be more prepared.”

“Next time?” Neil asks.

Andrew nods. “I liked it,” he says again. “Did you?”

“Yes,” Neil says.

Andrew sighs, and Neil watches him shrink as his muscles relax. “I guess you have to get up again,” he says. “To put out the candles.”

“And wipe off my makeup,” Neil agrees. “But not yet.”

Andrew takes a deep breath and traces one of the lines on Neil’s palm. “Good.”

Neil gives him a minute, watching as his face smooths out. “So how was your birthday?”

Andrew looks Neil in the eye. “I will expect you to beat this next year.”

Neil laughs. “ _Noooooo,”_ he cries. “I _knew_ I was shooting myself in the foot with this.”

“I will expect _plot development_. Overcoming a major issue in therapy. Experimentation with makeup and-or crop tops. A—a—”

“What, you want another wedding ring?” Neil asks, grinning.

“These were cheap, you know,” Andrew says staunchly.

“Tell that to the guy who bought them. _I_ like them, anyway. _You_ can get new ones if you want them. I’ll just keep both.”

“Stack them up.”

“Get a whole finger-full.”

“Ribbed for my pleasure,” Andrew says, deadpan, and Neil loses it, relieved—Andrew’s okay. _Better_ than okay—he’s making jokes. Neil kisses the back of Andrew’s hand. Andrew scoots a little closer and leans in to kiss Neil.

“Maybe I’ll just sleep naked,” Andrew murmurs. “Too lazy to get up. You’ve created a monster, love, now I _know_ I can do whatever I want.”

Neil grins, kisses Andrew’s nose. “You are, all by yourself, beauty _and_ the beast.”

“Gaston _wishes_ he has what I have.”

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“Isn’t that the point? He’s beautiful, and he’s a beast.”

Neil stares at Andrew. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I did, but— _what_?”

“I mean, by the end of the movie, if you’re looking at Belle and Adam, there’s no beast anymore, they’re both beautiful and non-beastly. But Gaston is _both_. Isn’t the movie as much about him as it is about Belle and Adam? About how looks can get you places, but they can’t prevent the world from seeing your beastliness?”

Neil stares at Andrew.

Andrew stares right back.

“Have you told Nicky this?”

“No.”

“Do that, at Christmas. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Andrew says.

“Thank you.”

“You should go put out the candles and everything,” Andrew says. “I want to go to sleep. _Do_ you want to put on pajamas? We can.”

“I will,” Neil agrees, kissing Andrew’s cheek one last time. He can’t help it. He just wants to kiss Andrew all the time. “But no, we can sleep naked. I don’t really care. No kids at home.”

“What if they mafia comes in?” Andrew asks, sitting up as he watches Neil put out the candles.

“That’s my line, not yours. But if they’re coming in at night on your birthday, it’s their own problem, I don’t really know what they expect.”

“Fair enough,” Andrew agrees.

Neil leaves the bathroom door open as he takes his makeup off.

Andrew’s watching him.

Neil knows this.

Neil does not care.

And then he joins Andrew in bed again, and Andrew curls up against his side.

Andrew falls asleep before Neil—as it should be. Neil doesn’t want to fall asleep _before_ Andrew decides if he’s comfortable enough to sleep. Neil closes his eyes.

He’s fairly certain that it’s not his imagination that Andrew stirs, whispers _I love you_ , and goes back to sleep before Neil slips away, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case this ignites a pepsi vs. coke debate i want it on record that i literally don't drink soda at all and coke was not my choice it was andrew's


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reactions to the proposal!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: there’s porn in the beginning, sorry to anyone who read this before i added the warning, i posted this with 0 thoughts in my head 
> 
> ok i know this chapter is even later than usual but consider: it is still sunday for me and also I was watching the iconic polyamorous christmas film known as Klaus, which my mom kinda turned on and i was like, ah, yes, the movie I've been thinking about for three weeks. i'll finish this fic later. and the main consequence is that I didn't really edit this so if you see something feel free to say something 
> 
> additionally, in case anyone didn't see it, on wednesday I saw something on tumblr like "soulmate au where your soulmate knows when you laugh" and my brain said "andreil?" and then i went temporarily insane and now [this exists](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28115676) so anyway

“Get up,” Andrew says.

Neil gets up.

It’s morning? It’s morning. Neil sees the sunlight on the wall; it’s morning. He’s standing up. That’s also true.

He looks around.

Andrew is still in bed?

“Why am I standing up?” Neil asks.

Andrew buries his face in the pillow, pounding his fist into the sheets. “I did _not_ know you would actually get up,” he says a minute later, face shining. “I just meant to wake you up, I didn’t think—”

Neil stands there. His shoulders are shaking with laughter—this is funny, he’s pretty sure, but he’s not really sure why. “Why am I standing up?”

“I said get up and you did it,” Andrew says. He’s still in bed, staring cheerfully up at Neil. Neil is still standing up.

“Why did you tell me to get up?”

Andrew shrugs. “I’m awake and we have stuff to do.”

“We do?”

“We do,” Andrew confirms.

Neil waits.

He blinks at Andrew.

“So are you going to get up, or just me?”

“No, I’ll get up too,” Andrew says. “I’m just enjoying the view.”

Neil glances down at himself.

He’s naked.

Right. Right. Under the blankets, so is Andrew.

Andrew raises his eyebrows. “Did you just get hard looking at _yourself_?”

“No,” Neil says defensively. “Remembered that you’re naked, too.”

Andrew stares at him.

Neil shrugs. He’s up, he may as well brush his teeth. He can’t think much farther than that. He stretches, turns, heads for the bathroom.

“Where are you going?” Andrew asks.

“Brush my teeth. You said get up, I’m getting up.”

“Yeah, you are, and so am I, come back here, we’ve got mints.”

Neil runs through that a couple times. His brain feels like mud. He’s fairly certain he was mid-dream. Possibly there was a forest involved? Was he in a forest? He can’t remember. “If you’re getting up, why am I coming back to bed?”

Andrew stares at him.

Neil gets the feeling he’s missed something. “Drew, I just woke up, my brain isn’t functioning.”

“It was an innuendo,” Andrew says slowly. “Maybe I _am_ a morosexual. Neil, I would like to have sex. With you, if possible, to be specific.”

Oh.

Neil considers this.

It takes him a second, but—

“I’ll overlook the fact that you called me stupid if you get the mints,” Neil agrees, climbing back into bed. They’d barely disturbed the roses, last night, and he has to climb over them. There’s one that’s out of place—he must have rolled over it on his way out of bed two minutes ago.

They really _don’t_ move while they sleep. By all rights they should just own a twin-sized bed.

Although, that said, the size of their bed means Neil has to crawl towards Andrew, who sits there for a second, blatantly staring at Neil, eyes growing darker, before he remembers his job was to get the mints and he rolls away.

Andrew starts moving the second they’ve both got mints in their mouths, pressing Neil onto his back, kissing down Neil’s neck, across his shoulder, and if there was ever anything that was going to get Neil’s brain moving, it’s Andrew’s hands pushing him into the mattress.

“What was it you said last night?” Neil asks, tangling his hands in Andrew’s hair. “About how much of me you’ve kissed?” Neil can feel the ghost of Andrew’s lips, Andrew’s fingers, over his whole body. And Andrew _remembers_. Remembers everything. Andrew’s fingertips slide over Neil’s ribs, a familiar landscape for them, and Neil is—lightheaded. It’s not that Neil _forgets_ —he’s just sometimes confronted by the _magnitude_ of Andrew’s love for him. And by the fact that, just as Neil uses Andrew’s memory to make sure Andrew knows how much Neil loves him, Andrew uses his own memory to love Neil—remembering exactly where and how Neil likes to be touched, kissed. Not even sexually, necessarily. Andrew knows how much it means to Neil, to be touched without threat of violence, without hatred, with _love_ , and he does it often, and the best Neil can do is slide his fingers over Andrew’s scalp, showing something like gratitude for that.

“Haven’t kissed your armpits yet,” Andrew says.

Neil automatically clenches his arms against his sides. “No need, actually.”

“I said I wanted to cover your whole body,” Andrew says, tugging at Neil’s arms.

Neil puts his hands on Andrew’s face and pulls him up for a kiss. He may have given Andrew control, but he’s happy to use every dirty trick up his sleeve to drive Andrew senseless, because if Andrew starts kissing Neil’s armpit—Neil’s fairly certain that that’s an imprisonable offense.

After a minute, Andrew loses it, settles down on top of Neil.

Full-body skin contact.

Neil’s brain shorts out.

He groans into Andrew’s mouth, drawing an answering noise out of Andrew—keeps his hands on Andrew’s face, doesn’t let them roam, he knows that, he knows that, but Andrew’s mouth is a free-to-touch zone and Neil licks into it, nips at Andrew’s bottom lip, slides his tongue along Andrew’s until Andrew moves away, stretching for the lube on the bedside table, giving Neil a view of his body that leaves Neil breathless. He closes his eyes for half a second, trying to get ahold of himself, trying to count to ten, but he doesn’t even make it to two before his eyes are open again. “How do you want—what do you—”

Andrew reaches over Neil’s head—he _must_ know what he’s doing, _must_ know how hard he’s making it for Neil to _not_ reach out—

“Can I touch you?” Neil asks. “Where?”

Andrew pulls back, not holding a pillow yet, and dips down to kiss Neil’s nose. “Wherever.” Oh, he’s breathing just as hard as Neil is, Neil doesn’t know why this is a surprise to him but—“Go at it,” Andrew says, and then he stretches up to get a pillow again and Neil slides his hands down Andrew’s chest, down his stomach, over his stretch marks, landing on his hips, and then Andrew returns with a pillow and pulls out of reach of Neil’s hands, settling between Neil’s legs, and Neil understands why it took Andrew longer than half a second to grab a pillow—it’s the same one Andrew used, last night. Neil lifts his hips, hears Andrew punch a breath out of his lungs, and then Andrew slides the pillow under his hips, the cold, soft fabric dragging along Neil’s sensitive skin, Andrew’s eyes dragging heavy and hot over Neil’s body, following the goosebumps spreading up his stomach, watching Neil shiver. Andrew rubs his thumb along Neil’s hipbone, and Neil reaches down and puts his hand over Andrew’s, feels Andrew’s rings under his palm, against the skin by his hip, watches Andrew’s face flush as his head dips down so he can press the flat of his tongue against the base of Neil’s dick. Neil takes a deep breath, stares at the ceiling as Andrew works his way up, as Andrew pulls the head of Neil’s dick into his mouth. Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand, shudders as Andrew’s tongue works him over, feeling so _good—_

But that’s not what Andrew wants to do, apparently, pulling his mouth and hand away, kissing Neil’s hip. Andrew sits up, and Neil watches him uncap the lube.

Neil expects the lube to go on Andrew’s finger—although, to be fair, Andrew isn’t wearing a condom on his hand—they really need to get gloves—but instead, Andrew pours it into his hand, rubs it around to warm it up, and slides it up Neil’s dick, sending sparks through Neil’s veins, and then Andrew moves up, settling between Neil’s legs, letting Neil wrap his arms around Andrew’s shoulders and sigh as he feels Andrew’s dick slide against his, Andrew’s fingers holding them together.

Neil pulls Andrew in for a kiss, pulling Andrew’s tongue into his mouth as Andrew’s hips push forward, and then lends his right hand to the effort, fingertips against Andrew’s wrist, his own hips stuttering to a start, finding a rhythm with Andrew, dragging half a groan out of Andrew, music to Neil’s ears. Neil could live like this forever—warm, Andrew’s weight and heat pressing him into the bed, their hands working together, hips working, Neil’s ankle hooked over Andrew’s leg, Andrew’s little sighs and aborted moans audible under Neil’s. Neil tells Andrew this, tells him how nice it is, leaves out the way Neil’s heart feels like it might explode—the closeness, the kindness, the gentleness, the kisses, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew—calls Andrew’s name as he comes, toes curling, pressing his forehead to Andrew’s shoulder, shuddering as a whine works its way out of Andrew’s throat, moving his hand as Andrew falls apart under his fingers.

Andrew holds himself up, apparently incapable of moving.

That’s fair.

Neil reaches out—it’s gotta be around—and finds the towel they’d used last night. Uses it to wipe himself off. It’s not ideal, but once he’s reasonably clean, Andrew wipes his lube-covered hand on the towel, pulls it out of the way, and lets himself collapse on top of Neil, wrapping his arms around Neil’s head, letting Neil use his arms as a pillow.

Neil kisses the shell of Andrew’s ear, which is conveniently right next to his face, and then pulls the pillow out from under his butt, letting his hips settle down into the bed, hissing when the movement drags Andrew’s skin over Neil’s over-sensitive cock. Andrew makes a noise, presumably for similar reasons, and nips at Neil’s shoulder.

“Fuck refractory periods,” Andrew mutters.

Neil snorts and wraps his arms around Andrew’s shoulders.

He’s comfortable, here. Underneath a living, breathing weighted blanket. Safe. Loved, Andrew’s love so tangible it’s practically a blanket in its own right. The amount of skin contact he’s getting right now would’ve destroyed his brain at the age of 19; the only reason it’s not entirely overwhelming, right now, is because of years spent working up to this, and even then—and if _he’s_ feeling this much, he can only imagine that Andrew is feeling _more_. But—but here Andrew is, breathing, deep and calm, wrapped around Neil just as Neil is wrapped around him, and Neil is—peaceful.

Neil presses his face into Andrew’s neck, closes his eyes, breathes in deep. Andrew’s a little sweaty. That’s fine; Neil is too. It’s not like Neil hasn’t kissed Andrew in way grosser situations.

Andrew moves again a few minutes later, picking his head up to hunt down Neil’s mouth. Neil makes it nice and easy. Puts his face right there.

Andrew shows his appreciation.

“I like seeing you like this,” Andrew murmurs, one hand in Neil’s hair. “You should start experiencing the concept of bliss at other times, too.”

“I was thinking more _peaceful_ ,” Neil suggests.

“That, too. You should start feeling peaceful at other times.”

“I’ll tell Erika that that’s what I want to work on. The concepts of bliss and peace.”

“That’s a good idea,” Andrew tells Neil’s lips. Their noses brush.

Andrew sighs, glances at the clock. “I shouldn’t have made plans until we were up,” he complains. “Now we have to get _up_.”

Neil waits, but further detail doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. Nor does Andrew seem to intend to get up. “Could cancel,” he suggests.

Andrew makes a face. “No, I want to go.”

Neil waits.

Andrew says nothing, and doesn’t move.

Neil waits.

Andrew is still staring at the clock. He’s lying on top of a naked Neil and staring at the clock. Neil tugs on his hair, and Andrew looks back at Neil, and, wordlessly, without laughing, conveys the fact that he is both intensely aware of Neil and, also, incidentally, laughing at him for this.

Neil examines his husband’s face. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I love you.”

Andrew kisses Neil’s nose. “I love you, too.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I appreciate you.”

Andrew’s laughing at him, but kisses Neil’s cheekbone nonetheless, lips soft, gentle, knowing exactly where Neil’s scar is, exactly how much Neil trusts him, allowing him to put his mouth there. “I appreciate you, too.”

“Andrew, will you stay with me until I die of old age?”

“Yes. Yes, Neil, the answer is yes.”

Neil feels warm, feels—like—he can’t comprehend feeling _more_. He can feel Andrew’s rings, pressed against his scalp, and drags his fingers through Andrew’s hair, wanting— _wanting_. “And how are you doing, this morning?”

“I’m doing great,” Andrew says, kissing Neil’s temple. “And how are you doing, this morning?”

“I’m doing great,” Neil agrees. He gives up and finds Andrew’s mouth—it’s all he can think to do, right now, all he can do to handle—however it is he feels.

Somewhere in there, Neil’s hips move, and that’s how he discovers that he and Andrew are both up for a second round.

It’s messy, poorly done—they’re too lazy to set up properly, and it’s just a mess of lube and hands and hips, but—Neil can’t stop laughing, what are they, teenagers?—it works, anyway, and then they really do have to get up, but at least Neil doesn’t have all that excess energy sitting around to turn into feelings he can’t handle. Like love for his husband, which probably shouldn’t overwhelm him, but hey.

Neil watches Andrew get dressed, and not just to catch the last glimpses of his stomach before the shirt slides over it: Andrew’s clothes can be a clue to where they’re going, and Neil is starting to get curious, now he’s out from underneath Andrew.

Neil has no idea where they’re going.

Armbands, plus knives—although that doesn’t mean much. These days, Andrew wears his knives even downstairs, as a matter of course. In Neil, Andrew would call that paranoia, but Neil isn’t going to argue with the move. But Andrew is also wearing a long-sleeved shirt—long enough to cover his hands, if need be.

It’s possible that the clothes aren’t a reaction to where they’re going, but a reaction to hours on end spent naked. A pushback against the feeling of exposure.

“So where are we going?” Neil asks, following Andrew downstairs.

Andrew doesn’t respond, reaching for the cereal.

Neil wants waffles.

This weekend he’ll make waffles. Or maybe they’ll have waffles for dinner. He checks the freezer—they’ve got ice cream, so Andrew can put ice cream on his. Andrew gives Neil a raised eyebrow. “Waffles,” Neil says by way of explanation, to which Andrew nods.

They settle down at the table. Neil is _starving_.

“We’re going to Aaron’s,” Andrew says. Casually. Like Neil isn’t currently choking on Special K.

Once Neil coughs up his cereal, he pulls out his phone. Turns it on. Shows it to Andrew.

Andrew raises both eyebrows.

“It is a _Tuesday_ ,” Neil says.

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees. “On Tuesdays, Aaron doesn’t go in until noon, so if we leave soon we’ll catch him with a solid half-hour to go.”

Neil awaits the punchline.

Andrew keeps eating his breakfast.

“Does—does he know?” Neil asks carefully.

“Yeah, I texted him before you woke up. I warned him you weren’t up yet.”

Neil eats his breakfast.

“So where are we _actually_ going?” he asks as he puts his bowl in the dishwasher.

Andrew picks tupperware out of the cabinet and goes for the cake. “To Aaron’s.”

“But _really,_ though,” Neil pushes.

Andrew cuts a slice of cake big enough to feed two people and stuffs it into the tupperware, and then he gestures to Neil to put his shoes on.

Neil puts his shoes on.

Neil follows Andrew to the car.

Neil sits in the car as Andrew follows a route they’ve followed maybe twice before. He rubs his pinky against his rings.

He’s going to have half the day to himself, with Andrew and the kids at therapy. He pulls out his phone. Sends a text to Riley. _Are you free this afternoon? Want to go to the arcade?_ “So why are we going to see Aaron?”

Andrew shrugs. “He’s my brother.”

Neil turns his entire body sideways to stare at Andrew.

Andrew doesn’t respond.

Riley answers before Andrew does— _yesyesyes, we’ve got shit to talk about._

_I guess you’re not bringing Maria?_

_Noooooooooo. She’s coming over for dinner tho so I gotta be back a little early_

_Great, than you can tell me why you’re thinking about rings._

_Bitch, so can you._

_Fair enough._

Neil looks up as they turn into Aaron’s neighborhood. Puts his phone away.

“I’m going to have _so_ much to brag to Bee about,” Andrew whispers.

Neil cackles. “Okay. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense.”

Neil can’t tell if much has changed about Aaron’s house. It’s been two years since he’s been here. It’s the same house, he knows that. Same color. New knob on the front door? Maybe, he decides as they approach. It’s similar, but definitely different.

Aaron answers the door within two seconds of Andrew’s knock, and steps back to welcome them in with a look on his face that says that he’s as suspicious and shocked as Neil was.

“Happy birthday,” Andrew says, handing Aaron the cake.

“Thanks,” Aaron says. “Happy birthday. I didn’t get you anything.” He gives Neil a look that says: _Was this your idea_?

Neil tries to convey the fact that not only was this _not_ his idea but he didn’t even know it was _happening_ through a singular facial expression. He’s not sure if it works or not.

“I didn’t really clean up,” Aaron says. “If Katelyn asks, tell her it seemed really clean.”

“We will,” Andrew agrees.

Aaron only lasts through half a second of silence. “So why are you here? Oh. Oh. Hang on. Are you here to show off your ring?”

Oh?

Neil turns a delighted look on Andrew, but Andrew shrugs.

“I came here to check on you,” Andrew says bluntly.

“What, did I seem to be doing poorly a couple days ago?” Aaron shoots back.

Andrew looks at him for a second, and then glances at Neil.

All right, then. Neil turns for the door. He’ll sit this one out in the car.

“No, you stay,” Aaron says.

Neil, hand already on the doorknob, looks back at Andrew.

Andrew looks at him, but rather than telling him to leave, he just—looks at Aaron.

“Oh, do I get some say in this now?” Aaron asks.

Andrew gestures a yes.

“He stays,” Aaron says. “He’s as much my brother as you are, and that’s _your_ fault. Don’t look so fucking amused about it.”

Andrew shrugs. “It’s nice. I want to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m as fine as I ever am,” Aaron says.

“That’s a lie,” Andrew says.

“Am I not allowed to lie to you?”

“Am I not allowed to be worried about you?” Andrew counters.

“You don’t usually make a big production out of it,” Aaron says.

“You don’t usually open the worrying event by telling me you give a shit about me. I’m trying to respond in kind.”

“You’re terrible at it,” Aaron says.

Andrew waves a hand—that’s obvious.

Aaron waves a hand right back, more sarcastically than Andrew had. “I don’t know, I’m—fucked up. It’s fucked up. Your whole life was fucked up. And I—I should’ve been in there with you, mom didn’t want me either, I—”

“Don’t bother with that,” Andrew says flatly. “If you’d been there I wouldn’t have let it happen to you. I went to juvie to make sure you wouldn’t ever have to deal with any of that.”

“I don’t know if you think that’s supposed to make me feel better,” Aaron snaps, “but it doesn’t. It doesn’t make me feel better to know that your only way out was to literally go to jail, and it doesn’t make me feel better to know that you weren’t willing to do that to get _yourself_ out of Drake’s house, and it doesn’t make me feel better that you were willing to do that for some stupid shitty teenager you’d never met. Why didn’t you go before you’d ever heard of me? Why was you being raped better than juvie, but me being raped was worse? Just—fucking—would it have fucking _killed_ you to take _care_ of yourself?” He turns away, but the silence barely has time to settle into Neil’s ears before he turns to face Andrew again. “I mean, what, were you just _used_ to it? You can’t say you were, you can’t lie to me like that, because you _knew_ it was bad, you _knew_ you didn’t want it to happen to me, but it was just _fine_ if it happened to you because it _always_ had? Don’t just—stare at me! Yell at me!”

Andrew turns his hands palms out, half a shrug that doesn’t seem to calm Aaron. “You’re not wrong,” he says slowly. “It had always happened to me, and seemed like it would always happen to me, and at least it could happen to me in a place where I had a mom who loved me. But you—it wasn’t happening to _you_. I was fairly sure it wasn’t, anyway, and I wasn’t going to risk—it was always happening in my head, I didn’t need it to be happening in your head, too. And don’t act like it would have been _better_ for me, if you were there,” he says as Aaron opens his mouth. “Don’t sit here thinking that you being fucking sexually assaulted on the regular would have made me feel better, or less alone, or would’ve taken the attention off of me. Drake didn’t want you _instead_ of me, he wanted us both. So yes, it would have been worse if it had happened to you. You didn’t _need_ a mom. You _had_ one. I didn’t know she was a piece of shit, but—still.”

“How—you—”

Andrew and Neil wait while Aaron hunts for words.

“How do you _live_ like this?” Aaron asks, eventually.

“Like what?”

“With— _all of that_ happening in your head all the time?”

“I lived with you, you know how I lived. And these days it doesn’t anymore, anyway.”

“How is that even _possible_?”

“What, do you think I go to therapy for _fun_?”

“No, jackass,” Aaron says, “I just—with your memory—”

“I don’t think that was a side-effect of my memory,” Andrew says drily. Neil can practically hear the effort it’s taking for them to keep being nice to each other. “I think that was the trauma. My memory just means that it’s always in high definition. Bee—Bee taught me how to—distract myself, and how to distance myself when I can’t distract myself, and how to refocus on different things. Better things. Or, fuck, innocuous things, but these days there’s good shit to focus on. I’m _not_ living like that anymore. I don’t want you to sit here thinking that my whole life—thinking that I’m always there. I don’t live with that anymore. Well, sometimes I do, but—rarely. Less and less often.”

Aaron pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You can’t just—just _recite_ everything that’s happened to you and then just—how good was that therapy?”

“Really good. You should try it.”

“I’ll try it when Neil tries it,” Aaron mutters. “Has _he_ found a therapist yet?”

Neil sucks a breath in through his teeth.

Aaron looks up at him. “No.”

Neil nods.

“Fuck. Well, I take it back, then. I’m the only normal Fox that school ever saw. I did most of my therapy with Andrew, anyway. Andrew—Andrew, I need you to look me in the fucking eye and tell me if you’re okay. Don’t you dare lie.”

Andrew steps closer. Puts his hands on Aaron’s shoulders. “Aaron, I’m doing fine. _Better_ than fine, most of the time. You don’t need to worry about this.”

Neil turns and wanders away, examining the pictures on the wall. Just because he was asked to be here doesn’t mean he actually needs to be part of this particular moment.

Oh, they have last year’s Christmas card on the wall. It’s a cute picture, Aaron and Katelyn and Freddie all in red and green. Where _is_ Freddie? Is he old enough to be in school? Maybe daycare.

“You’re an asshole,” Aaron mutters.

Neil can probably look again. He turns around in time to watch Andrew put his middle finger down.

“So you _did_ get the ring, right?” Aaron asks. “The fuckup didn’t fuck it up?”

“The love of my life didn’t fuck it up, no,” Andrew agrees.

Aaron flips Neil off, almost reflexively. “Oh. He didn’t?”

“No, it was nice.”

“Do I get to see it?”

“You—want to?”

“That’s normal, right?”

“Feels weird,” Andrew mutters, pulling his sleeve back so Aaron can see the ring.

“Wearing it?”

“No, showing people my hand.”

Aaron waves Neil over. “Bring yours here, too.”

Neil sticks his hand next to Andrew’s hand.

Aaron shakes his head. “If I didn’t know you were both cold-blooded murderers, this would be adorable.”

“ _I_ have _never_ murdered in cold blood,” Neil defends himself. Unless—well—“I don’t _think_ I have.”

Aaron nods, slowly, at Neil. “Yeah. Yeah. That’s normal, Neil, real normal.”

“ _I’m_ more disturbed by the fact that you think cold-blooded murder is _bad_ ,” Andrew says. “We’re _married_.”

“Sorry, I’ll try to be more sensitive,” Neil promises.

“I don’t understand how you’ve been going to therapy for _years_ and still don’t care about murder. Isn’t that something?” Aaron asks. “Isn’t that a thing? Where you have to feel remorse? Does Bee not _know_?”

“No, she knows,” Andrew says, waving a hand. “Unfortunately, we’ve never been able to correct this failing on my part. Anyway, you have to leave soon, right? We should go.”

“Yeah. Couldn’t have done this, oh, Sunday night, huh,” Aaron says. “Or even yesterday. _Had_ to ruin my birthday, huh.”

“Well, I didn’t want to ruin _my_ birthday,” Andrew explains.

“God, you’re such a dick,” Aaron mutters, but he’s halfway to smiling, and that’s something.

“Yup,” Andrew agrees cheerfully, and is that—is _that_ —“We should go now. Let’s go, Neil.”

“Was that a _smile_?” Aaron asks.

“Out the door,” Andrew says, as though Neil isn’t already halfway down the walkway. “Bye, Aaron.”

“Wait!” Aaron calls from the doorway. “Was that a smile? Did you just _smile_?”

“Bye, Aaron,” Neil calls.

“You fucking _smiled!_ ” Aaron yells as Neil and Andrew buckle their seatbelts. “And I _saw_ it!”

Andrew backs down the driveway. Neil waves at Aaron.

“Feeling better?” Neil asks

Andrew glances at Neil, looking absolutely content. “Yes. Also. You didn’t tell Roland about the rings, correct?”

“No, I forgot about him a bit.”

Andrew hums.

“Should I have?”

“No. I’m thinking I won’t tell him. I’m thinking I’ll just—casually put my hand out there.”

“You could probably get Aaron or Kevin to reflect the table light off their spoon and onto the ring so it glitters.”

“I don’t even know where we’re eating. We’ll have to eat somewhere well-lit. Maybe I’ll talk to the waitstaff and ask them to notice my ring and tell me how nice it is.”

Neil grins. Smug. God, he’s so fucking smug. Andrew is, too—not smug about a good idea, but about being proposed to. And _that_ knowledge only serves to increase the amount of smugness Neil is feeling, which Neil is certain was not the goal. “What are you going to say when they do?”

“Oh, maybe just a thank you. Nothing that would indicate that this is _important,_ of course.”

“Of course,” Neil agrees. “And then when Roland notices?”

“ _Oh, yeah, Neil proposed on my birthday_.” Andrew holds his hand up, mimes showing off the ring. “ _Just wanted to make it clear how much he loves me._ _Got himself a ring the color of my eyes, picked out the stone from memory._ You know.”

“You’ll have to take a bite of something right after. Maybe some bread. Something you have to chew. Then when he says _oh_? you don’t even have to say anything. Just wave it off.”

“Never thought I’d have to plan out being apathetic,” Andrew says happily.

“This isn’t even _apathy_ ,” Neil says, grinning wider. “It’s the _this old thing_ of engagement rings. It’s not that you’re _apathetic,_ it’s that you have bigger, more important things to care about. You _did_ care, but now it’s _old_ news. You’ve moved _on_.”

“Sure, it just happened two days ago, but honestly my life is so full of love it didn’t even register.”

“Wait, is that a thing?” Neil asks, sitting up a little straighter. “Hang on, though. Is your life _not_ full enough of love? Do you need more love?”

“No, Neil, this is just the bullshit I’d like to feed to the guy I’m pretty much friends with that I used to blow in the backroom of the bar where I worked, who didn’t even like me enough to keep his goddamn hands off me. This isn’t commentary on _you_.”

“Okay, but are you sure? Is a proposal _supposed_ to be barely a blip in the radar of love? Is—”

“You just said the words _radar of love_ , so I’m going to assume you’re just bullshitting now.”

“No, hang on, I’m serious—”

“Neil, love, it is literally impossible for you to make me feel _more_ loved.”

Neil considers that, and settles back into his seat. “I’m—”

“Don’t take that as a challenge.”

“—taking that as a challenge.”

Andrew pulls up to a red light and looks over at Neil. “Neil Josten. My bok choy. My pikachu—”

“Don’t even _think_ about it,” Neil says, grinning.

“Too late—there is literally no conceivable way you could make me feel any more loved than I already do. I’d probably explode.”

“I’d like to see that,” Neil says.

Andrew gives Neil a glance, but doesn’t respond. Neil doesn’t take offense. Besides the fact that it wouldn’t bother him regardless, Neil isn’t oblivious to the faint blush on Andrew’s cheeks. Has, in fact, taken half a second to memorize it.

Kevin calls Andrew two minutes later, the call coming through the car. “Hey. Did he do it?”

“Of course I did,” Neil says, offended. “What do you think I am, a coward?”

“No, I guess not,” Kevin concedes. “But still. Andrew, did he do it?”

“He did it,” Andrew says. “And he did it good.”

“Thea!” Kevin yells, holding the phone away from his mouth. “He did it! And he did it good, apparently!”

Thea cheers faintly in the background.

“And I’ll be honest, I thought I got my gift _hours_ before he gave me the ring. He told me it wasn’t his gift, but I didn’t believe him for a second,” Andrew says. “So the ring _completely_ blindsided me.”

“Oh, jesus, do I want to know what it is?”

Andrew glances at Neil.

Neil sighs. “I have a therapist.”

“A _what_!”

“You heard correctly,” Andrew intones. “Mr. Never-Therapy has a _therapist_. He has an appointment scheduled for next week. He came home and told me and I really thought he’d managed that miracle on my birthday as a present to me.”

“Holy _fuck_! Holy _shit_! I—Neil! Neil, you fucking killed it yesterday! What are you going to do for his birthday _next_ year? Neil, you killed it so hard I didn’t even ask Andrew if he likes the ring.”

“I like it,” Andrew allows.

“You _like_ it?” Kevin gasps. “So, what, did you cry over it? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say you like something in the entire time we’ve known each other. Neil, is he flipping me off?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Andrew, Neil came to us in tears—”

“That’s a lie.”

“Begging for our help—”

“Shockingly close to true.”

“And Renee suggested he wear Tripp pants,” Kevin says, at which point Andrew’s foot falls a little heavily on the gas. “Many chains for the rings to be on. Did he do that?”

“No,” Andrew says a second later, sounding strangled. “No, he didn’t, but Renee was right, that would’ve been better.”

“I’ll do that next year,” Neil says.

Andrew takes a deep breath. “As long as you wear a crop top with it.”

“Do I want to know what Tripp pants are?” Neil asks.

“No,” Kevin says, delighted. “It’s fine. We’ll get you a pair next time we—oh. I’ll get you a pair for next time you go to Eden’s.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Neil says.

“Unimportant. Hey, it’s really hard to have a heart-to-heart talk.”

“Yup,” Andrew agrees.

“Andrew, are you happy?” Kevin asks. “Have you found something to build a life around?”

“You’ve asked me this, before.”

“And I’m asking again,” Kevin says, unperturbed.

“The answer is unchanged,” Andrew says.

“It’s good to know I didn’t fail,” Kevin says after a minute. “Anyway, when are you coming over for dinner?”

“When do you want to teach the kids history?”

“Well, I don’t want to do both at the same time. History tomorrow, Dinner on Friday?”

“Works for us,” Neil agrees after a glance at Andrew.

“Cool. You come to us for dinner?”

“Will do.”

“Lovely. God, I’m such a functioning adult. Bye?”

“Bye,” Neil agrees.

“He _is_ functioning these days,” Andrew says once the call ends.

“It was probably the therapy.”

“And the sobriety.”

“And Riko’s death.”

“All good things,” Andrew concludes.

Neil lifts Andrew’s hand to kiss it, and they make it the rest of the way home in silence.

They don’t have long at home—Andrew’s gotta leave for therapy, and Neil has to meet Riley at the arcade. They get the dishwasher started. They smoke some bubbles. Neil puts his pinky in Andrew’s, and they enjoy the silence—kids all in school, parents all at work, and the whole neighborhood quiet—and then Andrew gets in his car, and Neil gets in his car, and they roll out.

Riley’s already there, when he gets to the arcade. “Food?” She says by way of greeting.

“Food,” Neil agrees.

They get fries. It’s just after lunch, but Neil’s not willing to just—take up a whole table like that.

Riley scoots her chair in. “Spill.”

“What, my water?”

She points a fry at him. “Avoidance.”

Neil sits back in his chair.

Okay.

He leans forward. “I’m not telling anyone else about this,” he warns, “so don’t tell.”

“Oh, jesus, don’t tell me,” Riley says through a mouthful of fry.

Neil blinks at her. Really? “Really?”

She sighs, hands turning up, and swallows her food. She leans in. “Is it murder?”

Neil laughs almost in spite of himself. “No. What? No.”

“Some other crime?”

“Also no, Riley, what the fuck? Do you think I proposed by breaking into a jewelry store and handing him the first ring I saw? That would be hilarious, actually.”

“No, it wouldn’t be, and I mean, what do I know multi-murderer? Okay. Tell me your secret story.”

Neil takes a deep breath. “Okay. So I proposed, and it was—he was speechless, Ri, it was really—it was good. And we start walking along the beach, and he _trips over his own feet_ because he’s too busy staring at me to watch where he’s going—you _can’t tell_ ,” he warns as Riley’s eyes go round. “Not even Maria. No one. So anyway, I turn to him and I give this whole speech—I know we got married on accident, but it wasn’t a mistake—don’t look at me like that—and all about, you know, I choose _this_ , I choose _you_ —well, him—and—Riley—”

Riley looks like she’s about to cry. Neil almost doesn’t want to tell her.

“He looks at me, he looks me in the eye—waves crashing in the background, moon rising—he looks me in the eye and he says _Pikachu_.”

Riley’s whole face drops, and then she cackles.

Neil watches her curl over, laughing so hard it’s silent. “Pikachu. I poured my heart out and he’s thinking about _Pokemon_. It was about to be the end of Kate Chopin’s _Awakening_ , I was about to just walk into the ocean, I thought the sand was going to suck me straight down to hell, Riley, it was—”

“ _I choose you_ ,” she gasps.

“Yes, that’s what he said when I asked what the fuck he was talking about, but—doesn’t help, actually. And then we kissed and he looks at me and goes _I can’t believe I said Pikachu_. You know what, Andrew, neither do I. Neither do I.”

Riley folds her arms on the table and presses her cheek to them, trying and failing to take deep breaths. After a minute she sits up, though, presses a hand to her chest. “I can’t believe he said Pikachu and you still kissed him.”

Neil shrugs. “There aren’t many circumstances under which I would _not_ kiss Andrew Minyard.”

“If you wrote that man a verbal love letter and his response was _Pikachu_ and that _still_ wasn’t enough to make you not kiss him, I’d argue that there are _no_ circumstances under which you would not kiss Andrew Minyard.”

Neil shrugs again. What’s he going to do, argue? “So how’s your ring shopping going?”

“I’m not ring shopping.”

“Sorry, how’s your proposal planning going?”

“I’m not going to propose.”

Neil eats a fry and stares at her.

“God, I _hate_ it when you do this, it’s the weirdest interrogation tactic. I mean, we’ve only been dating for a month! Why would I propose? That’s fucking ridiculous, and if she said yes she’d be _worse_ —like, and, look, I love her, but look at how her last relationship went! They broke up _six times_ , Neil, _six times_ , and you wanna know who heard about it every time? Me! And what the hell do I do if we break up while _engaged_? Do I just take the ring back? Propose again later? Propose repeatedly? My knees can’t handle that!”

“To be fair,” Neil points out, “Maria only broke up with her last girlfriend _once_. And it was the last time. Maybe you shouldn’t attribute her girlfriend’s actions to her.”

“Okay, known relationship counselor Neil Josten.”

“I mean, _you_ said we had stuff to talk about, not me. And anyway, between the two of you, I’d think _she’d_ be the one worried about multiple break-ups. Since that’s what happened to her.”

“Stop saying logical things,” Riley says, tossing a fry at him.

Neil eats it. What’s he going to do, argue?

Riley mopes.

Neil eats his fries.

“I’m just saying,” Riley says, “it’s only been a month. Who proposes after a _month_? You and Andrew waited, what, four years?”

“After we met or after we started dating? A little over four years after we met, a little over three after we started dating.”

“And even _that_ was an accident.”

“Well, but we’re weird.”

“Okay, but I don’t think anyone you know had a proposal time of _one month after dating._ ”

“How long have you two known each other?”

“It’s not the same, you _know_ it’s not,” she says, waving a hand. “It’s _different_. Sometimes when we cuddle she _kisses me_.”

Neil won’t laugh at her for blushing. He won’t. He won’t do it. “Are you _blushing_ because sometimes your _girlfriend_ kisses you?”

“I will eat you alive, Neil Josten, don’t fucking think I won’t, don’t think that just because you’re a big bad killer I won’t crush your skull like a potato chip.”

Neil snorts. “I’ve been told I have a thick skull.”

“By who, Andrew?”

“Yeah.”

Riley shakes her head. Examines a fry, although Neil isn’t sure for what. Eats it, staring out over the arcade. Looks back at Neil. “So, to be clear, you’re encouraging me to get engaged to my girlfriend of one month?”

Well. Hold on now. “Not necessarily. I’m just saying that when I asked if Andrew would like the ring, Maria made a point of saying what her preference would be, for an engagement ring.”

“She did, didn’t she.”

“Don’t take _my_ advice, I don’t know anything.”

“Who among us does?” Riley laments.

“Not me.”

“No, not the man so happily married he just re-proposed to his husband.”

“Exactly. Well, not exactly. I never proposed in the first place.”

“Right. I hate you and your life.”

“Understandable.”

Riley steals a fry off Neil’s plate. “Because you ate one of mine.”

“I thought I was allowed to eat it since you threw it at me.”

“Sure, that too. But I’m already eating this one, so. Yknow.”

“Yeah, I know,” Neil agrees. “Are we going to play that car racing game or what?”

Riley closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “We’ve been coming here for _years_ and you still call it the _car racing game_?”

Neil shrugs. It’s not like the title of the game is his top priority. “What’s it called?”

“Well, now I’m not telling you. Come on—”

“You don’t know,” Neil accuses her. “You forgot, too.”

“Did not. Let’s go, Neil, don’t sit around all day. We’ve got stuff to do, and then I have to go home and cook dinner for my girlfriend.”

“Fiancée-to-be?”

“Not yet. Maybe. I don’t know. _She_ can propose to _me_. What about _that_? I’ll drop some hints about what kind of ring _I_ want. Then it’s _her_ decision.”

“If she asked, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” Riley says immediately. “But we’re not gonna talk about that.”

“No, wait, maybe we should talk about that,” Neil says, hovering halfway out of his seat.

Riley deliberates, and then she sits back down and leans in. “Okay, look, if she wanted to get married tomorrow I’d do it, all right? Okay? Look, I love her more than—I just—I’ve liked her so much, for _years_ , and I didn’t—I didn’t know it was—fuck, if I’d had any guts I’d’ve asked her out before she even went out with her last girlfriend, but—I didn’t—but I don’t know if _she’s_ the same— _I’m_ down, but I don’t know if _she_ is—”

“You could ask her,” Neil suggests.

“But what if she doesn’t have an _answer_? Or what if she _thinks_ the answer is yes and then changes her _mind_ and then I can’t bring it up _again_ because I’m _traumatized_? What _then_ , Neil? I’ll _die_ , that’s what, and I’ll have to convert to christianity on the spot so I can go to hell. Are you going to make me _convert_?”

Neil reaches forward to take the hand she’s got stretched out towards him. “You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks. I’ll collapse. Don’t you dare fucking mention this to Maria.”

“I would never.”

“I know. Let’s go play our dumb car game.”

They go play their dumb car game, the name of which Neil forgets immediately upon turning away from it. DDR. And then they work their way across the arcade—it’s a Tuesday afternoon, no one’s there, they have their pick.

And then, simultaneously, they pull out their phones to check the time.

They side-eye each other.

“What, am I boring you?” Riley asks.

“Yeah,” Neil says.

Riley punches him in the arm.

“What? You checked _your_ phone first.”

“I don’t think so, I think we did it pretty much at the same time. Why are we friends again?”

“You tell me.”

“No, _you_ tell _me_.”

Neil points at her. “I asked first.”

“You did _not_.”

“What’s your evidence?” Neil asks, leading the way into the parking lot.

“My memory and the fact that I’m nearly a foot taller than you.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Neil asks indignantly.

Riley gestures for him to stop moving.

They’re in the middle of the parking lot, but there’s no cars coming, so whatever.

Riley puts her forearm on his shoulder. “So why are we friends again?”

“Ah, the intimidation factor,” Neil says understandingly. “We’re friends because you’re intimidating.”

Riley considers this, and nods. “Sounds good to me. See you later?”

“Yeah.”

Riley pushes off him—absolutely unnecessary—and heads for her car. Neil flips her off when she glances back at him, but she just laughs.

Neil makes one stop on the way home—at the bakery. He takes his time, because he’s got time, browsing the cases, considering. Eclairs, one for each of them; an apple dumpling for Paige; triple fudge brownie for Natalie; brownie-studded fudge for Andrew. Neil selects chocolate-covered strawberries for himself.

He brings it all back to the car, puts the boxes on the floor of the passenger seat, and considers them.

There’s a feeling, there.

He should push it down. He generally does. He can’t be bothered with this kind of thing. The feeling isn’t a good one, it’s a confusing one, and Neil doesn’t know what to do with that, or why he’s supposed to care about it. It’s not like it’s necessary for his survival.

Neil sighs.

The chocolates were expensive, and they were _also_ not necessary for his survival.

Carefully, doing the mental equivalent of standing three feet away and holding a spiked baseball bat, Neil allows the feeling to present itself for consideration.

It’s not fear, and that surprises him.

Although _fear_ isn’t exactly what he was expecting—more _guilt_ , maybe. That he’d spent so much money, so unnecessarily. That, by all rights, he should get slapped for it, for that kind of waste.

It’s also not anger, or—self-defense. Is that a feeling? The feeling he has when he’s arguing, mentally, with Mary, telling her that he _can_ do this. That he’s got the resources. That he’s got safety. It’s not that, either.

He prods the feeling with his imaginary bat.

It’s similar to what he felt when Mary died.

Grief?

Grief seems, nominally, to fit the emotion, or at least part of it, and Neil has no idea what to do with that.

Grief.

They’re baked goods.

He wants—

He wants, and he doesn’t know what he wants, and that’s plenty for today. He beats it down. It’s none of his business, anyway, so he gets going.

He puts all the bakery items in the fridge, and starts putting away the dishes.

He’s never been this conscious of his fingers before. Getting topaz was a bad idea. He can’t stop worrying about what’ll happen if the utensils scrape his ring. Maybe he should just wear it on a chain. He remembers that, too—the comforting, familiar weight of his wedding ring around his neck, tucked safely into his shirt. The way it had never lain flat against his skin, by virtue of being a ring on a chain. He could do that again.

He puts a stack of plates in the cabinet and rubs his pinky against his rings.

Maybe he likes having the rings on too much to take them off. Is that a sin?

To be fair, even if it _is_ a sin, Neil doesn’t particularly care. He doesn’t believe in god.

He turns as the door opens, Paige bursting through it, already complaining.

“Pops! Dad won’t tell us what you got him for his birthdaaaaayyyyyy!”

“He’s been torturing us the whole way home,” Natalie whines. “He was like, _I already have one. Neil made it a set_ ,” she says, dropping her voice two octaves. “And then he was like _I’m surprised you haven’t seen it already._ We haven’t even been home!”

“Is it down here?” Paige asks, ducking out of the kitchen. “Or is it in your room?” She calls from the living room.

“No, they’re down here,” Neil calls back.

“ _They_?” Natalie and Paige ask simultaneously, Paige’s head appearing in the doorway. The two of them scan the kitchen at top speed, and then run back into the living room.

Neil tucks his hand into his pocket.

Andrew holds up his hand—neatly covered by his long sleeve.

“Did you wear those sleeves in preparation for this?” Neil asks in Russian.

Andrew nods, the look on his face pure mischief. “Didn’t want to tell them. You can tell them.”

Neil grins. That’s—Neil had assumed that the shirt was chosen because Andrew felt too exposed. And he’s not willing to drop it as an explanation altogether. But it’s nice to know that there were other reasons.

The kids come running back in, determined looks on their faces. They walk right up to Neil and bodily move him out of the way, examining the counter behind him like he might’ve been hiding something.

“I’ll give you a hint,” Neil says, taking pity. “We’re wearing them.”

And then he and Andrew are the objects of the kids’ scrutiny.

“Did you get him _socks?_ ” Natalie asks, frustrated.

“That’s next year,” Neil decides.

Paige reaches out and pats Neil’s neck.

Neil raises his eyebrows at her.

Paige shrugs. “You used to wear a necklace, right? With your ring on— _with your ring on!_ ” She says, loudly enough that she herself jumps, but it doesn’t stop her from yanking Neil’s hand out of his pocket. “ _Rings_!”

“ _Rings!_ ” Natalie repeats, gesturing excitedly for Andrew to reveal his hand.

Andrew shakes his sleeve back, and Paige drags Neil over so she can put his hand next to Andrew’s.

“ _Matching,_ ” Paige whispers. “They’re _matching_.”

“Why did you get _rings_?” Natalie asks.

“I proposed,” Neil says.

Paige exclaims, loudly and wordlessly, and Natalie makes curious hand motions.

“Wanted to make it official. I wanted to make it clear that we’re not married by mistake.”

“Why’d you get _yourself_ a ring?” Natalie asks.

“Because he proposed to _me_ , whether he likes it or not, and _I_ never got an engagement ring.”

“I was poor,” Andrew says. “And _you_ proposed to _me_ and never got _me_ an engagement ring.”

Neil reaches out the two inches required to tap Andrew’s ring. “Yes, I did.” The amount of smugness he’s currently experiencing should be illegal.

“The first time,” Andrew clarifies. “The first time, you did not.”

Neil waves a hand. “We can argue that, but you _cannot_ say that I _never_ got you an engagement ring. I _did_.”

“You guys can just, hold hands, if you want,” Paige says, indicating their left hands, still floating next to each other.

They let their hands drop. “Thanks for the permission,” Andrew says drily.

“So how was therapy?” Neil asks. “Or should I not ask?”

Natalie and Paige shrug.

“She’s teaching me coping tactics,” Natalie says. “Counting to ten and shit. She said in a week or two we’re gonna start talking about difficult shit and she wants to make sure I can handle it.”

Paige waves a hand, which Neil takes as generalized agreement. “She doesn’t talk to us like we’re babies, though. I like that.”

“Like you,” Natalie says, gesturing at Andrew and Neil. “Like we’re people.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Neil manages. Is he on the verge of tears again? Maybe. Why? He doesn’t know. Something about maybe being a good parent? Maybe he can talk to Erika about that. That’s what she’s for, right?

“But! We should celebrate!” Paige says. “You _proposed_ , that’s really cute—what’s a good soundtrack for that?”

“ _Party in the USA,_ ” Natalie suggests.

Paige shoots her a dirty look. “No. I don’t know. Um.”

“We don’t—it’s not like we’re getting married again,” Neil says. “We don’t really need a soundtrack.”

“Sure, but, I mean, did you even celebrate?”

Neil is fairly certain they don’t want to hear that he and Andrew came home and had sex. And then woke up and had sex again. And regardless, when it’s something they do pretty regularly anyway, does that count as a celebration? “No.”

Paige turns on a song Neil’s never heard before, places her phone on the table, and then grabs Natalie and runs out of the room, Natalie nearly falling over.

Neil looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks at Neil.

 _But these stories don’t mean anything when you’ve got no one to tell them to,_ a woman sings. _It’s true, I was made for you_.

Neil takes a deep breath and holds a hand out to Andrew. “Shall we dance?”

“ _Shall we dance_ ,” Andrew mutters, but he takes Neil’s hand. “This isn’t even a waltz,” he complains as the woman sings _I climbed across the mountain tops, swam all across the ocean blue, I crossed all the lines and I broke all the rules, but baby, I broke them all for you_.

“It’s a _difficult_ waltz.”

“That’s not how music works,” Andrew counters. They can’t get a rhythm going. Probably, because it’s not a waltz.

“We should’ve learned other dance styles.”

“Won’t help us now.”

Neil reaches over and turns the song off. He pulls out his own phone and turns on their usual song—a little slower, maybe, but at least it’s a waltz, and Andrew takes the lead, putting his hand on Neil’s waist. Neil’s right hand is clasped in Andrew’s left, and there’s his rings, pressed up against Neil’s fingers, and that’s—nice. Very nice. _Extremely_ nice.

They circle the table. Narrowly avoid bumping hips into the counter. Pull their hands in to avoid hitting the fridge.

And when the song ends, Natalie enters, blaring _Party in the USA_ from her phone, Paige following her already jumping up and down in what Neil assumes is a dance. He grins and offers her his hand, which she takes, allowing him to twirl her. Andrew catches her before she can spin into the counter, and she bounces off him to do a dance move that Neil assumes is generational.

Natalie pokes him. “I’m taller than you are,” she says, and holds out a hand.

Neil snorts a laugh, takes her hand, and allows her to twirl him.

“Wait, wait, we could do a line,” Paige says. “Height order, height order—” she slips between Neil and Natalie and gestures to Andrew to stand by Neil. “Do it, do it—”

Natalie twirls Paige, who grabs Neil’s hand and twirls him, who grabs Andrew’s hand and twirls him, who pulls Neil in to step around in a quick circle, timing be damned, and Neil grabs Natalie’s hand, and Natalie grabs Paige’s hand, and it’s not really dancing anymore, what they’re doing, mostly just jumping with a side of wiggling, but—Paige is laughing, Natalie grinning, Andrew nearly smiling, and that’s more important than dancing.

When the song ends, Paige lifts Natalie and Neil’s hands. Neil lifts Andrew’s hand.

Paige pulls them all down for a bow. Natalie narrowly avoids bashing her head into the counter. “We did it!” Paige crows.

Neil lets go of her and Andrew’s hands and starts clapping.

Paige bows, very seriously, while Natalie rolls her eyes.

“Dinner?” Neil asks.

“Yes,” Natalie and Paige say immediately.

“What is it?” Paige asks.

“I was thinking waffles.”

“For dinner?” Natalie asks.

“Yup. Where’s the law that says it’s a breakfast food?”

Natalie shrugs.

Andrew drags a chair over so he can reach his Reese’s.

“Dessert?” Paige asks.

“Dinner,” Andrew says. “If we can have breakfast for dinner, I can have dessert for dinner.”

“Can we?” Paige asks.

Andrew points at Neil.

Who decided this was Neil’s problem?

Well, Andrew did.

Neil shrugs. “Sure.”

“Really?” Paige asks eagerly.

“Can’t see why not,” Neil agrees.

“Vegetables?” Natalie suggests. “That’s a reason why not.”

“If you guys want vegetables, we can make vegetables, but I don’t know how good they’d be on waffles.”

“No, I mean, we need—like—nutrients, right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t suggest waffles with ice cream and Reese’s for dinner _every_ night,” Neil agrees. “And if you insisted on it I’d probably have to put my foot down, at some point. But once in a while probably won’t hurt, right? I’m not a doctor, what do I know?”

“We could ask uncle Aaron,” Paige points out.

“Ah, but you’re missing the main problem,” Neil says, turning to face his children, one finger up so he can properly impart wisdom to them. They straighten up, shoulders back, hands clasped, ideal students. “If we ask him, he might tell us we’re wrong, and then we won’t be able to do it because it’ll be bad. If we _never ask_ … we never know! Schrodinger’s nutrition.”

Paige throws her head back and laughs, and Natalie only manages half an eye roll, and, oh, there’s that feeling again, that almost-grief, and he doesn’t know why he’s got it, and he doesn’t know why it’s taking the time to show up now, and he doesn’t have time for it.

“We should watch _Princess Bride_ while we eat,” Neil says.

“In the living room?” Andrew asks, looking at Neil with a light in his eyes that says that if this is what Neil wants, it’s what they’ll do.

“Why not? We’ve got those folding tables.”

“ _Princess Bride_?” Natalie asks, grimacing.

“Do you not like it?” Neil asks.

“ _Saaraaaahhhhh,_ ” she whines. “ _Papaaaaaaaaaaa._ Gross.”

That’s not—Neil looks at Andrew.

“That’s _The Little Princess_ ,” Andrew says. Ah. That’s it.

“Oh,” Natalie says, disarmed. “Never mind, I’ve never heard of it. What’s _Princess Bride_?”

“Why don’t you like _The Little Princess_?” Neil asks, but even as he asks he figures it out. “You don’t have to—”

“ _Ooooh, look at meeeee,_ ” Natalie cries. “ _I’m a little girl with no parents in an orphanage and it’s_ terrible _but fortunately the only problem is that my dad forgot me due to war but once he hears me callllllling for him he’ll remember and come running—_ ” Her fingers are moving, and Neil recognizes the movement—the same one Andrew used to make, when he wanted to punch something, break something, but there was nothing around he could break. Reaching, aborted twitches, Natalie trying not to storm off.

“Well, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll always remember you, anyway,” Andrew says softly. “Neil, I can’t speak for—he’s got a shit memory. But on my end, you’re safe. Also, we won’t need to send you to an orphanage, we’ve got 80 people clamoring to be surrogate parents.”

Natalie looks at him, and her fingers stop twitching.

“What happened to Patrick, anyway?” Neil asks, ignoring the glance from Andrew that says: _really_?

“Oh, he’s still whining,” Paige says, “but it’s cool now. There’s this bot someone made where, every time he tweets something about us, the bot responds with a quote from us bashing him. It’s pretty good.”

“Oh? Do you guys—interact?”

“We like every tweet the bot makes,” Natalie says, grinning. “It’s _extremely_ passive aggressive.”

“Which maybe Bee will have to talk to you about—”

Natalie gives Paige a scathing glance. “Okay, _therapist_. You’re doing it too, anyway.”

“Well, maybe Bee will have to talk to _me_ about it, what’s wrong with that? I’m just saying maybe it’s not mentally healthy.”

“And when did _you_ become a mental health expert?”

Paige swishes her hair over her shoulder. “Twenty minutes ago, why?”

Neil starts making waffles. Is that a fight? Is he supposed to break it up? He didn’t read up on sibling fights. They hadn’t expected two kids.

He glances at Andrew, who raises an eyebrow at the kids.

They settle down, with an eye roll from Natalie and a heavy sigh from Paige.

And then they’re reading funny tweets—unrelated to Patrick—and Andrew is rinsing blueberries, after giving the baked goods a glance and Neil a thorough perusal. Natalie stands to get plates, after appointing Paige their in-house comedian, a position Paige accepts with grace.

Andrew helps Natalie and Paige build waffle monstrosities.

“Hey, you know, I didn’t think about this,” Neil says, “but I _did_ go to the bakery and get desserts.”

Natalie and Paige side-eye him.

“Oh, is that teenage angst?” Neil asks, categorizing that particular type of side-eye. “Refreshing.”

Andrew puts his hand on the counter. “Refreshing?”

“It’s been a long time since I hung out with teenagers.”

“I’d think you’d be immune to harsh looks.”

Neil shrugs. “But the same thing all the time gets boring. And I mean, Kevin, Seth, whoever—they can’t accomplish that teenage fury.”

“Can only get that from real, authentic—”

“Free-range, grass-fed—”

“Teenagers,” Andrew concludes.

Natalie flips them both off.

Neil snorts. “Look, I didn’t plan. But we have dessert for tomorrow, yes?”

Natalie and Paige’s deep breathing exercises inform Neil that he is an idiot, which he accepts with equanimity, and then they take their plates and head into the living room.

There’s a moment of organizing—folding tables have to be retrieved from the garage—and then they’ve settled in, and Neil turns on _Princess Bride_.

When it ends, Natalie leans back in her seat. “ _Wuv._ ”

“ _Twuuuuu wuvvvvvv_ ,” Paige agrees, sliding out of her seat onto the floor. She twists like a girl possessed to look at Andrew and Neil. “Is that it? Are you guys in wuv?”

“In _twu_ wuv,” Natalie corrects.

“Yes,” Neil agrees.

“Amazing. No—wait—adowabow.”

Neil works it out— _adorable_? “That’s a lot of w’s.”

“Douboe-wues,” Natalie says.

Neil pinches his lips together. “You know, I think I have to go.”

“I missed a call from Renee,” Andrew mutters.

Paige raises a hand. “We need help with our homework.”

“Hang on, let me tell her we’ll call later,” Andrew says, distracted, typing.

“We’ll meet you in the kitchen,” Neil suggests, leading the kids into the kitchen.

Neil dreads the day when the kids have outlearned Neil and Andrew, but that day is not today, and a few successful homework hours later, the kids call Arnie and head upstairs.

Andrew calls Renee. He puts the phone on speaker and sets it between them.

Neil watches as the call gets picked up—the screen starts counting out the seconds.

Andrew checks the volume, but the volume is already up.

“Hello?” Neil tries.

Renee’s voice sounds like it’s coming from someplace extremely close to the speaker. “Well?”

Andrew puts a hand over his eyes. Neil stifles a laugh in his fist.

“Who’s on the phone?” Allison asks, from a distance.

“Andrew and Neil,” Renee says, still right up against the speaker.

There’s a noise, and then Allison’s voice—right up against the speaker—says, “ _Well?_ ”

Neil presses his fist against his mouth.

Andrew takes a second to compose himself. “Yes?” He asks, flatly. Deadpan. Apathetic.

“Oh, fuck, that sounded like the old Andrew,” Allison says, from a normal distance. “Shit, did it go—Andrew, did it go bad? I—Neil—Neil did the thing, right? Did it—what happened?”

“Neil did indeed do the thing,” Andrew intones. “Wanna know what I said to him after he did the thing?”

“Maybe?” Renee tries.

“Nothing.”

Neil gives up his hand and presses his forearm to his mouth. He can’t break. He can’t fail here.

“Nothing?” Allison asks after a second.

“Because I was literally speechless,” Andrew says normally. “I couldn’t even say yes, I just had to nod. And our rings are gorgeous—never thought I’d use that word, don’t like saying it—Allison, Neil, go away, I have to talk to Renee.”

“Call me,” Allison shouts into the speaker over Renee’s laughter. “Neil, _call me_.”

“Gimme 30 seconds,” Neil says. “Hang on. Be ready.”

“I’m leaving. I’m leaving,” she says. “Bye, Andrew. Bye, baby. Neil, talk to you in 30 seconds.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek and heads into the basement, calling Allison on the way.

“ _Neil._ Spill.”

“I mean, there’s not much to spill—”

“Liar, do it.”

“He really was speechless,” Neil says. “Not even temporarily—he didn’t say anything for a solid ten minutes. Went completely nonverbal, Al, I let go of his hand so I could get down on one knee and undo the chain and he didn’t even take his hand back, it was just floating in midair—”

“ _Wrecked,_ you _wrecked_ him, I didn’t think you could do it!” Allison crows. “Nothing against you—well, lots against you, actually, but—but then again, Andrew is so goddamn head over heels for you—holy _shit_ , Neil, and how did that make you feel?”

Neil paces circles around the basement, grinning. “The amount of smugness I have felt in the past 24 hours could fuel most people for a lifetime.”

“He really didn’t say yes?”

“He nodded. Multiple times. And—it was so dramatic, you’d have loved it—I got down on one knee, took the chain off, pulled his ring off the chain, put the chain back on, tucked it back into my shirt, and _then_ proposed—” He pauses to let Allison laugh—“and Andrew just _stood_ there, hand out, eyes bigger than god—and when I stood back up, he pulled the chain out to look at the ring, and then—again, no words, he still wasn’t speaking—takes it off me so he can put _my_ ring on. A couple minutes later—and don’t read into that, we were literally just standing there—I suggest that we walk down the beach, so we walk onto the beach and he _trips_ because he’s too busy staring at me to watch where he’s going—”

“ _Tell_ me you made fun of him for that,” Allison begs. “Tell me you weren’t too lovestruck to pass up that opportunity—”

“Who do you think I am? I laughed at him for it and he told me to shut up, which, you will note, were the first words he’d said since I got down on one knee.”

Allison laughs, long and loud. “The two of you are a _mess_. I—”

“Sorry, what happened when you proposed to Renee?”

“We proposed to each other at the same time, that’s perfectly respectable,” Allison says calmly.

“And why am _I_ a mess?” Neil asks. “ _I’m_ not the one who tripped over my own feet.”

“I’m sorry, you proposed to your husband—with rings and everything—and you’ve been married for _years_ , Neil, that’s either the most dramatic thing I’ve ever heard of or it’s the messiest thing I’ve ever heard of. Now, tell me real quick, _why_ did you propose, again?”

“Because we can’t agree on which one of us proposed,” Neil says reluctantly.

“Exactly. Now, Renee and I _also_ can’t agree, because technically _I_ got on one knee first but technically _she_ bought my ring first, but you will notice that in our case we’re each trying to claim that we’re the one who proposed. _You_ claim that _neither_ of you proposed, and yet you’re still married! Messy, Neil, it’s messy.”

“I’d reframe it as _adorable_ ,” Neil suggests.

Neil can practically see her flicking her post-exy-season nails at him.“Reframe it however you want, it’s still a goddamn mess. A _cute_ mess, for sure, but a mess just the same.”

Neil shrugs and sits down. “Hey, Allison.”

“Yeah.”

“I called you.”

“You _did_.”

“So what’s up? What’s happening? What’s going on in your life, Al?”

There’s silence for a minute.

“Okay, Renee and Andrew are arguing about their book again. We’ve got time. Settle in, Neil, shit’s happening. So we’ve kind of decided what size house we’re looking for.”

Neil makes appropriate listening noises, cataloguing her criteria. It’s reasonable—backyard for a dog, somewhere between Columbia—where Renee is likely to end up working—and the Jaguars’ stadium. Three bedrooms—Neil doesn’t understand why, but Neil and Andrew also have three bedrooms, so he doesn’t have much right to judge. All he’s got there is that he hadn’t gone _looking_ for three bedrooms; it had just happened. He’s fairly certain that Allison wouldn’t hold with that defense.

“Your real estate agent’s name was Denise, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We might just use her instead of you. Or maybe we’ll make her take you to see the houses.”

“You’re sure you want me to have that responsibility?”

“I trust you. And you have a smartphone now, so I expect it to be used liberally.”

“Ah. I’m the livestreaming service.”

“The—Neil, that’s a word you just used! You just used a computer word! I’m so proud! And yes. Moving right along.”

Neil listens to an in-depth analysis of her favorite TV show, which he’s already forgotten the name of. He’s trying. He really is. But Allison doesn’t need his input, and he could probably recognize the name if needed, so—he interjects with a comment about a character’s mother, and Allison sits in shocked silence for a minute before continuing.

When Neil hangs up, it’s with the sense that he has been a good friend. Is that accurate? Neil has no goddamn idea, but he’s a better friend now than he was when he and Allison met, so—that’s something, anyway.

He heads back upstairs, and finds Andrew checking the garage door.

Neil looks at him and melts. He can’t help it. “How’s Renee?”

“Good,” Andrew says, reaching out to take Neil’s hand. “How’s Allison?”

“Still watching that TV show.”

“So, good.”

“Yup.”

They wander around to the front door and lock it.

At the top of the stairs, they pause—there’s noise coming from Paige and Natalie’s room. Quiet, but noise nonetheless. A song, unidentifiable, and stifled laughter, and Neil grins at Andrew.

“That’s the dream,” Andrew murmurs in Russian.

“Happy kids?”

“Happy kids.”

Neil follows Andrew into their room and to bed. They have to shift King so they can lie down, but—that’s fine, too. Neil wraps himself around Andrew and finds it again—a love so big he can’t contain it, a feeling of safety he can’t comprehend.

Andrew takes a deep breath. Kisses Neil’s cheek. Curls up on top of Neil. The silence wraps him up. He can smell Andrew’s shampoo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, 41 chapters in: I have no idea what the Jaguars’ stadium is called


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> vast amounts of dialogue and also a youtube stream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm not going to post a chapter next week--I am not, I repeat not, abandoning this fic, but I'm at the point where I'm writing 6-7k on the weekends and barely finishing in time to post, and I'm not really giving myself any time to plan a plot. I'm basically flying by the seat of my pants, so I want to use the extra work to plan out the next bunch of chapters, so hopefully they'll be a little meatier and also easier for me to write--which should save me from posting things at 11 at night like I have been.
> 
> Also, this chapter is a little shorter--christmas happened. 
> 
> Anyway, I love you all, I would send u all care packages if I had things like money, and I hope the end of the year and beginning of next year is good. Please stay safe and healthy, and know that I love you all. I'll be back in two weeks. Looking forward to talking to you all again!! <333

On Wednesday, Kevin comes over to help the kids with history.

He doesn’t stay for dinner—he’s scheduled to have dinner with Wymack, and he heads out after double checking that Neil and Andrew are coming over Friday night. Andrew cooks while Neil helps the kids with math and German, and then Andrew whistles to himself while Neil helps them with English, too, because Andrew’s making some kind of chicken that requires constant supervision. It smells like garlic and wine, and Neil will do some critical analysis of the racism in _Heart of Darkness_ if it means Andrew doesn’t burn the chicken.

“Okay, but, consider,” Natalie says, poking at her broccoli, “if it’s racist, I don’t want to read it.”

“That’s fair,” Andrew agrees.

“Then maybe I shouldn’t have to read it.”

“Maybe,” Neil agrees.

“Then why do I have to read it?” she asks, stabbing a piece of broccoli.

“Because sometimes, things are racist in real life, and it’s useful if you know when it’s happening,” Neil suggests.

“Sure, but I already _can_ identify racism. Why do I need to read a book about it?”

“Well, first of all,” Andrew says, “humans are bad at knowing what we don’t know. So maybe there’s _some_ kinds of racism you can identify, but if you didn’t need to think about it, you wouldn’t need help with your homework. Second of all, just because _you_ know doesn’t mean that _everyone_ knows, so it’s a good thing to teach. Third of all, sometimes even the worst books have literary merit, and it’s useful to know how to acknowledge both, and in some cases, to be able to see how a book inspired what came after it, for better or for worse.”

“Lecturing,” Natalie mutters.

“Sorry. You did ask.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want an _answer_ ,” she complains. “I wanted you to tell me I didn’t have to read it.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Andrew glances at Neil.

Neil shrugs. What does he know? “Everything else okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Natalie says.

“What are we doing for Thanksgiving?” Paige asks.

“Um—everyone’s coming down here, right?” Neil asks, looking at Andrew.

Andrew nods. “Normally, we go to New York,” he explains, “but since Allison and Renee are house hunting, they’re coming here so they can look at neighborhoods, which is fine, because usually we go there for way longer than your break allows. And Dan and Matt are coming down, too, because Dan is getting tired of New York and wants to bother Wymack.”

“Can’t they just—move here?” Natalie asks.

“Dan backed herself into it,” Neil tells them, grinning. “Wymack told her not to hold her breath, Dan told him not to call her back any time soon because of Matt’s _career_ , she kept that line up when Matt left pro exy, and she’s been telling Wymack to _send for her in New York whenever he’s feeling old_ ever since. At this point it’s a matter of pride, so they’ll have to find a way around it.”

“Is Wymack like that?” Paige asks. “Won’t just—admit he’s old?”

“Probably not, but more importantly, he’ll never hear the end of it if he gives in first. The _real_ question is if he’d _care_. But if Al and Renee are moving down here, Dan has a legitimate _reason_ to move down here—all her sisters are down here, her family is here, and soon most of her friends will be, too, and if she’s coming here _anyway_ , she may as well give Wymack the chance to hire her before someone else snaps her up…”

“And Matt’s already looking for jobs down here, so if that’s not Dan’s plan, I’ll eat my foot,” Andrew says.

“He is?”

“Yeah, he texted me this morning.”

“Oh, good,” Neil says happily. He wants his family _here_. Plus, no more Thanksgiving flights can only be a good thing for Andrew. “How much do you want to bet that Wymack already knows?”

“One massage.”

“Done,” Neil agrees, holding out his hand. Andrew shakes it.

Sure, Neil isn’t a betting person. But this one seems fairly win-win, for him, so—sure.

“Dave gave Tina a flower today,” Natalie says abruptly.

“It wasn’t, like, a _rose_ ,” Paige says quickly. “It was just one of the wildflowers that grows outside the school, you know?”

“Oh,” Neil says. Does this mean something?

“You don’t want to date someone that tall, anyway,” Andrew says reassuringly. Neil works to catch up. “Date someone short, so they can’t make fun of you for needing a step stool to reach the cabinet.”

“ _I’m_ tall,” Natalie snaps. “And I don’t want to _date_ him.”

Andrew nods. “Yes, you are. And of course you don’t.”

Andrew starts eating again, so Neil does too. This is Andrew’s conversation. Neil doesn’t know how to have it.

“It’s just, that, Tina’s my _friend_ ,” Natalie says. “And, like, people stop being friends with other people when they start dating other people.”

“Ah,” Neil says. Maybe this _is_ Neil’s conversation, after all. “Maybe Tina will be a better friend than that.”

“You basically don’t have friends,” Natalie says. “You can’t talk.”

“I’m going out with my friends tomorrow afternoon,” Andrew says. “And we’re hanging out with Kevin on Friday. Half our friends live in New York, and we still talk to them pretty regularly.”

“And half the reason we don’t talk to them _more_ is because we have kids now,” Neil says. “Tina doesn’t have kids.” Has he ever _met_ Tina? She must’ve been at Lorna’s party. Neil has no memory of her.

“We don’t have to, like, talk about this,” Natalie says, stabbing a piece of chicken.

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

“Are you guys doing another YouTube thing tomorrow?” Paige asks a few minutes later.

“Yeah, I texted Eliana this morning to warn her,” Neil says. “She agreed to be moderator, and she’s got another coworker willing to help, so you don’t have to do it.”

“Maybe _we’ll_ be the PR people,” Paige says, glancing at Natalie. “We’ll come running in to tell you if you’ve said anything wrong.”

“That could be fun,” Neil agrees.

“ _And_ that way people know we’re okay. And not, like, being starved or anything.”

“Also a good idea,” Andrew agrees.

“Sure,” Natalie says.

Paige raises her eyebrows at her plate.

They eat in silence.

The chicken is _really_ good.

Natalie pulls out her phone and sits on it.

Should Neil tell her to put it away? Is it rude to have phones at the table?

Andrew’s not telling her to put it away, so—neither will Neil. It’s not his business if she wants to mope.

Well, actually, maybe it is, but she’s not asking, so Neil’s not going to butt in.

He should go on another run with her, soon.

Paige is on her phone now, too, but not for long. “This song feels like you two,” she says, setting her phone up so the speaker faces Neil and Andrew.

_I steal a few breaths from the world for a minute…_

Neil glances at the screen. _Me and My Husband_ by Mitski. Does he know who that is? Of course not.

 _But me and my husband, we are doing better. It’s always been just him and me together_.

That’s fair. It’s nice, that Paige thought of them, he decides, even if the first stanza seemed to be a little bit about death. Although, honestly, that’s accurate, too—

 _And I am the idiot with the painted face in the corner, taking up space_ —

“Now, which one of us is me and which one of us is my husband?” Andrew asks, casually.

Paige looks up. “Hmm? Why?”

They wait.

Paige waits.

Natalie ignores them.

They wait.

Paige blinks at them.

Neil gives in. “We want to know which one of us is the idiot with the painted face and which one of us is walking in.”

Paige’s eyebrows jump, surprised, and then pull together, confused. “I thought—I thought it was obvious.”

“You did?” Neil asks guardedly. He glances at Andrew just in time to see Andrew glance at him. “So—which one of us is it?”

“I—oh, this is awkward,” Paige says. “I really—I really didn’t think I’d have to tell you.”

Neil and Andrew wait expectantly.

The song ends; Paige picks up her phone and starts tapping at the screen.

“So which one of us is it?” Andrew asks. “Which one of us is the clown?”

Paige pinches the bridge of her nose—is she imitating Neil?—and sighs. “Look, I mean—you’re making this really weird for me. I thought you’d figure it out. So just—I mean—just think about it. Just—really _think_ about it, okay? You’re both smart. I know you’ll get there in the end. Okay?” She stands and walks out of the room.

Natalie looks up. “Where’d she go?”

Which one of them is it? “I don’t know,” Neil says vaguely. That’s odd behavior for Paige. She’s usually more—upbeat. Is she having friend issues too?

“She was supposed to— _ughhhhhhhh_ ,” she groans, throwing her head back before getting up. “I’ll gofhner,” she mumbles, voice trailing off as she heads out of the room.

Neil has no idea what that meant, but the kitchen is now devoid of children, which means that Neil can look at Andrew.

They stare at each other for a minute.

“It’s probably me,” they say simultaneously.

Andrew shuts his eyes as Neil stifles a laugh.

“Well, no, because—” they try.

They pause.

“I’m older so I go first,” Andrew says, holding up one finger. Neil nods and gestures for him to continue. “I usually end up sitting in a corner until you come in and make me part of the party. You usually end up center of attention.”

“Not on _purpose_ ,” Neil argues. “And anyway, I _literally_ paint my face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with makeup on.”

They stare at each other.

“Are we _both_ me?” Andrew asks.

“Then who’s our husband?” Neil asks.

They stare at each other.

“Trying to think of a man who isn’t related to us,” Neil says.

“Kevin?”

Neil shakes his head. “Related to me via Dan.”

“Dan isn’t related to you.”

“By marriage. Matt is basically my brother.”

“Clark?”

“Oh, yeah, we know him.”

Andrew peers closely at Neil. “You know, I don’t really know what level of forgetfulness is common, for other people. I can make educated guesses, but the concept is basically meaningless. You could get dementia and I could miss it.”

“You’d notice a difference, probably,” Neil says. “Also, next time you tell me I’m supposed to experience sexual attraction, I’m going to tell you that you should forget things.”

Andrew hums.

Neil watches him consider and discard counterarguments.

Andrew leans over and kisses Neil’s cheek. “You don’t have to think I’m hot when I drive.”

Neil snorts. “Thanks for the permission. You don’t have to forget about when I spilled my heart and soul to you and your response was _pikachu_.”

Andrew shivers theatrically. “The difference is that you _like_ being ace—”

“Yes,” Neil agrees.

“Whereas I would sacrifice a cow to any given god if it would allow me to forget that.”

“There must be a god of memory, right? All I know is St. Anthony—he’s the saint of lost things, right? That’s close?”

“I see the logic, but I’m not sure it checks out,” Andrew muses. “But Greek mythology has Mnemosyne, she’s the goddess of memory, the mother of the muses—but she was usually called on to _stop_ forgetting—I mean, there’s the river Lethe, but that’s not really a _god_ , I’d have to _go_ there to drink from it, and I think it’s _total_ forgetting—”

“You _think_? What, did you _forget_?”

“I mean, it’s Greek mythology, I’m not an expert. It’s not like I read _sources_ , I just—went to school, most of the time. Okay. Hang on. If I die and drink from the river Lethe, are you willing to go on a mission to find me and bring me back?”

“Of course,” Neil says. “The _real_ question is, how do I charm my way in? Who was it—it was Orpheus, right, who played music really well?”

“You’ve got a certain amount of natural charm,” Andrew says, waving a hand as Neil laughs so hard and so suddenly he starts choking on his own spit. “Just play it up. Hey, look, just look at Hades and Persephone like they’re aliens and you’re down to either shoot them three times or spend some time studying them to learn how humans work, and then say something about—I don’t know, your life—and they’ll love you, no worries.”

“I don’t—I don’t think that’s how it works,” Neil says, grinning.

“Yes, it is. You say _Are we? Friends?_ And they’ll be willing to upend the rules of life and death for you. Or, fuck, ask if you can just stay. Say something about how it’s nice to not have to worry about dying, start talking about how nice it would be to just chill, and they’ll hand me over and _beg_ you to leave.”

“That’s not charm.”

“No, it’s more the—the Jean Moreau method. Sure, you saved his ass, but he doesn’t want you anywhere near him. You pop down to he Greek afterlife and tell them you’re happy to stay to preserve the rules, and you even brought three _new_ souls down as a gift—”

“Who am I _killing_?”

Andrew shrugs. “Go find Ichirou, kill him, you’ll die immediately but that’s the point—and they’ll put you right back into your body. You’ll have to come dig me out, but I’ll deal with that, just don’t cremate me.”

Neil squeezes Andrew’s hand, takes a breath, calms the sick feeling in his stomach. “I don’t like talking about you dying. Or being buried.”

“This got a little morbid,” Andrew concedes. “But, anyway, if they tell you I’m going to follow you out as long as you don’t look at me—don’t turn to look for me.”

“Well, of course,” Neil agrees. “I can always fight my way back in.”

“Now, _can_ you?” Andrew asks. “I mean—you can’t _kill_ them.”

“Well, but can they kill _me_? Then they’re just helping me achieve my goal.”

“Well, but—but—wait. Okay. Hang on. Is the goal to stay alive and bring me back? Or to die so it’s easy to get in, and then make them give _both_ of us back?”

Neil shrugs. “It’ll be harder to get in alive, but then I only have to convince them to bring one person back to life. If I die ahead of time—”

“Pre-dying.”

“If I pre-die, it’s easy to get in, but harder to convince them. Although then maybe it’s just an escape? Could we _escape_? I’m there legally, I mean, they don’t have to know I’m there for any special purposes.”

“I mean, I imagine escape is nigh impossible,” Andrew points out. “Otherwise the world would be overwhelmed.”

“That’s fair. But consider: I’m me, and you’re you, and together, we have _many_ useful skills.”

“Most of our useful skills involve hurting and killing people, though. Which isn’t useful when trying to escape the land of the dead. Well, I can bake, I guess. Persephone ate a pomegranate, and she had to _peel_ that, I could probably accidentally feed her cake or something. I don’t know what would be in it that she’d have to let us go, though.”

“And _that_ begs the question— _can_ we escape? I mean, would we have _bodies_? I can’t imagine we _would_ —I’d think that half the point of getting permission would be that part of the deal involves us getting bodies back.”

“ _Our_ bodies, or just _any_ bodies? We know they can do _any_ bodies,” Andrew says, waving a hand, “because reincarnation is a thing. So are we being _reincarnated_? If so—I mean, Greek reincarnation generally doesn’t involve _remembering_ previous lives, so do we remember each other? I guess by definition, dying and then coming back _is_ reincarnation—unless—does that require—a new body?”

Neil is already looking it up. “Yes. Yes, it requires a new body. Otherwise, probably it’s just coming back to life.”

“Hey, would you still love me if I was in a different body?”

“I should be asking _you_ that question,” Neil counters. “I find you very aesthetically pleasing, but that has really no bearing on _why_ I love you.”

“That’s true. Yes, I would. I’d probably manage to find you hot even if you were ugly.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Maybe I’ll ask Hades and Persephone to put me back in a body that looks like—I mean, what _is_ your type? I look _nothing_ like Roland.”

“Why are you comparing yourself to _Roland_?”

“He’s the only point of comparison I have,” Neil says defensively. “I don’t know anyone else you’ve been attracted to. Except, I mean, the odd celebrity, but that’s different, right?”

Andrew’s laughing at him. “Are you asking my _type_?”

“I did just literally do that,” Neil agrees.

“We’re married.”

“And I’m curious.”

Andrew shifts a little in his chair so he can look directly at Neil.

“I believe you’ve said in the past—and correct me if I’m wrong—”

Andrew gives Neil a _look_.

Neil grins. “But you’ve said you had a crush on me from approximately two hours after meeting me sober, and I looked _very_ different then than I did when we initially hooked up. So I’m curious.”

“You don’t even know anything about this _concept_ ,” Andrew points out. “You don’t know jack shit about _types_.”

Neil shrugs. “This is very educational for me.”

Andrew shrugs right back, almost defiantly. “I don’t know, why am I supposed to know?”

“Do some data analysis,” Neil suggests.

“ _Data—_ Neil, you’re an idiot.”

Neil flips a hand in agreement.

Andrew flips a hand right back. “I don’t know, I—men are attractive. Most men are sexy. We have had sex multiple times in the past week and this is the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had.”

“Ever?”

Andrew’s eyebrows twitch. “It’s possible that I’ve had more awkward conversations, but have just never cared before. But—I find many men sexually attractive. I don’t have a type, as far as that goes, I just have—people who remind me too strongly of people I don’t want to think about, and people who don’t.”

“So when you said you’d be willing to blow me? Hey, I hope our kids aren’t listening right now.”

“I’d assume they’re not, or else we’d have heard about it. Just because I think someone’s hot doesn’t mean I’m actually willing to have sex with them.”

“I’d assume, but how the fuck do you _decide_? I can’t imagine my _personality_ was particularly endearing.”

Andrew stares at him.

Neil waits.

“Literally, yes, Neil, that was it. Are you stupid?”

“Yes?”

Andrew lets go of Neil’s hand, leans in, takes Neil’s face in his hands. “Neil, you dumb piece of shit, I was—Neil, I _told_ you I had the world’s biggest crush on you. I _told_ you that. I—what? I—we’ve _had_ this conversation.”

Neil shrugs. “There were also multiple times when you told me to talk about something that wasn’t exy, and I couldn’t do it.”

“You—no, you _couldn’t_ do it. I didn’t—you’re so fucking dumb, Neil, I swear to god—it wasn’t just because you were _available_ , it was—Neil, you fucking know I love you, right? You know that I love you? You know that I have loved you for a very long time? Even if I didn’t want to admit it? Neil, I decided I was willing to have sex with _you_ because I _loved_ you.”

Somehow, this almost makes it _worse_. That was _not_ Neil’s reason for hooking up with Andrew, not initially. Even the second time, when—

When—

When.

Neil distinctly remembers the shock of being touched without hatred, with intent to please—and, these days, he’s lumped that in with love, because it’s similar enough, but—

Neil grins.

“What?”

Neil hadn’t known about Andrew’s memory. And he hadn’t read much into it, anyway. But he remembers Andrew standing up, looking down at Neil, and—

Staring.

Neil grins wider. That couldn’t have _possibly_ been to help Andrew collect himself. He wouldn’t have looked at Neil. That wouldn’t have helped. And if he’d wanted to see—he wouldn’t have needed seconds. He’d barely have needed a glance.

“What?” Andrew asks again, distinctly concerned.

“Did you love me?” Neil asks, grinning. “Was I pretty? Lying on the floor, thoroughly kissed, hands above my head—”

“Oh, shut up,” Andrew snaps, putting a hand on Neil’s mouth and pushing him away.

Neil snickers. “Didn’t just want a snapshot, either, did you. You needed to watch me _breathing_. Wanted a short video. A quick gif in your brain—”

Andrew’s face is in his hands. “I hate you so much.”

“—just to—isn’t that a song? Something about watching you breathe? Hey, your cousin was banging on the door, Kevin was in the next room, you needed to take time to _collect yourself_ , and instead of speeding it up even a little bit—”

“Hey, how is any of this a _surprise_ , did you just—have you just never used any kind of critical thinking? Just, never, in your life? Not once? Have you never even a little bit thought about _any_ of the time we spent together? Do you think I’m just—a sex bot, waiting to find someone who swings my way? What—I—”

“I have never used any critical thinking, I have never bothered revising my perception of any of the time we spent together, and no, I don’t think you’re a sex bot, I’m just generally confused regarding the concept of sexual attraction versus sexual action. I don’t know, _you’re_ the one who asked me a stupid question like whether or not I’d love you in a different body.”

Andrew tilts his head, staring at Neil at an angle.

Neil waits.

 _Sex bot_. Sex bot? Sex bot.

Andrew watches Neil.

Neil waits, aggressively patient. Andrew just said the words _sex bot_. Neil will remember that. He’s not sure what use it’ll have, but he’ll remember it.

“Would you love me if I was taller than you?”

“No.”

“ _Fuck_!”

Neil cackles as Andrew’s fist hits the table.

“I can’t little spoon someone who’s taller than I am.”

“I little spoon you _all the time_.”

“No, you lie on top of me, and if you were taller than me you’d _crush_ me.”

“I’m _already_ heavier than you are, and I don’t _crush you_.”

“You _do_ crush _on_ me, though.”

“We’re _married_.”

Neil snorts. “Why do so many of our arguments boil down to _we’re married_?”

“Because you’re an idiot—”

“Hi,” Neil says as Paige’s head appears in the doorway.

Paige’s cheeks turn red. “Hi. Um. I probably should’ve just eavesdropped.”

Andrew snorts.

“But. Um. Is everything okay?”

Is everything okay?

Why _wouldn’t_ everything be okay?

Oh. Neil meets Andrew’s eyes—Andrew removes his hand from the table.

“I wasn’t punching the table because I was angry,” Andrew says. “It was a joke.”

“Oh,” Paige says. “Okay.”

“Neil said he wouldn’t love me if I was taller than he is.”

Paige blinks.

Neil _watches_ her make the effort to not roll her eyes.

“Well, wait,” Natalie says, appearing behind Paige. Eavesdropping, then, must have been the initial plan—Neil can practically see Paige sticking her head in, ignoring Natalie’s silent screams. “Taller than he _is_?”

“Well, not taller than I _was_ ,” Neil says. “I used to be short. When I was a kid.”

“You’re still short,” Natalie says. “But I’m saying—are you going to hit a growth spurt, dad? Or, like, is this a hypothetical scenario wherein you have a totally different body?”

Andrew turns towards her a little, interested. “We were talking about reincarnation, so a whole different body.”

“Then is pops _also_ in a different body?”

“The answer can be yes.”

“Then is it about being taller than pops is _now_ , or taller than pops would be in a different body?”

“No, taller than however tall I happen to be at the time,” Neil says. “I don’t care if he’s five-foot-seven, as long as I’m five-foot-eight.”

“Even in your _fantasies_ I can’t break six feet,” Andrew says, injured.

Neil cackles. “If it makes you feel better, neither can I.”

“You two are _supposed_ to be short, that’s a universal law,” Paige says absentmindedly, waving a hand. “I guess _we’d_ have to be six feet, though.”

Natalie nods. “That’s fine. As long as we’re taller.”

“Now, why do _you have_ to be taller?” Neil asks.

“Because what are we going to do, be _shorter_ than you? No,” Paige says. “That should be obvious. The _real_ issue is, when you two get old, will you _shrink_? And, pops, will you shrink faster than dad? Are you gonna be 90 years old getting a divorce because you shrank four inches and dad’s too short to shrink?”

“Yeah, Neil,” Andrew says, turning on him. “Are you going to divorce me when I’m old and brittle just because I’m too short to shrink?”

“I find it offensive that you think I’m going to get shorter. _I_ exercise too much to shrink.”

Neil gets three stares for that.

“Is—is that how it works?” Paige asks.

“I—isn’t it?” Neil asks, now equally uncertain. He looks at Andrew.

Andrew shrugs.

“Don’t you know everything, dad?” Natalie asks.

“No?” Andrew holds up a finger. “If I’ve learned it at some point, I’ll remember it. But there is a surprising amount of shit I’ve never learned about. Including why people shrink when they get older. _If_ they do. Assuming that’s not just a myth.”

“We could just google it,” Natalie suggests.

“Or we could live in confusion,” Andrew counters.

Thursday afternoon, Andrew sails out of the house in long sleeves.

Neil makes dinner. Helps the kids with homework. Considers asking Natalie to join him on a run, but she seems happier today—Neil takes it that no more flowers were given.

Andrew gets back home five minutes before the stream is set to start, and he is _glowing_.

Neil follows him up to their bedroom, the kids splitting off to their homework room to watch the stream, and grins as Andrew turns to him.

“ _Speechless_ ,” Andrew enunciates. “He was _speechless_. Aaron was _perfect_. _Oh, hey, I don’t think I’ve seen the ring?_ ”

Neil snickers.

“ _Oh, yeah, didn’t you hear? Neil proposed to Andrew again, since they didn’t get engagement rings the first time—_ I didn’t correct him on the iffy nature of the _again,_ of course— _he made a whole big deal of it, did it on the beach, got my blessing just to be formal about it—_ and, oh, wow, Roland was so happy for me, and he couldn’t say _shit_ , because what was he gonna say? That he’s happy you love me? I’d have just had to say that of course you do, I didn’t need a ring to prove that—”

“So it was good,” Neil surmises, grinning wider.

“ _Extremely_ good. Anyway, I get to brag to the public about it now, right?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Let’s go,” Andrew says, sitting down in his seat, waving Neil over.

Neil has created a monster.

He sits down, and decides he doesn’t mind—and then Andrew puts two fingers under Neil’s chin and pulls him in for a kiss, and, no, Neil doesn’t mind at _all_. 

He pulls away, checks the clock, runs a finger through his hair, and starts the stream.

Again, it goes from 0 viewers to five digits within seconds, and Neil stops looking. Can’t do that, can’t handle that, doesn’t need to know about that. “Hi,” he says, glancing at the chat, which is bunches of _hi’s_ and _hello’s_ and is giving him a headache. “Still don’t really know how to start this, but—we—” the chat asks, in hundreds of different voices, if this will be a regular thing. “I don’t know if it’ll be a regular thing,” Neil says. “Definitely not during the actual exy season—no time.”

“Or, there _is_ time,” Andrew corrects, “but we have kids to spend that time with.”

“Correct. _How are they?_ ” Neil says, reading the chat. It’s like watching a flock of birds fly from one tree to another—a little roundabout, and some losses along the way, but the main body of the chat moves together. “They’re fine.”

“Rude,” Andrew adds. “But fine.”

The flock of birds moves— _rude? They’re kids of course they’re rude_ —

“No, you don’t get it,” Neil says. “Paige was sitting in the kitchen with us yesterday and she puts on this song. _Me and My Husband_ by Mitski. And Andrew and I were like, oh, that’s sweet, until it got to the part about being a clown in a corner, and we asked Paige which one of us was me and which one was my husband, and she said—”

“ _Oh,_ ” Andrew says in a high-pitched voice. “ _I thought it would be obvious. I didn’t think I’d have to tell you._ ”

“And we went back and forth like that for two minutes, with her refusing to tell us which of us is a clown, before she got up and _left._ And _that’s_ rude.”

“She still won’t tell us which one is which, by the way.”

“ _Extremely_ rude. And yes, I know she’s watching this,” Neil says, reading the chat. “I’m doing this on purpose. Anyway, the point of this stream is—oh.” He grins.

_What did you get Andrew for his birthday?_

The question is appearing now, with all different punctuation and wording, with and without emojis, the chat moving so fast it practically blurs.

“Wanna tell them?” Neil asks Andrew. _Wanna brag?_

“They don’t know the story,” Andrew says. “You have to tell them the story.”

“Do you want me to tell it? I’m biased.” _Would you like to brag, Andrew?_

“So am I. It’s your gift, you tell the story.”

“Okay.” Neil settles back in his chair. Clearly, Neil has to do some pre-bragging. “When Andrew was in his senior year of college, I got hit by a car, and ended up in the hospital. He could only come during visitation hours, of course, because we weren’t married, and when he finally got in to see me, he was pissed—well, worried, but he was pissed. So I apologized, and promised to be safer, and said the words: _Stay with me until we die of old age?_

“Now, to _me_ , that was a reference to the fact that I’d told him I no longer had a gang on my ass and would get to die of old age—”

“And to _me_ ,” Andrew breaks in, “It was a direct reference to _’til death do us part_.”

“I will say he didn’t say yes,” Neil says, picking up the thread of the story. “So it’s not like I had the opportunity to correct his misunderstanding. He didn’t even _nod._ He just stood there for a minute and then took a deep breath and calmed down. And then a few days later, thinking literally nothing of it, I’m out of the hospital, doing my homework, and—”

“I’d assumed it would take him a long time to do anything about it,” Andrew breaks in.

“Do you want to tell the story?” Neil asks politely. _Andrew, would you or would you not like to brag?_

“Maybe. Look, he was injured, he didn’t have a car, I didn’t want to live in sin—”

“Liar, you were in love. Anyway, he comes bursting into our dorm and just drops a wedding ring into my hand, and tells me we may as well do the deed, and a week later we’re married. He insists I proposed. I would like to point out he literally got me a wedding ring. Anyway.” Neil raises his voice over Andrew. “Fast forward to maybe a month ago, when I mentioned on live TV that he proposed to me, and he freaked out, because maybe I hadn’t _wanted_ to marry him.”

“ _Freaked out_ is maybe a bit extreme.”

“It’s accurate. And I was sitting there thinking, well, for his birthday present, he can be right. I’ll give up my version of the story. He can say that I proposed.”

 _Not a great present,_ the chat says. _And you’re not really following through, tbh._

Andrew reaches over with a tissue and wipes Neil’s mouth.

Neil stares at him.

“I was wiping that smug look off your face,” Andrew says.

“Sorry, it’s smear-proof. Anyway. He can say I proposed, as long as he specifies that I did so _after_ we got married.”

Neil watches the chat’s confusion, followed by understanding.

Andrew snorts, reaches across Neil to grab his left hand, and holds their hands up in front of the camera.

“Anyway, we’re engaged now,” Neil says, grinning at Andrew, who does not look particularly displeased. Who is, in fact, staring at Neil, and Neil’s fairly certain that the staring is _not_ part of the bragging.

“You like that, huh,” Neil asks in Russian. “Me saying we’re engaged.”

“And what of it?” Andrew asks, letting Neil put his hand down.

Neil shrugs and switches back to English. “Anyway, I got him a ring and a proposal. We called our parents immediately to tell them the good news—”

Andrew huffs half a laugh. “My parents already knew, of course, as you asked their permission.”

“Of course. It was always very important to you that your parents be consulted.”

“I’m a very traditional guy,” Andrew says, deadpan. “The joke here, for anyone in chat who doesn’t get it,” he continues pointedly, “is that my mom is dead and I don’t know who my dad is. That said, Neil _did_ get my brother’s blessing.”

“But, in keeping with our usual order for these things, I didn’t get his blessing until _after_ I’d already bought the rings. And picked them up. And shown them off to half my extended family. Wymack and Abby still don’t know,” Neil says with dawning horror.

“No, I’m sure they do, I told Bee and I told her to tell them.”

“What? They didn’t even call—no congratulations—”

“We didn’t tell them. I’m surprised _you_ didn’t tell them, though. Didn’t include them on the call wherein you tried to figure out how to propose to me.”

“Didn’t occur to me to ask them, honestly. Not a one of them has any experience in the matter. Anyway, are we arguing or what?”

“We usually are, yes,” Andrew says, with half a glimpse of a smile. “First question is from Shufflepunk. How cooked does bread need to be in order to be considered toast, versus just warm bread?” He turns to Neil and waits expectantly.

“I’d think it’s about the crunch,” Neil says thoughtfully. “The—crunchy on the outside. Possibly also on the inside, but definitely on the outside.”

“And toast is toast whether or not it’s warm,” Andrew agrees. “I would also argue that toast is a _window_. If it’s black and crunchy all the way through, then it’s just _burnt_ bread.”

Neil considers this. “Well, can you see through it?”

Andrew raises his eyebrows in Neil’s direction. “No?”

“Then I’d argue it’s not a window, at all.”

The look of absolute resignation that falls over Andrew’s face is absolutely, without a doubt, worth the way the chat is flying now, a flurry of keysmashes and other things Neil can’t read.

“I can’t believe I married you,” Andrew says.

“I can’t believe you were so happy when I proposed to you.”

“Me neither. Honestly, if you’d told me that—that—I won’t call it a _joke,_ but—if you’d said that to me, I’d have said no.”

“Too late now,” Neil says cheerfully. “You’re stuck with me.”

“There’s always divorce,” Andrew reminds him.

“You’ll have to give me back the engagement ring.”

“What? Why? It’s mine now.”

“So I have something to give you when I propose again. I am _not_ creative enough to come up with a whole second set of rings.”

Andrew nods understanding. “That’s fair. Speaking of our impending divorce.”

“I get one kid, you get the other, one of us moves to London, in a few years they meet up at camp and perform some wacky shenanigans to get us back together?”

“While I would absolutely pay money to see you in shambles with curlers in your hair over having to see me again—”

“I don’t think he ever saw her like that in the movie.”

“I _know_ he didn’t, but you wouldn’t deny me that joy. But no, I was—”

“Hang on, we’re divorced, why _wouldn’t_ I deny you that joy? I’ll put curlers in my hair specifically so I can tell you I used them and you’ll never get to see it.”

Andrew turns to face Neil. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t try me,” Neil warns.

Andrew considers this, and then shrugs. “Okay, we won’t get divorced then. Anyway, _speaking_ of our impending divorce, where’s that magazine that said we were getting divorced?”

It takes Neil a second, but—“I think it’s in my bedside table.”

“It is not, it was in the kitchen, what did you do with it?”

“Put it in my bedside table,” Neil repeats, getting up. “Thought it might make for some light reading.”

“ _Light reading_?”

Neil shrugs. It _is_ in his bedside table—under most everything, because he’d moved everything around to hide the rings. He brings it back to Andrew and sits down. “What, wanna go through it _live on camera_?”

“Maybe,” Andrew says, flipping through it. “Oh, hey, they have a source close to us.”

“Who?”

Andrew makes a face. “ _A source close to the couple has revealed that constant arguing has taken a toll on their relationship. ‘They argue about everything,’ the source said in an exclusive interview, ‘from what’s for breakfast to how to pay for things. It’s tearing them apart—assuming they were ever really close in the first place.’ What does that mean? The source continued: ‘They hated each other in college. Even when they were hooking up they denied that there was anything more between them—and they hated each other then, too. The Foxes were all a little weird like that—they all hated each other and they all dated each other. As a psychologist—_ who is this, Bee? Do we know any other psychologists?— _I can say with some certainty that growing up the way they both did destroyed their idea of a healthy relationship. Right now, the healthiest thing for them would be divorce.’_ Well, that wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be. Who do we know who’s a _therapist_?”

Neil stares at him, racking his brain. “Not someone particularly close to us,” he decides. “We didn’t all hate each other, and we _definitely_ didn’t all date each other. What’s the likelihood that this is literally all made up?”

“Pretty high,” Andrew says after a minute. “I mean—that _all_ sounds like an outsider’s perspective. Also, _rude_. ‘A little weird like that,’ my ass.”

“Is there anything fun in there, at all?” Neil asks, taking the magazine. “Oh, here— _There’s plenty of speculation regarding how this would affect the Jaguars. Sources are divided. One expert told us: ‘At this point, you’re not just looking at a Josten vs. Minyard scenario—you’ve gotta get Day in there, too, and account for how he will react. Whose side will he take? Is he loyal to either one of them, or to the team? Or is his only concern the sport? At first glance it seems like Josten would stay with the Jaguars, and Minyard would return to Oregon—_ ”

“In their dreams,” Andrew mutters.

“ _But it’s distinctly possible that Minyard is a better investment than Josten—”_

“Now, _that_ might be true—hitting is bad, Neil.”

Neil pokes him again. “Shut up. _In which case it’s very possible that Josten might go to New York, where he has friends. It’s worth noting that most of the ex-Foxes are friends with Josten, not Minyard—_ oh, _definitely_ an outsider— _and thus moving to New York would be a good move for him. But again, Day is the wildcard here. Would he stick with the Jaguars? He chose to go to them before Minyard joined the team, but_ _—_ hey, why do they care so much about Kevin? It’s _our_ divorce.”

“Are we married to _Kevin_?” Andrew asks.

“Not to my knowledge. I didn’t get him a matching ring, anyway.”

Andrew snorts. “Well, if my ring is the color of your eyes, and your ring is the color of my eyes, is Kevin’s ring the color of _his own_ eyes?”

Neil laughs. “Well, hang on. Maybe it’s the color of _both_ of our eyes. I mean, he’s coming into this relationship a bit late, he’ll have to bribe and flatter his way in.”

“What’s he bribing us with? We don’t exactly need money.”

“Probably, more Japanese lessons.”

“We can get those anywhere,” Andrew says, waving a hand. “I want something _unique_.”

“It’s your turn to come up with something, I already tried.”

“We should call _him_ and make _him_ come up with something.”

“So, to recap,” Neil says, grinning, “you want us to call our friend and ask him, without context, what he’s willing to give us to bribe his way into our marriage?”

“You say _without context,_ I say that if he’s not watching right now he doesn’t deserve us anyway. Make the call.”

“Well, hang on, shouldn’t we vet him first? We don’t want to put in a bunch of effort if it’s going to go poorly anyway.”

“What vetting process did you have in mind?”

“Well, if he has to watch this in order to make it in, then he should know to call us in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1.5…1.4…1.3—oh, fuck—” Neil doubles over laughing as his phone rings, Kevin’s name popping up. _He passes the phone to Andrew, blissfully free of the urge to laugh, who answers it.

“Hey, what the fuck is going on?” Kevin asks. “I just have this stupid stream on in the background while I wash dishes, and suddenly I have to call you so I can marry you? I don’t _want_ to marry you. I don’t like _either_ of you that way.”

“Now, you could have just not called,” Andrew says. “You could have just not called, and we’d have lived our lives in disappointment, but you _did_ call—”

“To tell you to start arguing again, not to find a way into your _marriage_. What do I have to do with anything, anyway?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Andrew asks, offended.

“Barely. I’m literally washing dishes, the water’s fucking loud, what do you want from me?”

“A lot, but the point is, there’s this article in this magazine about how Neil and I are getting divorced—”

Kevin laughs.

“That was our reaction, too, so we bought it. Anyway, they have an unnamed sports expert speculating on what it’ll mean for exy—”

“An expert I’d trust with my life, I’m sure,” Kevin says drily.

“Yeah, they also have an unnamed psychologist who happens to be close to us who says that all of us Foxes hated each other and dated each other.”

“False. I hated all of you, for sure, but I never dated any of you, thanks very much. I have _taste_.”

“I won’t argue, _Thea would murder me. Anyway, this expert spent two sentences saying that Neil and I might do just about anything, but that _you_ are the real wildcard here, and he doesn’t have any idea what you would do.”

“Probably move to Ireland and play for them,” Kevin says. “Fuck this shit, I’m out. I’ve got better things to do than mediate for you two—”

“What makes you think we’d ask you to mediate?” Neil asks.

He can _hear_ the look Kevin is giving him.

“We both have therapists now,” Neil says. It’s a half-hearted argument, and Kevin’s silence says he knows it. “It’s not like we bring our arguments to you.”

“You don’t argue, so that’s not a good argument. More _importantly_ , you’re actually right about that, you’re much more likely to go to dad.”

“We argue sometimes,” Andrew says defensively.

Neil looks at him.

Andrew shrugs.

Kevin laughs. “Are you trying to argue with me by lying about arguing with your husband?”

“Maybe. Fuck off. Yeah, we’d talk to Wymack. Hey, you know what? It’s been a while since I broke into his house to rant at him, I should—”

He’s cut off by Neil and Kevin laughing. 

“As is traditional, of course,” Kevin says.

“Well, yes, do you know how often I complained to him about you? When he found out you were his kid he must’ve been going— _ah, shit, Andrew told me that—_ ”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Kevin warns.

“Don’t what?” Andrew asks innocently.

“Say whatever you were about to say.”

“What? Oh, that you—”

“No one will ever find your body,” Kevin says loudly. “I’ll swear Neil to secrecy—”

“I want nothing to do with it,” Neil says preemptively.

Andrew looks at him. “You won’t even protect me?”

“Well, of course I will, but if I fail, I’m walking away.”

“Won’t even seek revenge?”

“Oh, that could be fun. Kev, what do you bet I could take you out?”

Kevin snorts. “I’m not betting on that, I know full well you could slaughter me. Long-range, to be fair. I’m better with an exy racquet than you are, but as long as you stayed out of reach I’m sure you’d do me in nice and quick.”

“I’ll be honest, I’m a little offended by the implication that given a racquet I couldn’t hold my own in—”

The door opens and Paige and Natalie burst in, Paige carrying King.

“Cake or pie?” Paige asks. “Personally, I prefer pie, because it comes in a little package.”

“Disagree,” Natalie says, flopping down on Neil and Andrew’s bed. “If you cut the pie it is no longer neatly packaged, so that only works for a personal pie, and also, cakes are sweeter, and _furthermore,_ pastry is disgusting.”

“Lies and slander, lies and—”

“Were we getting off-topic?” Neil asks.

“The topic has been begging you to come home for around 20 minutes now,” Natalie says. “Cake or pie? Oh. Shit. That’s from—um—a—Accioice. Accioice.”

“Cake,” Andrew says. “For obvious reasons. Kevin?”

“Oh, if you guys are back on your shit, I’m going. I still have a pan to wash. Pie, though, because it can contain veggies.”

“ _Blasphemy_ ,” Andrew hisses, but the phone beeps—Kevin has hung up. “Neil, if you say pie, I’m going to tell Wymack about it at 4 in the morning tomorrow.”

“You’d never get up that early, don’t make threats you can’t follow through on. I _do_ like cake better, though. Not for any real reason, just that I like fruit all on its own and don’t see the need to put it in more sugar.”

“Snob,” Natalie says.

“Maybe so,” Neil agrees. “But my husband makes the world’s best cakes, so—I think it’s a good choice nonetheless.”

“Moving right along,” Andrew says, and he’s flustered, and that’s adorable, but he barrels right along too fast for Neil to mention it. “Bluejaycancrochet says: _honestly the only thing my nuisance sister and I wholeheartedly agree on when it comes to food is ‘any food can be made better by adding either cinnamon or ketchup’_ and I would like to raise you: eggs.”

“No, there are people in Pennsylvania who eat eggs with ketchup,” Neil says.

“They do _what_?” Paige gasps. “That should be _illegal_.”

“Seconded, but nonetheless. Any other suggestions?”

There’s silence.

“Broccoli?” Paige suggests.

“Maybe,” Andrew says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

“Potato chips? Wait, no,” Natalie mumbles. “That’s just fries.”

“Pasta,” Andrew says finally. “I’m sure you _could_ put ketchup on it, but you should probably be beheaded for it.”

“Is that the best we’ve got?” Neil asks, frantically searching his brain. The problem is that by and large, if it contained calories, he’d probably have eaten it, at certain points in his life.

“You haven’t come up with anything,” Paige accuses.

Neil shrugs. “What _wouldn’t_ I eat? Maybe—orange chicken. Or teriyaki chicken.”

“I’ll make them both and we’ll try them,” Andrew decides.

“We will?” Natalie asks, popping up. “I won’t. I remember the poptarts.”

“Coward,” Paige says immediately.

“Fuck you, I’ll eat the chicken with weird shit on it.”

“Ketchup and cinnamon don’t qualify as _weird_ _shit_ ,” Paige argues.

“They do when they’re on teriyaki chicken. Anyway, are you guys back on track?”

“We can be,” Neil agrees.

“Untamedphoenix asks _ice cubes or crushed ice_? And the answer to that depends on the drink. Crushed ice melts faster.”

“Unless they’re talking about which one you’d want to _eat_ ,” Neil argues. “In which case, crushed ice.”

“Who the fuck eats _ice_?”

“People. Look, sometimes it ends up in your mouth, okay?”

“ _When_?”

“When you have to run out of a restaurant but you’re not going to _waste_ cold water so you just dump it down your throat and chew ice on the way out.”

“Is—does that happen _often_?”

“Not anymore, no. I was a kid. But more importantly—crushed ice is _way_ easier to chew, and you really don’t want it sitting in your mouth for too long or you get brain freeze.”

“When you were a—okay. We’ll take your word for it, because I’ve never eaten ice.”

“Really?”

“Really. Some of us don’t do that.”

“Well— _never_?”

“Never.”

Neil stares at Andrew, who is staring right back at him, and concludes that he is telling the truth.

“It’s been a while,” Andrew says, turning back to the camera, so we’ll answer one more question. Lavar asks: _are you a morosexual, Andrew Minyard?_ And the answer is yes.”

“No argument here,” Neil agrees.

“So with that—good night, all, and we’ll see you—maybe next Thursday, maybe not.”

“It depends on how bored we are,” Neil chips in.

“What he said.”

Neil ends the stream. Did that—was the viewer count in the _millions_? For _that_? He puts his head on Andrew’s shoulder.

The kids burst in two seconds later.

“That was—I mean, there was that lengthy period where you just talked about getting divorced and then talked about getting married to Kevin, which was weird,” Paige says.

“As weird as weird gets,” Natalie agrees as Andrew and Neil stand and turn to face them. “Like, what the fuck, weird.”

“But other than that, hey, it seemed fun.”

“Tell me what Eliana thinks?” Natalie begs. “Just—just tell me what she says. I want to know. Actually, when she calls, grab me and put her on speaker.”

“That bad, huh,” Neil surmises, squeezing Andrew’s hand. He doesn’t particularly care if it was bad. It was fun, all the way up until he remembered that other people were _watching_. It really shouldn’t matter. He plays exy in front of more people than that on a regular basis. But exy isn’t about _him_ , it’s about how he _plays_ , which is—different. 

“I mean, no, it was fine,” Paige says. “You just—forgot to argue.”

“We argued plenty,” Andrew argues. “About—whether or not we should marry Kevin, I think.”

“The answer is no, right?” Neil asks.

“Obviously,” Andrew says, staring at Neil.

“Just checking. Anyway, did you guys want to do anything before we go to bed?”

“Nah,” Natalie says, turning and heading out of the room.

“What she said,” Paige says. “Good night.” She hugs Neil, hugs Andrew, laughs when Natalie doubles back for hugs.

“We could do stuff,” Andrew suggests when they leave.

“Like what?”

“Sex. Read books.”

“I’m down to read.” And maybe not even that. He just wants to be near Andrew until he stops feeling—exposed.

“Books it is,” Andrew agrees. “Did we lock up?”

“Nope.”

They make their rounds of the house, and are in bed by 8:30. Andrew throws his ankle over Neil’s as they read.

Well, they can always change their names and move to New Zealand, if need be. But for now—

Neil leans over to kiss Andrew’s shoulder, and goes back to his book.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shufflepunk on ao3 is Sirfatcatmccatterson, a name which they noted would be real weird in-universe.


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliana calls. They go to dinner with Kevin and Thea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK WHAT TIME IT IS!!! no one should be staying up late to read this this week. please get some sleep. 
> 
> also, thank you everyone for being so nice while I took a break! thanks to everyone who reached out to make sure I was alive! and to everyone who started reading these past couple weeks: welcome! please also get some sleep. 
> 
> I know there's a couple comments I missed, I'll be on 'em in a hot second.

The call wakes Neil up.

He blinks twice, and then locates his phone, clears his throat, and answers it. “Hello?”

“Neil, good morning! Eliana here, I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

He checks the clock. 8:30. That’s reasonable, he supposes, although Andrew’s groan says otherwise. “You didn’t, no worries. How can I help you?”

“She _did_ ,” Andrew grumbles.

“I—Wendy Williams thinks you’re both serial killers who should go to jail for life, and also, incidentally, that you two are getting divorced.”

“Wendy Williams can suck—” Neil stops. He recalibrates. He needs to be more awake.

“No, she can’t,” Andrew tells Neil’s chest. “Only I get to do that.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I can read between the lines.”

“Does he know I can hear him?” Eliana asks. “And do you know that I can hear you?”

“She can hear you,” Neil tells Andrew.

“And I can hear her. Neither of us are happy with this situation, but _one_ of us created it, so it’s not on me to make this pleasant.”

“He didn’t realize you could hear him,” Neil tells Eliana. “I don’t care about Wendy Williams.”

He can hear Eliana repressing a sigh. “Well, I guess it’s fine—that segment where you read the magazine article about the two of you went over like a cloud, actually, people loved it. Wendy Williams hated it, because of course she did, but there’s a couple twitter essays and youtube videos about how tabloids are bullshit and you can’t believe everything you see in a magazine. There’s a few celebrities who have spoken out in agreement—I’ll get you a list—and people enjoy that, they like feeling like they’ve been lied to and those lies are being exposed. People liked that Kevin Day was involved. I would like to once again, from the bottom of my heart, _beg_ you to stop talking about violence and murder like they’re a part of your daily life, and, please, Andrew, I know I’m not your PR person, but for the love of god, don’t talk about breaking into people’s houses.”

“It was a consensual breaking-and-entering,” Andrew says, “albeit an unknown one. And I didn’t even break anything. I just—stole alcohol, usually.”

“Don’t say that.”

Andrew waves a hand.

“He says he won’t,” Neil says.

Andrew flips him off.

“I’m just—hey. Guys. Both of you. The whole _point_ of this was to show off the fact that these days the two of you are very non-violent, very normal. Please _pretend_ that it’s true.”

“It is,” Neil argues.

Andrew snorts. Loudly.

Neil wraps his arm around Andrew’s head to cover Andrew’s mouth. Andrew sticks his tongue out and licks Neil’s palm. Neil doesn’t move. That’s not going to gross him out. He’s had Andrew’s tongue in his mouth, he’s not going to complain about having it on his palm. “It _is_ ,” he repeats. “Notice how we’re not in jail?”

“That’s not a comforting argument, Neil. I need you to volunteer at an animal shelter and spend the next stream talking about your time with little puppies. Pictures would be appreciated.”

Neil laughs.

Eliana does not.

“Are you serious?”

“I realize I can’t force you, but I’m also not kidding. It would do wonders for your image.”

“I would like to see you with puppies,” Andrew mumbles into Neil’s hand.

“I’ll consider it,” Neil tells them both, patting Andrew’s cheek.

“Wet,” Andrew grumbles. “Gross.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“I don’t want to be here for this, so I’ll hang up now,” Eliana says. “I just wanted to say—there’s distinct room for improvement, and if you don’t do some improving, I’m probably going to get fired. My job is hanging over your head, Neil, so get it together.”

“If I get you fired I’ll help you start your own PR company. You’ll get Fridays off.”

“Not if you keep streaming Thursday nights, I won’t. Talk to you later.”

“Bye. Oh. We won’t be streaming the week after next, that’s Thanksgiving.”

“Yup. You _are_ streaming next week?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I’ll put out a press release about it. Talk about making it a regular thing. Can I quote you? Give me something.”

“I don’t know, what am I supposed to say?”

“Something about how great it is to connect with fans. In a—ah—in a space where you can be vulnerable and authentically yourself.”

“It’s great to have this opportunity to connect with fans,” Neil recites. “Especially in this space where we can be so authentically ourselves. I’m not saying we’re vulnerable.”

“People would eat that up, Neil. Like candy. They’d love to think that, first of all, you _can_ be vulnerable. Second of all, it gives the idea that you’re giving your fans some special treatment, access to you that they wouldn’t otherwise get, and again, Neil, that’s good for your numbers, it’s good for your reviews, and it points your audience in the direction we want them to be thinking in. We don’t want them thinking about this as scripted, or in _any way_ inauthentic—”

“It’s not scripted, and it is authentic to a nigh-problematic extent,” Neil points out. Andrew’s gone silent; Neil glances down at him, but his eyes are closed. Trying to go back to sleep, in spite of it all.

“And if we tell them that this is you being vulnerable with them, they feel like they’ve been entrusted with something, like they’ve got ahold of a secret of some kind. And people like that. And it means that when you say something we need to apologize for, we can write a letter about how hard it is to be vulnerable and authentic, and how sometimes being unscripted means you say the wrong thing, and how you’re going to try harder.”

“Why are you already planning for a fuckup?” Neil brushes his fingers through Andrew’s hair. He has nice hair. Neil can see Andrew’s ribs, rising and falling in time with his breath.

“You’re human and you’re saying things unscripted, at a rapid pace, in front of hundreds of thousands of people. You’re going to fuck up, Neil, it’s inevitable. If we plan for it now, it’ll be easier to handle when it happens, and we’ll have a faster response. Prevention is better than a cure, but sometimes you catch a disease anyway.”

Neil slides his fingertips over Andrew’s scalp. “Then write what you want to write.”

“I need you to sign off on it.”

Neil closes his eyes. He wants to go back to sleep. “Read it off and I’ll sign off.”

“We’re excited to have this opportunity to connect and engage with our fans, _said Josten, speaking from his home Friday morning,_ ” Eliana reads off. “Andrew and I are thrilled to have this space where we can be so open and authentic, and can show people who we truly are.”

Andrew seems to be peacefully sleeping, so Neil withholds his reaction. “Great. I’m officially signing off on it.”

“No one who watches those streams will think you said that.”

“Well, then, why’d you say it?”

“I’m trying to figure out something that sounds authentic, but can still be run by the media.”

Sir’s paws hit the mattress, soft and weightless. She pads across the bed. Neil tries to shoo her back, but he can’t move fast enough to surprise her without waking Andrew, and gently, tentatively, she puts a paw on Andrew’s hand, steps down, wakes Andrew up. Andrew catches his breath, but he doesn’t jump, doesn’t throw Sir across the room, doesn’t slam a fist into Neil’s ribs, just—opens his eyes. Lies perfectly still as Sir steps up and curls up in the dip of Andrew’s back.

“Andrew and I have been in the public eye before,” Neil says slowly. “So we value our privacy. But if people are going to take advantage of that to spread rumors about us in an attempt to take away our kids, we’re willing to speak out and show people who we are. Andrew and I are grateful for the opportunity that our fans have given us—to reassure people that Natalie and Paige are safe with us. Also, to speak and be heard, and correct some misinformation about us that’s out there, and to be ourselves, even in public.”

“Yup,” Eliana says absently. Neil hears her fingers flying across her keyboard. “Yes, that’s good. I’ll publish that. Maybe add something about how much you helped the FBI. Your harrowing childhoods. Are you dedicated to giving your kids a better childhood than the one you had?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Great. Okay. Did you think you’d be doing several of these? Do you have plans to stop?”

“I have no idea,” Neil says. “I think we’ll do them as long as people send us arguments to have, and as long as people are willing to listen.”

“Good. Okay. I need to write this up and send it out. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye,” Neil says.

“Bye.”

Neil hangs up and lets his arm fall straight so he can put his phone towards the edge of the bed.

He takes a deep breath. That’s one thing dealt with. Not like it had much to do with him, but at least it’s out of the way.

Andrew’s hand twitches, and then finds its way up Neil’s shirt to rest against his ribs. Neil breathes against it, warm and undemanding, and lets Andrew’s hair slip through his fingers.

He drifts, for a little while. Not asleep, but not awake, not aware. Andrew’s hair is silky, his hand is warm. Sir is purring, loudly.

He feels it when Andrew’s fingers curl, though, and blinks. His eyes have been open. He’s been blinking, he’s fairly certain, because his eyes aren’t burning.

He kisses Andrew’s scalp.

Andrew presses his face into Neil’s chest. “You drive me fucking crazy,” he says, voice muffled by Neil’s shirt.

“You’re welcome?” That must be the appropriate response, right? That’s all Neil’s got, anyway.

“Why do you drive me crazy?”

“I assume you’ll tell me,” Neil says, not awake enough to formulate a better response. “Is it because my PR agent wakes you up?”

“Maybe. Hey, you love me a lot, don’t you.”

“I do. If this is your way of trying to bribe me into hanging out in an animal shelter and letting puppies pee on me, I’d like to remind you that the only reason Sir was allowed to pee on me was because she was your cat.”

“That would be nice, but it was just an observation.”

“It is a correct one.”

“No, I mean—you got me a whole ring and proposed just because you _love_ me that much.”

Neil looks at him. His face is still pressed against Neil’s chest, voice still gritty with sleep. Is there a chance he wouldn’t say this if he were wide awake? Yes. Should Neil stop him? Not in a million years. Neil runs his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “That’s true.”

“And I just—I just—I can’t hold it all. I can’t—I want other people to confirm. To see it and agree that it’s real. Because I—they think—I don’t care what they think. They think I’m violent and unhappy and I exist to make people miserable and—whatever. I sound like I’m drunk.”

“A little.”

“I should just stick with Shakespeare and poetry.”

“No, you can keep going.”

“You just like listening to me ramble.”

“You know, I thought you were talking like that because you were half asleep, but you’re doing just fine now.”

“Shut up or I’ll shut up.”

Neil zips his lips.

“I just like having such a—a visible, clear indicator that—that whatever I am, I’m not—unloved.”

“You’re not. You are deeply, _deeply_ loved.”

“ _I_ know that. But I can’t have you and my friends following me around all the time talking about how much you love me. I just like—being able to—show people.”

Neil rubs the space between Andrew’s shoulder blades.

Oh.

Neil doesn’t know how he feels about that.

Anger, of course. Always. Because people didn’t love Andrew as he deserved to be loved, because they still don’t. But—well, happiness is there, Neil is fairly certain. He knows how to identify that one. And love. And—he doesn’t know what else.

His emotions have gotten complicated, recently, and he doesn’t know what to do about that.

But that’s a problem for later, not for now. He kisses Andrew’s hair. “I love you.”

Andrew doesn’t answer, but Neil feels his hands curl against Neil’s skin, feels Andrew’s lips on his collarbone, feels it when Andrew takes a breath. Andrew loves him, too.

“We have to get up,” Andrew says a few minutes later. “Clean. Go grocery shopping.”

“Do yoga,” Neil adds to the list.

“Meditate,” Andrew tacks on. “You know what we’ve never done?”

“What?”

“Use our bathtub.”

Oh.

That’s true. They turn the tub on, once every few months, to make sure a pipe hasn’t burst or something. To make sure it still works. But they’ve never used it. Maybe they should start—Neil can imagine a bath would be nice, during exy season. Especially early on, when their muscles are still getting used to daily exy. Although unless they shower first, they’ll just be bathing in their own sweat, which sounds gross more than relaxing, and even if they _do_ shower first, Neil can imagine that there’ll still be _something_ coming off in the water, so they’d have to shower _again_ —

“Neil?”

“Sorry, thinking about exy.”

“I hate you.”

Neil snorts. “Baths would probably be nice during exy season, but we’d have to shower before and probably after, too, because just _sitting_ in water doesn’t sound very hygienic.”

“It’s not exy season, right now.”

“No, it’s not.”

Andrew lifts his head up, meets Neil’s gaze, and pointedly rolls his eyes. “Neil, would you like to take a bath _with me_? At a non-exy time?”

Oh. “Oh. Yes?” Neil reorganizes his idea of what kind of _we_ Andrew is talking about.

Neil can see Andrew’s desire to roll his eyes and roll away, but he doesn’t. He stays. “That’s an enthusiastic response.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Neil says. “I mean—if you’re comfortable with it? Sure. What do people _do_ in the bath?”

Andrew shrugs. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“Ah. We’ll enter the bathtub and our minds will expand.”

“We’ll gain the knowledge and wisdom of the bathers.”

“The bath bombs, as they call themselves.”

“Oh, we should get a bath bomb,” Andrew says. “That’s a necessity, right?”

“I thought it was bath salts?”

“No, you’re behind the times, it’s bath bombs now.”

“Ah,” Neil agrees, nodding.

Andrew stretches up to kiss Neil’s cheek. “We’ll pick one while we eat. Get up.”

“You’re on top of me,” Neil protests, but Andrew’s already rolling off of him.

Neil gets up and trails Andrew to the bathroom, admiring what’s visible of Andrew’s back under his pajama shirt. It’s a very nice back. Neil is a fan, personally.

They brush their teeth, allowing Neil to tap two fingers under Andrew’s chin. Andrew tilts his head up for a kiss.

“You only love me because I’m a good kisser,” Andrew murmurs.

“Maybe I only think you’re a good kisser because I love you, have you ever considered _that_?”

“You take that _back_ , I am an _incredible_ kisser.”

“Says whom?”

“ _Whom._ Oh, I love you. Says my many other partners, all of whom have complimented me on my kissing technique.”

“It’s been a while, though, since you’ve had anyone who would tell you the _truth_ ,” Neil says, pulling off his shirt. “Maybe you’ve gotten bad since—”

Andrew is there, when Neil gets his shirt out of the way, wrapping a hand around the back of Neil’s neck and pulling him down.

Five minutes later, Neil gives up. “Okay, okay, I surrender,” he says breathlessly, hands tangled in Andrew’s hair.

“ _I don’t kiss well enough_ ,” Andrew grumbles, releasing Neil. “I kiss well enough for _one_ person, at least. Jackass.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Neil agrees, grinning. Maybe he should insult Andrew’s kissing technique more often.

The cats follow them downstairs, meowing up a storm, informing Neil and Andrew that they have not been fed, that they were not let out of the room when the girls got up, that instead of feeding them Neil and Andrew spent five minutes making out in their bedroom, and that that was _incredibly_ thoughtless.

Neil feeds them. “I deeply regret the struggles you’ve experienced this morning,” he tells them. “At House Minyard-Josten, we do our best to give everyone top-tier treatment, and we are saddened to hear that this has not been your experience.”

“You spend too much time talking to Eliana,” Andrew says.

“Thanks for the feedback. What would _you_ say to them?”

“We’re not sorry,” Andrew tells the cats. “You’ll survive. Look, Neil even gave you extra for your troubles.”

Neil puts the cat food away. He has nothing to say for himself. He _did_ give them extra for their troubles.

“You should be _excited_ when we spend time making out and talking about taking baths together," Andrew says, still talking to the cats. "It means you can con extra food out of Neil.”

“Or out of you.”

“I would _never_.”

“You would, and it wouldn’t be a mistake. You know _exactly_ how much food they’re supposed to get, without measuring. When _I_ do it, it could be a mistake, I don’t know how much they get.”

“Normal memory isn’t _that_ bad. You don’t get that excuse. Get the blueberries?”

Neil washes the blueberries. He meets Andrew at the table.

Andrew pulls out his phone. “What _scents_ are we looking for in a bath bomb?”

“More importantly, what’s the _mood_ we want to create?”

“Ah, good point, oh wise one. Do we wanna get sexy with it?”

Neil chokes on a blueberry. Successfully swallows it without dying. “Maybe a combo? Relaxingly sexy.”

“Oh, like we both woke up in the middle of the night and we’re tired but also have erections.”

“I was thinking more like we’re both feeling very hyped up, but after sex, we’re ready for a three-day-long nap.”

“I think that’s just normal.”

“Is it?”

“Probably. Have you ever smelled _vetiver?_ ”

“No. What does it smell like?”

“No idea, that’s why I was asking. Maybe we should do this in-store.”

“Ask for recommendations next time we stream.”

“That too.”

They eat. They clean.

They don’t bother grocery shopping. They can do that tomorrow, with the kids.

“Do you want to meditate with me?”

Neil considers. He _had_ said he’d take up meditation.

He has a therapist now, though, so does he _need_ to?

Can it hurt?

“Do you think it would be better to meditate before or after yoga?”

“After, probably,” Andrew says. “After working out is better, right?”

“Probably. Want to do yoga with me?”

Andrew sighs. “I should.”

Neil shrugs. “You don’t have to.”

“I may as well.”

“You can stop if you get bored.”

“Okay. You can, too.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Neil hooks his laptop up to the TV so they can both watch the video, and Andrew stretches out his yoga mat with a look on his face that clearly communicates the fact that if exercise was not necessary for his continued existence, he wouldn’t be doing it. Neil counts this as a victory: Andrew cares enough about staying alive that he’s willing to do things he doesn’t like to stay healthy, and that’s nice to know. Nice to think about.

Is there such a thing as _fun_ yoga? Does that exist? Or maybe they should just play hopscotch. Whatever it takes. What do kids do? _They_ don’t seem to have any issue running around all day long. Maybe he and Andrew should play tag. Next time Andrew wants to have sex, he’ll have to tag Neil.

Neil scraps that. If he insists on that one, he and Andrew will never have sex again. Andrew isn’t fast enough.

Neil could slow down. Make it a little easy.

He has a sudden vision of himself half-jogging through a field of daisies, giggling, and dismisses that, too.

They push up into downward dog. Andrew sighs.

Neil is supposed to be focusing on his breath.

He counts each breath out. He’s good at counting. He can do that. He zones in, mind empty of everything that isn’t 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. His lungs fill and empty. He stands in tree pose. No emotions here. Nothing complicated. Just him and warrior 3.

Andrew always does just fine at the balancing poses. Neil might be a little jealous. Maybe.

But not here, in yoga. He’ll be jealous afterwards.

Not _directly_ afterwards, though, because Andrew scoots across the floor and pulls up a guided meditation.

Meditation is harder than yoga.

Neil’s body is doing _nothing._

It’s a little easier this time, though, which Neil attributes to the fact that he can still feel his muscles relaxing, letting go of their work. It’s something else to focus on, something for his body to do.

Do his morning zone outs count as meditation?

Actually, maybe they _do_.

Actually, maybe not. He’s supposed to be focusing on the breath, and in the morning, he’s usually not thinking about the breath at all.

Maybe next time he should make Andrew sit on him. The weight might help. Feeling Andrew’s back expand against Neil’s chest might help.

Maybe Neil should just get a weighted blanket.

Would Andrew be offended?

Maybe Andrew would be offended.

The weighted blanket would, quite literally, be intended to replace him, albeit only during meditation.

Neil can’t imagine another situation where he’d need to replace Andrew’s weight, anyway.

Maybe an _Indiana Jones_ -esque scenario.

He can picture himself there. _You’re on a weight-sensitive trap? If you stand up, it will set off a bomb? Hang on—I have 4 weighted blankets here and a bag of flour. I can replace your weight down to the ounce_.

Neil doesn’t laugh. He’s meditating.

Blessedly, the meditation ends, and Neil opens his eyes.

Andrew looks at him.

Neil looks at Andrew.

“Well?”

“You did yoga first, you answer the question first.”

“You didn’t even ask—yoga was all right. Annoying. How can I focus on my breath when I’ve been holding plank position for ten minutes? Ridiculous. But I should probably exercise more, and I’m _not_ running, so—fine. How was meditation?”

“You know that scene in _Indiana Jones_ where he replaces the egg or whatever with a bag of dirt or something to avoid setting off a weight sensor-based trap?”

Andrew gives him a look of deepest suspicion. “Yes?”

“That, but with you and several weighted blankets. And a bag of flour, for better precision.”

Andrew looks like he’s on the verge of losing his mind. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Replacing you with a weighted blanket. I’m wondering if meditation would be easier if I had weight on me, like I do in the morning, when I’m kind of just drifting?”

“I could just sit on you.”

“That’s what I was thinking, but I didn’t want to disrupt your meditative experience.”

“Ah. I appreciate the thought, but as long as you don’t get a hard-on while I’m sitting on you, it would probably be fine. Actually, sitting on you would lift my hips above my feet, which is the ideal way to meditate anyway, so—”

“It is? Then what do _I_ sit on?”

“I don’t know, a meditation cushion or something?”

“Why were we sitting on the floor?”

“Because fuck it, that’s where we were for yoga, you wanted me to _move?”_

“Well, when you put it like that.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

Neil takes Andrew’s hand and kisses the back of it. Kisses his rings.

They turn on Property Brothers.

They get a text when the kids are on the bus, and a text when the bus approaches the house. Neil is, therefore, prepared when he hears the key in the lock.

“Wanna go for a run?” Neil asks Natalie when she walks in the door.

Natalie shrugs listlessly. She looks angry. Or depressed. One or the other. Both. “I guess.”

Paige watches her walk up the stairs, and then zooms silently into the living room. “Dave gave Tina a pen today,” she whispers. “I think Natalie has a crush, but I don’t think it’s on Dave.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Neil whispers. He stands, puts his hands over his head, and stretches, dead certain that Andrew is staring at him. That’s fine.

He waits for Natalie by the door, doing a couple warm-ups.

Natalie joins him, half-heartedly does similar stretches, and then leads the way out the door.

Neil lets her set the pace, the direction, the path. She knows her way around now. She doesn’t need his help.

She takes them along a familiar route, putting them by the woods at the point where she slows to a walk. She catches her breath in silence.

“So what’s up?” Neil asks. Blunt? Yup. Much gentler than he would’ve been in the past, though, so—improvement.

“Nothing,” she snaps.

They keep walking.

“It’s just, like,” she says, each word containing an ocean of fury and a bottle of grief, “why am I always going to be second? Like, look, okay, you grow up, and then you and your friends all get married and spend all your time with the person you married, and then you have kids, and then you don’t have time for anyone else anyway, and you get together on holidays and call each other on birthdays for five minutes and then you _die_ , but what if I _don’t_ get married? Like, whatever, that’s fine, I don’t care, but then everyone _else_ is going to get married and they’ll have _someone_ to be friends with and I’ll have _no one_ , and don’t be like _family is forever blah blah blah_ because it’s not the _same_ , I just don’t want to be an afterthought for everyone forever.”

“Ah,” Neil says inadequately.

“And, like, it’s not like I _don’t_ want my friends to be happy, it’s not like I _don’t_ want them to fall in love and date and marry or whatever, it’s not like I’m gonna—gonna go full serial killer and trap them in my basement, I’m not even gonna be angry, I just—I just don’t want to be _second_ forever, I don’t want to—I don’t want to go to work and come home and have no friends except on my birthday, I don’t want to be begging people to hang out with me once a year, I don’t want to be the only idiot in my grade who isn’t dating someone and has to third-wheel all the time and I—”

She stops.

They keep walking.

“I just don’t want to have to date to have someone who thinks I’m important.”

Neil links his arm with hers. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers.”

“I _know_.”

“But what I will say is—there’s probably someone out there who feels the same way you do. Probably lots of people. And probably, you’d get along with some of them. Be best friends with them. Just because you haven’t found anyone like that now, when you’re 14, doesn’t mean that you won’t find them, ever.” She’s quiet, letting him tow her along. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t want to make it sound like he’s saying she’s just a kid. Is she aro? Does it matter? “I think that if Andrew and I managed to find each other—the only people in the world we could ever love—you’ll be able to find someone who makes you the most important person in their life, whether or not you’re dating. Whether or not you’re in love. Fuck, whether or not they’re in love with someone else altogether.”

“Do _you_ know anyone like that?”

Ah, the one question he’d hoped she wouldn’t ask. “Not really.”

She snorts pointedly.

“But I also never went looking for people like that. And Dan is probably going to move across several states to make sure she’s within driving distance of her best friends. And we all came from all over the country, but we’re all settling down here, within driving distance of each other, on the same team if applicable—except Nicky—because the _rest_ of us are here. If Wymack, Bee, and Abby had all packed up after we’d graduated and moved to Idaho, we’d probably all have followed them, one at a time, and rebuilt there. Even if Andrew is the most important person in my life, he’s not the _only_ person in my life, and he knows that. And vice versa. Kids make it a little harder, but we’re getting back into things. And, shit, we said we couldn’t hang out because we’ve got kids and all our friends just shrugged and started coming to _us_. We have _really_ good friends.”

“Mm.”

“The point is, things will change, and you won’t see your friends every day at school, and sometimes they’re going to be gross-ass teenagers making out and you’re going to want to eat lunch alone just to avoid them. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be lonely forever, or all the time. I think—I think—” he doesn’t want to say she doesn’t need to be scared of that, _shouldn’t_ be scared of that. He doesn’t want to tell her her fear is unjustified. Andrew would never tell her that. “I think there will come a time when you will wish you could tell your 14-year-old self not to be scared of that.”

“Future me can go fuck herself, I _am_ scared.”

Nope, he’s fucked it up. “I’m not saying you _shouldn’t_ be, I’m just saying that—Andrew and I do it all the time. Look back at things we were scared to do and did anyway, and we wish we could encourage ourselves. Wish we could tell ourselves that our bravery will end well.”

“And how the fuck am I supposed to be _brave?_ Join a club for fucking lonely losers?”

Neil shrugs. He didn’t prepare for this. He didn’t have time to look over his proverbial notes. “Just—keep going. Making friends even if you’re scared they’ll leave. Making plans even if you’re scared they’ll be broken. Trying again, I guess.”

“You’re the shittiest inspirational website out there.”

“I am not peer-reviewed.”

Natalie sighs. Slouches. “I don’t know, can’t I just be fucking depressed like a normal person?”

What is Neil supposed to do with _that_? “I don’t know, _can_ you?”

“ _May_ I?” Natalie snarks.

“You _may_ , but it would be nice if you didn’t.”

“Oh, are _you_ going to lecture me on controlling my emotions?”

“No, I’m just saying that—I get it—”

“Oh, _do_ _you_?”

“Ask Andrew how often I said I didn’t swing. Feel free to call Nicky and ask him just how alone I was, and how alone I always thought I’d be, and about the time he said I couldn’t grow old with the exy court and I said _yes I can_. Yes, I get it, but—but just because you _think_ something is true, or even if it _is_ true _now,_ doesn’t mean it will _always_ be true. And—giving up, just because you can’t imagine how things could change, is a good way to make sure they never will.”

She bumps into him, gently, reminiscent of the way Neil sometimes pushes Sir’s head when he’s reaching for the cat food and she’s in the way. When he glances at her face, though, she looks unhappy.

And then her face twitches. “It’s really funny that you’re too short to put your arm around my shoulder.”

Neil stops just short of pulling a Natalie-esque eye roll. “Thanks.”

She snickers. “No problem, old man.” She tugs away from his arm and takes off.

Neil follows her. Did he help at all? Did he make any difference?

He’ll find out eventually. Maybe.

She heads straight upstairs when they walk through the door, and Neil heads into the living room as credits for _The Office_ play.

Paige swivels to face him as he flops down next to Andrew, King stepping neatly out of Neil’s way, digging his claws into Andrew’s thighs, and settling on the arm rest. “Will you come play exy with us next week?” Paige asks.

“Sure,” Neil agrees. “Want anyone else to come?”

“No. I don’t know anything? I don’t want people spiking the ball at my face. Or watching me fail miserably. You’ll go easy, right?”

“Yup,” Neil agrees. Maybe he’ll use a lightweight racquet. Make _sure_ he can’t spike it at her face.

Oh, it’s been a _while_ since he played exy. Nearly—nearly three weeks. Jesus. “When, next week?”

Paige shrugs. “Wednesday, maybe? The day none of us have therapy.”

“We’re actually pretty condensed,” Neil points out. “But hold off on that—I might end up hanging out with Riley that day.”

“Hang out with her during school hours. Or if not, bring her here, then we can hang out with her, too.”

“I’ll see what she wants to do,” Neil says noncommittally. Maybe he doesn’t _want_ to do more than one thing in a day. Also, he and Riley are _going_ to eat fries, and playing exy right after eating fries is—less than ideal.

Not that he’ll really be _playing_ exy. Just waving a racquet around.

 _Wanna hang out Wednesday?_ He texts Riley. _I_ _have received a request for you to come to my house to hang out._

“Maybe we can plan for Thursday instead? Just in case.”

Paige wiggles her head side to side thoughtfully, and then nods.

Natalie walks into the living room a few minutes later, showered and changed, phone in her hand, and says, to no one in particular, “I need Nicky’s phone number.”

Andrew looks at Neil. _What did you do?_

Neil purses his lips together. _I have to stop saying things._

Andrew’s eyebrows twitch. _The return of a lifelong problem_. He gives Natalie Nicky’s number.

“Do you think he’ll answer me if I call now?” Natalie asks.

“Maybe,” Andrew says. “Depends on how many spam calls from America he gets. I could also text him to let him know you’re calling.”

Neil’s phone buzzes—Riley. _YES_. _You watched sherlock right_

 _The BBC one, not the cool elementary one_ , says another text.

_I think you did_

Mm. _Yeah,_ Neil texts. _With Andrew. At Nicky’s behest. Neither of us liked it._

“Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea,” Natalie agrees.

 _Yes exactly_ , Riley texts back a minute later. _It was fucking terrible but anyway some guy made a video about WHY it was terrible and we’re gonna watch it_

 _How long is it?_ Neil asks.

_Like 2 hours? A little less_

Holy shit. _Holy shit,_ he texts back.

_Yeah but apparently it’s extremely good. I’ll bring popcorn_

_Do you think we don’t have popcorn?_

_I’m the one making you watch it, I’ll bring the good shit_

_The good shit?_

_Yeah neil the good shit. The gooooood shit. Tell andrew I’m bringing the good shit_

“Riley’s coming here on Wednesday,” Neil announces. “Not sure how late she’s staying, but, Drew, we’re watching some two-hour long video about why Sherlock sucked, and Riley said to tell you she’s bringing popcorn. Specifically, the good shit.”

Andrew turns to face Neil. “The good shit?”

“The good shit.”

Andrew chews on that for half a second. “Yeah, I’m in. Tell her I’m in. Also, Nat, you can call Nicky.”

Natalie must’ve had his number typed in and ready to go, because she hits one button and puts the phone on speaker.

It barely rings once before Nicky’s voice comes through. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Natalie says. “Natalie speaking.”

“Hi, Natalie,” Nicky says, sounding absolutely overjoyed about it. “Nicky speaking.”

“Neil told me I should ask you about how lonely he used to be.”

“What?”

“He said he used to be really alone, and that you’re the person I should ask about this.”

There’s silence for a split second, and then Nicky takes a deep breath.

Neil cringes against Andrew.

“So, look, this kid comes to us with nothing and no one. Okay? He has a _duffel bag_ and _everything he owns is in there_. Everything! Matt’s moving in in a U-Haul and Neil is wearing the same clothes he’s worn all week. He doesn’t have a phone. Wanna know why he doesn’t have a phone? Because, and I quote, _who would he contact_? Like, most of us had _acquaintances,_ even if we were trying to distance ourselves from them because they were terrible people we were maybe only friends with because things were shitty. Fuck, _Andrew_ had friends. Neil is sitting there just—if we weren’t talking to him, no one was. Ever. _Ever_. And even when we _did_ talk to him he was, like, _insistent_ on telling us to fuck off. I thought we were getting pretty close—like, you know, how humans do—and I mention that we’re friends and he fucking _freezes_. Like Han Solo in that one Star Wars movie where—you know what, irrelevant. He looks like I’ve just spoken his dirtiest secret out loud. He looks me in the eye and goes _Are we? Friends?_ And, Natalie, I have _never_ in my _life_ been more depressed about _anything_. Like, he had _no idea_ what to do with that. Like, I feel like at least five weeks of therapy are going to be dedicated to what happens to a human being when they’re that fucking alone, because it _can’t_ be _good_?”

Nicky pauses to take a breath, which might be the first one he’s taken since he’s started.

He takes a second.

“Okay, and then there was this time when—we’re studying, and he literally told me he was going to marry exy and that that would be enough. Like, I’m sitting there like _hey sometimes people are necessary, exy can’t hug you_ , and he’s like _yes it can_. Natalie, you need to understand that he really was intending for _the concept of the sport exy_ to take the place of basic human connection, which, actually, made me feel better when I found out he was dating Andrew, because _clearly_ exy was Neil’s husband, and if Andrew had managed to take that place then he couldn’t be _that_ bad—”

“He, Andrew? Or he, Neil?” Natalie interrupts.

“He, Andrew, I was _really_ concerned he was going to fuck Neil up beyond repair, but you know what? Neil got _more_ like a normal human being after they told us they were dating, it’s almost like maybe you need _people_ and _human connection_ in order to be human yourself—and then there was any time we’d go anywhere, and Neil literally spoke like an English textbook, like—no. Hang on. Like when you learn a language, and then you _go_ there and find out that that’s not how normal people speak? That’s how he spoke. Like he’d practiced saying everything in a classroom with thirty other people. And he’d talk to people like he was answering questions from one of those really annoying answering machines, where they’re like _if you’re calling for questions about billing, press one. If you’re calling for questions about shipping, press two_. And you’re sitting there trying to say it as clearly and emotionlessly as you possibly can so that the machine will understand you? Like that, but sometimes angry. Like, he acts like he worked hard to blend in wherever he went, and I’m sure he learned the language and whatnot, but I think his way of blending in was being such an asshole that no one noticed or cared about him, and it just so happens that _we_ were all such assholes that it didn’t _work_.”

“But, like, was he sad about it?” Natalie asks.

“What’d he do to you that you want to hear all about how miserable he was for a few months before we saved him with our friendship?”

“Nothing.”

“Mm. I’ll get it out of him later.”

Natalie’s head whips around to look at Neil, and Neil shakes his head frantically. _Nope. No, he won’t._

“But, anyway, he wasn’t, because I think he didn’t know he was supposed to be? Like. _To my knowledge_ he never had a breakdown in bed late at night over how alone he was and how alone he’d always be.”

“To your knowledge,” Neil says.

“ _Fuck_ , was that Neil?”

“Yeah?” Neil says. He can’t imagine his voice and Natalie’s are _interchangeable._

“Shit, you’re listening?”

“Yeah?”

“What, do you listen in on your kids’ conversations now?”

Neil refrains from rolling his eyes. “No, but when I’m in the living room and my kid stands in front of me and gets on the phone and puts you on speaker, I’m not going to _not_ listen.”

“I’m on _speaker_? Please _god_ don’t tell me Andrew’s there.”

“If you’re lucky,” Andrew growls, “I’ll forget what you’ve said by the time I fly over there for Christmas.”

Nicky shrieks. Natalie stares at Andrew. Andrew winks at her.

“Tell me everything you know or my dad will kill you,” Natalie tells the phone.

“About what? I’ll tell you anything!”

Natalie pauses. “I didn’t think that through.”

“Hang on, do you need a minute to come up with something?”

“Yeah.”

“Take your time,” Nicky says breezily. “Take your time.”

“Tell me embarrassing stories about our dads.”

“There was that time we caught them making out in the locker room, but that’s fairly garden variety,” Nicky muses. “Um—I’ll be honest, the two of them are kind of hard to embarrass, and the problem with this is that if I _don’t_ tell you something Andrew will kill me but if I _do_ tell you something Andrew will also kill me. And, like I said, unless you want to hear about the time I overheard Andrew threatening to gut Kevin if he came back to their dorm before two in the literal afternoon—”

“I _don’t_ ,” Natalie says emphatically.

“And even that is more embarrassing for you to hear than for them to hear. I mean, two in the afternoon—and this was _four hours in advance_ —they _planned_ the _largest conceivable stretch of time—_ I was more _impressed_ than—”

“I’m hanging up now,” Natalie says. “Bye.”

“Bye! Love you all! Seeyouatchristmas!” Nicky spits out before the line goes dead.

Neil grins at Andrew. “I remember that.”

“Me, too,” Andrew says.

“Oh, gross,” Natalie says, packing more scorn into the two syllables than some people manage in a lifetime.

“No, it wasn’t—look, Kevin was pretty anti-junk food, okay? Not completely—he wouldn’t turn down a free pint of ice cream—but he wasn’t—”

“That’s not why _I_ remember not wanting him to be there,” Andrew interrupts.

“Well, but it was a part, right? I mean, he’d have insisted on—whole wheat, or some shit.”

“That’s true,” Andrew agrees. “We were baking brownies on a hot plate and didn’t want him to be there if it went wrong, and we’d planned to start around 11, and I figured that three hours would give us enough time to air out the dorm if things went wrong.”

“To—what about the _smoke alarm_?” Paige asks, speaking up for the first time since Nicky got on the phone.

Andrew waves a hand. “Disabled it as soon as I walked into that dorm. Neil and I smoked.”

“Not usually in the dorm,” Neil specifies. “Just—when we were particularly stressed.”

“Don’t they—check?” Paige asks. “Like, to make sure the alarm is on?”

“Pretty much only on breaks,” Andrew says. “So I’d just fix it before I left.”

“Okay, wait,” Paige says, leaning forward, an intent look in her eyes. “So obviously, you wouldn’t _forget_.”

“No.”

“But did you ever _not think about it_?”

“The concept of a mental list is more literal for me than, I believe, it is for most people,” Andrew explains. “Before I do most things—leave the house, go to bed, leave a dorm for a break—I check my mental list of things I have to do. That’s habit.”

“What if you forget to remember to check your list?”

Andrew stares at her.

“What if you… don’t think about remembering to check your list?”

Andrew stares at her. “I legitimately don’t know how to do that. I wouldn’t forget to think about it.”

“Well, but you said it’s habit, right? So—what about when you’re first _forming_ a habit?”

“There’s no—I can’t forget the habit.”

“Don’t you ever get _distracted_? Don’t you ever—”

“I _can_ ,” Andrew says. “It’s just—it doesn’t—if I stop paying attention to time, I can lose track of that, because that—I can count time out perfectly, because I remember exactly how long a second is, and if I really want to, I can count out exactly how long a period of time is—so, say, if I’m trying to remember how long ago I put pasta in the pot, I could remember the whole time frame between then and now and count out each second and figure it out. But that takes a long time, and the longer the time frame I’m trying to recreate, the more annoying it is, so I don’t. For a while, I was _very_ aware of the time, but these days—less so.”

“Can you _think_ faster? Like, instantaneously?”

“Can I think instantaneously?”

“Like—does it take you two minutes to remember the last two minutes?”

“Not necessarily. I could speed it up.”

“How does that _work_?” Paige asks, staring at him. “Like, how do you remember every detail, and not—like, do you remember _patterns of dust_?”

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t that hurt your _brain_?”

“No? I don’t think so. It’s very possible that actually my brain _does_ hurt and I’ve never noticed. It would be normal for me.”

“Well, but you haven’t had this memory your whole life, right?”

Neil waits, patiently, for Andrew to run out of patience, but he seems engaged. Thoughtful. Maybe Neil _should_ have bothered him about his memory earlier than this. Then again, Neil doesn’t usually bug him about mental health shit—that’s Bee’s department.

Well, Neil will be here if needed. He squeezes Andrew’s hand—an offer of support—and Andrew squeezes back—offer noted, but denied, for now.

“That’s true. But how do I know if my brain started hurting once my memory _became_ photographic if it wasn’t photographic _before_ that?”

“There would be a difference.”

“A brain-hurting difference,” Natalie chips in.

“But would I remember it?”

“Do you get used to things?” Paige asks, apparently giving up on that. “Like, if something smells bad, do you know every second that it smelled bad?”

“When you get used to things, is it because you forgot about them?” Andrew counters. “Or because your brain stops processing them as important?”

Paige blinks. “I don’t know. Sometimes I forget.”

“But you only forget because you stop thinking about them, right?”

“I guess. Why don’t you tell more people about your memory? It’s cool.”

“Why do they need to know?”

Paige considers this for a minute, and then shrugs. “Like, a fun fact. When you—well, I guess you don’t really have job interviews. I don’t know, when you’re a teenager having a fun fact at the ready is essential.”

“ _Essential_ ,” Natalie emphasizes. “Otherwise you end up saying something stupid, like one time I told them I’d once skipped my homework for three weeks. That was my fun fact. In a _math class_.”

Neil snorts. “That _is_ a fun fact.”

“No, it wasn’t! My teacher docked me points on every assignment because he figured I’d cheated to get it done, it was a _bad fun fact_.”

Ah. “No, it was a good fact and a bad teacher. Do you have shitty teachers now?” Hang on, hang on. “If you’re getting bad grades you don’t deserve, you’ll tell us, right? We’ll go in there.”

“You think we deserve bad grades?” Natalie snaps.

“No, I’m saying I have no idea _what_ grades you have,” Neil says, calm, eyebrows in a neutral position, “but we’ve been doing your homework with you regularly, so I’d think they’d be good. But if they’re bad and it’s because your teacher is being a jackass, we’ll just go get them.”

Natalie narrows her eyes at him, trying to figure out if there’s something wrong with what he’s said. _Is_ there? Neil reviews it a few times, finding nothing, until she sits back. “No, we’re doing fine. We’re—we’re actually doing good.”

Neil grins. His kids are doing fine.

“You’re been working hard,” Andrew says. “I’m proud.”

Natalie gets up and walks out.

Andrew glances at Neil— _what did I do_?

Neil shrugs. He has no idea.

They look at Paige.

Paige shrugs. “ _I’m_ happy, anyway. Oh. What’d you talk about?” she asks Neil. “When you went out?”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It is,” Neil admits. “But I’m not telling you. It’s hers to tell you about, if she wants.”

Paige examines him.

“I think I have a crush,” she says abruptly.

Neil has gotten whiplash before, but never quite like this. “Oh?”

“Was that a test?” Andrew asks. “To see if we’d spill your secrets?”

“Maybe.”

“What if Neil had started telling you?”

“I’d have yelled at him. Are you going to ask me about my crush?”

“What’s their name?” Andrew asks.

“Her name is Diana,” Paige says, and even though she’s the one who started this conversation, a blush is creeping over her cheeks. “She’s in the grade above me, but we’re in the same science class, and she’s been helping me at lunch.”

“Helping you with what?”

“Bio,” Paige says. “That’s why I haven’t needed so much help recently, she’s _really_ good at it, and also this is her second time taking the class—she has a sleep disorder and last year bio was her first class of the day, and she ended up missing too many days so even though she got an A she has to retake it. She’s on meds for her sleep issue now, though, and she says they’re okay, but when she’s an adult she’s going to try to find a job that doesn’t make her work mornings so she doesn’t have to take them anymore. Also, can you bring me to the bookstore soon? There’s this book series she really likes, and I want to read it.”

“Sure,” Andrew agrees easily. “Maybe after exy practice? Diana sounds really cool.”

“She _is_.”

“If you want to bring her over, that would be fine.”

“We’re not _dating._ ”

“You’ve hung out with Sandy, and the two of you aren’t dating,” Neil points out.

“It’s different,” Paige and Andrew say at the same time.

Neil puts his hands up in surrender. This isn’t his area of expertise.

“Is there anything else you want to tell us?” Andrew asks.

Paige shrugs, looking vaguely annoyed, like she isn’t the one who started this.

“Then I have a question.” Andrew waits until he has her attention. “Which one of us is the clown in the song?”

Paige sighs, and now she _does_ look uncomfortable, and Neil can’t blame her, because she didn’t start this one. “Okay. Look. You guys asked, and I hadn’t thought about it, and I didn’t know what to say, and I just said the first thing that popped into my head, okay? I don’t know! I don’t know. You two can figure it out because I have no thoughts on the topic.”

Disappointing.

How much of Natalie’s current anxieties are because Paige is sitting with and talking to someone else at lunch? When she was talking about losing her friends, was she talking about losing her sister?

Maybe both.

Andrew didn’t even _know_ his brother and the idea of losing him was so difficult that Andrew backed Aaron into a promise to stay by Andrew’s side. Natalie’s spent her whole life protecting her sister, and now, the second they’re someplace safe, Paige is eating lunch with someone else, crushing on someone, spending time with someone else. Not to hurt Natalie, that much Neil knows, but—nonetheless, Natalie is hurt.

Neil represses a sigh. Next time, they’re not getting babies _or_ teenagers. They’re going to adopt 40-year-old adults. Teenagers are too difficult.

Andrew has just said something, and Neil has missed it.

Paige is standing, shrugging.

“Don’t forget, we’re leaving in an hour to go to Kevin’s,” Andrew calls after her as she heads for the stairs.

“Yup,” she calls back.

Andrew looks at Neil.

“Is telling you what Natalie and I talked about off-limits?” Neil asks in Russian.

“I have no idea, is it?”

Neil considers this.

He and Andrew are a packaged deal, but—but, they’re not. “I guess it probably is. She’s lonely.”

“I know the feeling,” Andrew says.

“That’s what I told her. That’s why the phone call.”

“Ah.” Andrew shrugs. “Can’t make friends for her, can we?”

“Nope,” Neil agrees.

They sit in silence for a minute, contemplating, before Andrew gets bored. He reaches under the coffee table and pulls out _Much Ado About Nothing_. “Read to me?”

Neil kisses his cheek and flips through the book until he finds their place. Andrew flips around and lays down on his stomach, head in Neil’s lap, so Neil can rest his hand on Andrew’s back.

Neil reads until it’s time for them to go.

Natalie and Paige come downstairs, silently, still skipping the squeaky step. One day, maybe they won’t. Or maybe it’ll be habit long after the trauma is gone.

Neil locks the door behind himself, and follows Andrew to the car.

The house next door is throwing a party, when they arrive at Kevin’s.

They have to ring the doorbell twice before Kevin answers the door, the dark look on his face foreshadowing doom for his neighbors.

“Didn’t hear you,” Kevin says, loudly. Neil can’t tell if the volume is so that he can be heard over the baseline, or so that his neighbors can hear him.

The door closing behind them drops the volume, but Kevin’s hands are twitching, and Neil can sense the desire to pick up an exy racquet and go over there.

“They said last week was a one-off,” Kevin explains, leading them into the kitchen, where at least the noise is minimized.

Thea is pacing the kitchen floor, looking dangerous enough that Neil almost wants to leave. “Oh, good, you’re here,” she says. “I need the two of you to go over there and murder everyone in that house. I assume you’ve come armed?”

“Yeah,” Andrew says. “We could do it. Do they have cameras? We need some recon info.”

“We’ll watch your kids,” she says, nodding at Natalie and Paige. “That’s good enough.”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about the existence of cameras. Do they have a doorbell camera? A Ring? Do you have disposable clothes, and a place where we can put them? Have you thought this through at _all_?”

“Not to mention, it really won’t solve the immediate problem,” Neil adds, swinging himself into a chair. “I mean, we don’t want to make the timing obvious. It’s really useful that we can’t hear their voices—loud music is good for that—so no one in the neighborhood will be able to pinpoint the time when they all die, but that does mean we can’t turn the music _off_.”

Thea throws her hands in the air. “Useless.”

“It would solve the problem long-term,” Neil offers, in consolation.

“We could just _move_ , long-term,” Thea mutters.

“Not a _bad_ idea,” Kevin agrees, tentatively, leaning against the counter. “The real question is _where_?”

“Literally anywhere else,” Thea says, pointing in the direction of the noise.

“Can we go sit in the living room?” Paige asks.

“Sure,” Kevin agrees. “Don’t break anything.”

“You’ve got a toddler and also breakable things?”

“Rude. No, I don’t. Go away.”

“Rude, yourself,” Paige snipes, before turning and leading the way out of the kitchen.

Kevin twitches, and then frowns. “Is it weird that I almost flipped off your daughters?”

“Maybe? Sorry, continue with your _where to move_ conversation,” Neil says, gesturing. “I’m invested. _Our_ neighborhood is really quiet.”

“Are you bragging, or offering an alternative?” Thea asks. And then she makes a noise of dismissal. “Too far away from our parents, anyway. Don’t want John to spend _all_ of exy season with a babysitter—next year he’s starting school, which helps, but—still.”

“I thought you wanted to get away from your parents?” Neil asks.

“No, I want them to not have any say in whether or not we take our toddler to Disney. I _do_ want them to be involved in taking care of my child, because the alternative is constant babysitting.”

“Don’t want to pay?” Andrew asks.

“Don’t want a babysitter having that much—control of my kid. I don’t know, I just don’t like the idea.”

Neil and Andrew glance at each other, and then at Kevin, who gives them the world’s smallest shrug. A babysitter probably would’ve been better for the three of them than anything they’d actually gotten, but—well. Oh well.

What would Neil’s life have been like if he’d had parents who cared about him so much they wanted him to be with family all the time? Not the way Mary and Nathan had done it, not the way they’d left him with Lola so often, but—lovingly. Wanting him to be safe.

They probably wouldn’t have managed it. If he’d been born to that kind of family, he wouldn’t have been lucky enough to be born into one of the rare few that could raise their kid without a babysitter. Or maybe his family would’ve gotten frustrated with him and it would’ve turned out poorly regardless.

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand.

Is it—

Is it possible that—

Is Neil incapable of even _imagining_ a world in which he’d had a good childhood? Is Neil that fucked up, that even when he tries to imagine parents who loved him, he can’t make it work?

Neil feels it again. That weird feeling, from before, that’s something like sadness and a lot like anger and still none of his business.

He squeezes Andrew’s hand. His chest hurts.

Thea is halfway through a story from when she was a kid and threw a temper tantrum so loud the neighbors called the police on her parents. “And of course they get there and I’m blue in the face because I’ve been yelling nonstop for the past half-hour,” she’s saying. Neil laughs—that’s what Kevin’s doing, so it’s probably the appropriate response. “They’re asking if I’ve been denied food, water, sleep, if I’m sick, all this shit, and my parents had to explain that no, I’d just eaten, I’d even gotten the apple juice I wanted, I was just _furious_ that they wouldn’t let me flush a towel down the toilet because I wanted the fish in the ocean to have something to dry themselves off with.”

Kevin cackles. Neil laughs. Maybe it should be a real laugh—that’s probably funny. Neil just isn’t—feeling right. Not right now.

“The cops are trying to talk to me—trying to ask me if I’ve been fed, trying to verify that I’m fine—and I manage to manhandle their authority into forcing my parents to let me go to the bathroom, so I shut the door, and I can hear the cops talking outside the door, and I don’t care, I don’t know, I just know I’m in the bathroom and mom and dad aren’t there to yell at me.” Thea takes a break, trying not to choke on her own laughter.

“So you flushed the towel?” Andrew asks.

“I flushed the towel!” Thea howls, head thrown back. “But it wouldn’t go down, of course it wouldn’t go down, it was a full-size bath towel, so I kept flushing, and ten seconds later the toilet had overflowed _so_ much that my parents and the police had noticed, so they got the door open, and my parents are giving them the _dirtiest_ looks in the world—if looks could kill—carrying me bodily out of the bathroom while my dad pulled the towel out and I screamed about wet fish, the cops trying to politely excuse themselves so they don’t have to help clean up the water soaking into the carpet—I can’t imagine how much water damage I did to that floor, jesus christ—oh, Jonny, what’s up?”

He holds up an iPad and babbles something, which Neil takes to mean _the video has stopped_.

“I’ll put it on again,” Thea promises, taking the iPad. “Did you see? Uncle Neil and Uncle Andrew are here!”

John looks at them, jiggles over to them, and gives them both hugs. And then he takes the iPad from Thea and wanders out again.

Thea looks vaguely guilty. “My parents got it for him. We don’t let him use it often,” she assures them, like they care, “only half an hour a day and longer when we have guests—which isn’t often. But it _is_ useful when we have friends over.”

“When are kids supposed to start speaking?” Neil asks.

Thea and Kevin shrug.

“His doctor says he’s fine,” Kevin says. “So—if he doesn’t want to talk, we won’t make him talk. Maybe that’ll be a problem when he starts going to school, but—we’ll see. I’m not going to force him into it.”

“Just because people think he should talk doesn’t mean he has to,” Thea agrees, tone flattening out a little.

She was a Raven, too, Neil remembers. She hasn’t worn her necklace in years, but—you don’t get to be a Raven without killing yourself on an exy court first. And you don’t graduate a Raven without massive amounts of trauma. Neil remembers perfect interviews. Always the right thing said, always the right expression on the face.

Thea sighs, and Kevin picks it up. “We went to Thea’s parents’ house for her mom’s birthday on Wednesday,” he tries.

Thea grimaces. “Uncle Mike got trashed, as per usual. But, Andrew, my mom made—”

This time, Neil zones out on _purpose_.

He should be a better friend. He should try harder. This is his best friend’s wife. And it’s his best friend, too—Kevin is chipping in. And Andrew is interested. Visibly interested.

Neil should start making an effort.

He starts making an effort, but he’s too late—Thea’s pulling out Indonesian terms, only a few of which Neil recognizes. He’s never spent time in Indonesia, but he’s eaten Thea’s cooking before, and he recognizes the word for fried rice, recognizes the name of the noodles she makes sometimes, and understands little else.

He gives in. This is how Thea and Andrew connected—Andrew learned enough Indonesian that Thea agreed to teach him how she cooks. Kevin learned through osmosis. Neil didn’t learn at all, because he’s getting lazy.

He should learn some Indonesian. It wouldn’t hurt.

He starts paying attention again, and manages to pick up all of three words before the conversation trails off.

“How did the rest of your stream go last night?” Kevin asks.

“Fine,” Neil says. “Eliana gave us mixed reviews.”

“Is that good?” Thea asks tentatively.

Neil looks at Andrew. “You wanna tell them what happened this morning?” He asks in Russian.

Andrew waves a hand— _you can_.

Neil shrugs. “Eliana called me this morning,” he tells Kevin and Thea. “At 8:30. Woke us both up. I answered the phone, and one of the first things she tells me is that Wendy Williams thinks we should both be locked up, and again, I have _just woken up_ , and I say _Wendy Williams can suck—_ ”

Kevin laughs. Thea gasps.

“And then I cut myself off, because I mostly know better than that. But Andrew is lying on top of me—his head is on my chest, and remember, I’m holding the phone at my ear—and he says, loud and clear, directly into the microphone—”

Kevin is giggling uncontrollably.

“ _No she can’t, only I get to do that_.”

Kevin loses it, slides down to sit on the floor.

“And Eliana, whom I am going to give the world’s biggest Christmas gift, goes— _does he know I can hear him?_ And I relay that message to him, and he says, knowing full well she can hear him: _And I can hear her. Neither one of us is happy with this situation, but one of us created it, so it’s not on me to make this pleasant_. Anyway, we pledged to try and minimize the amount of time we spend talking about things like violence and breaking and entering, and then put out a statement talking about how great it is that we get to be authentic with our audience now.”

“I know you’re not allowed to _talk_ about violence, but can you still _commit_ some?” Thea asks, the noise from next door escalating.

“Not without proper preparation.”

“Violence is easy,” Andrew quips. “It’s the getting away with it that’s hard.”

“Maybe we should just go out to eat,” Kevin suggests.

Thea looks torn—getting John ready to go, finding space for 7 on a Friday night—but a loud cheer goes up from next door, and she breaks.

They eat later than expected, but they manage it, and even a restaurant on a Friday night feels quieter than the house they just left. Kevin spends half the dinner quizzing Natalie and Paige about history, while Thea and Andrew discuss food. Neil and John draw on his iPad. Neil draws a house; John erases it. Neil draws a person; John scribbles over it.

John has Thea’s face, Kevin’s eyes, Kevin’s laugh, Thea’s lopsided smile.

Strange, that. Strange that John has so much of both of them, but won’t have their lives. It feels inevitable, that he’ll become a Raven. That he’ll be so traumatized that for years of his life his friends won’t know what it sounds like when he laughs.

And yet.

Neil draws a sun, and John recognizes it, draws a rainbow underneath.

Andrew’s foot nudges Neil’s under the table. Neil nudges it right back.

Neil glances up in time to watch Paige throw a piece of onion at Kevin, who picks it up and eats it.

John erases the whole picture.

Neil intercepts an amused glance from Andrew.

Being _better_. There’s a thought in Neil’s brain that he can’t catch about being _better_. No need to be scared, as long as they keep getting better.

Neil tosses that away in favor of eating his fried rice. He can have thoughts later. Not now. Right now, he needs to redraw an entire stick figure family for John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Neil discovers the concept of negging. 
> 
> Disclaimer: this is not outsider hatred of sherlock, it is v much insider hatred of sherlock. There was a point in time when I talked about it enough that my dad got me a sherlock poster for christmas, and then after season three I never spoke of it again. anyway if anyone wants to prepare for neil and riley's hangout sesh by experiencing three hours of sherlock catharsis they'll be watching [Sherlock Is Garbage and Here's Why](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkoGBOs5ecM) and [Tumblr's Greatest Conspiracy: The Story of TJLC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZBP_0UTh5Q). If anyone has other videos for them and me to watch feel free to send them my way i have been having the time of my goddamn life


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil goes to therapy. Sherlock gets bashed.
> 
> TW for mentions of drug use but nothing major

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **EXTREME DISCLAIMER:** I am not a therapist, I know nothing, and as usual all things are bullshit made up so that I can have fun, please take none of this as therapy or advice
> 
> I would like to apologize to Lavar for getting his name wrong. He is the latest victim in this public discovery that I am absolutely terrible with names.
> 
> also, this one's a lil angsty, guys. Next chapter will be less angsty, but not angst-free. The chapter after that will probably be largely angst-free, though, so no worries, there is a light at the end of this angst-tunnel.
> 
> And just in case anyone missed it--the video they watch is [Sherlock Is Garbage and Here's Why](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkoGBOs5ecM) and yes, I did watch it in its entirety for a second time to write this chapter. As with the first time, it felt much shorter than it actually was.

On Monday, Neil goes to therapy again.

It actually feels weird, to walk into the same building a second time. Similar to how he once felt when he went through an airport twice. Weird, to check in. To sit in the waiting room until the patient before him walks out. That part is reassuring, though—she looks happy, like her therapy has uplifted her. Cleared her mind. Brought her some peace.

Neil heads into Erika’s office, shutting the door behind him.

“Neil! How are you?” she asks, a mug of what smells like coffee halfway to her mouth. “And don’t give me the _fine, how are you_ bullshit, I’m your therapist, if you were fine you wouldn’t be here. Probably.”

Neil opens his mouth, but—all he can think are the words _fine, how are you?_

He tries again, and gets nothing.

Erika sips her coffee.

“I don’t know how to answer that in any other way,” Neil admits. “How are you?”

“Mannerly even to the end,” she observes. “And absolutely incapable of discussing your feelings.”

“I’ve never in my life been accused of being mannerly.”

“There’s a first for everything,” Erika says cheerfully. “So let’s get started. What’ve you got?”

What’s he got? A lot of things, that’s what he’s got.

Of course, now that she’s asked him, he doesn’t remember any of what he’s got.

“Aren’t we supposed to have some kind of plan? For my treatment?”

“We can’t if we don’t know what you’ve got,” Erika points out.

“Right.” He feels like a child being told to go to target practice before he was allowed to eat dinner. _If I don’t eat, won’t I be too tired to throw knives? Better throw well enough to make Lola happy soon, then, and stop fucking standing around whining._ “Um, there’s this—emotion I keep having, and I don’t know what it is, and also I overthink things sometimes, and—” Neil is going to sink through the floor. None of this is bad enough to require therapy. But he doesn’t know what else—oh—“And also, my kids keep calling Andrew and me old, and I don’t know what to do with that,” he tacks on at the end.

“Well, who cares about kids calling you old? Now, about—”

“ _I_ care,” Neil specifies.

“About—about being called _old_?” She asks, making a face at him.

Is Neil losing his mind? Does _old_ not mean what he thinks it means? “Yes? I don’t know how to react when they say it, except to say that I’m _not_ old, but then they just—take more pleasure in saying it.”

“Who cares? Say thank you.”

“I care,” Neil repeats, irritated. “It bothers me. Isn’t that the point of this? I come in with shit that bothers me, and you tell me what to do about it?”

Erika huffs. “You care? Fine. Why is it a problem? Why does it bother you? What’s wrong with being old?”

“It—I mean—being weak, and not—understanding anything, and not being able to do things on your own—”

“So what? Let yourself be cared for. That’s not the end of the world. It’s what happens, when you’re a person. Sometimes you need help. And you’re more likely to need that when your body starts winding down, that’s not a problem—”

“I don’t have those issues _yet_ ,” Neil argues.

“Then what’s the issue here?”

“Do _they_ think I have those issues?”

“Do they? That seems like a question for them, not for me. And who cares if they do? If they’re helping you, let them. If they’re not helping you, then it’s not a problem regardless. Yes?”

“But—”

Erika sighs and puts her pen down, visibly annoyed. “Neil, I want you to look me in the eyes and I want you to answer a question.”

Neil looks at her and gestures for her to continue.

“When you were a kid, how old did you think you’d live to be? Living with your father, a gang leader? And then on the run, getting all sorts of scars and being shot at? How old did you think you’d get to be?”

“Not very,” Neil says. “So what?”

“So what? Then you of all people, Neil, should know that old age isn’t a curse, it’s a goddamn blessing. You’ve spent most of your life trying to survive for five more minutes, and you’ve managed it for so long that your kids think you’re old! That’s not a _problem_ , that shouldn’t _bother_ you, it’s your _success story_. Next time they say it, hug your kids, hug your husband, and tell them about the years you spent terrified you wouldn’t make it to adulthood, let alone to old age, and how great it is to have achieved your goal so soon. And, look, 29 isn’t even _old_ and they already think you’re old. Imagine how much older you could get! Tell them how happy you are that you managed to not only make it here, but to make it here with so much fucking joy in your life, when most people don’t get their shit together at all until they’re at _least_ your age. Thank them, Neil, and then annoy them with stories about how shitty it is to be young and how great it is to be old. That’s what you do.”

Neil sits there for a minute.

“That’s true,” he agrees slowly. “It is my goal to die of old age.”

“What about _live_ with old age?” Erika suggests.

Neil stares at her.

“Is that a thing you say often? Or _think_ often? That you want to die of old age?”

“As opposed to being brutally murdered by my father? Yes.”

Erika gives him a look that tells him he should’ve mentioned this _before_ her speech. Neil instantly decides he doesn’t care. He _liked_ her speech. “If you think of old age as the thing that’s going to kill you, then yes, I’d imagine it’s horrifying to hear that you’re old. Old age isn’t cancer and it’s not a gun, Neil, it doesn’t arrive with the express purpose of killing you. Stop wanting to die of old age and start wanting to _live_ to an old age.”

Oh.

Okay, he’ll just have to correct himself whenever he thinks about dying of old age. Will that be easy or hard? Neil has no idea. He’d always found it easy enough to switch personas, mentally, although that _was_ with the threat of death hanging over his head. On the other hand, he never _has_ given up his general paranoia, or managed to swap to a less imminent-death-oriented way of thinking. Of course, he very much is living with the threat of imminent death.

That’s an issue for another day. “Yeah, that works,” he says. Glances at the clock—it’s been ten minutes. “Is all therapy this easy?”

Erika throws back her head and laughs, long and hard, and then looks at him. “No.”

“Oh.”

“Not for you.”

“Why not?” Neil asks. Is he being petulant? Absolutely. He’d like to go home and be done with therapy. Can’t he be like the woman who just walked out of here looking pleased with her life and existence?

Erika puts her pen down, clasps her hands in front of her, and leans in. “Neil, I told you I looked you up. Have you ever been to therapy before?”

Neil shakes his head.

“All people are traumatized, in some way or another. And it builds up over the years. You have been through some horrifying shit, and it’s just been sitting in your brain for—Neil, how old are you?”

“29.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“I ask because I’m not sure how old you are, because I’m reasonably certain that the birthday and age Google has for you are fake. Am I correct?”

Neil nods.

“Do you _know_ the actual date of your birth?”

Neil nods.

“So am I right in assuming that you changed your birthday—permanently—because you were hiding from your father?”

Neil nods.

“And the name you have, is it faked so you could hide from your father?”

Neil nods. His neck is getting tired.

“You needed safety, and found it in a lie that you buried yourself in so deep that you forced it to be true.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Neil snaps. “I _am_ Neil. And who cares what day I was born? It’s only off by a couple months. That’s not important.”

“There’s nothing wrong a name change,” Erika snaps right back, “or with having a birthday that isn’t the day you were born. What’s _wrong_ is that you spent years of your life in constant danger, made a fake persona to escape it, and then adopted that persona _as you_ without ever talking to a professional about the trauma that built you. My goal for your treatment here is not to have you going by Nathaniel and shouting out the actual date of your birth to everyone who passes by, it’s to help you deal with what I can only imagine was a frankly astounding amount of violence in your childhood and teenage years and to help you separate out your actual identity from lies you spun to keep yourself safe. To be honest, I don’t know that it _would_ be good for you, at all, to go back to Nathaniel. Sometimes you have to re-break a bone so it can set properly, but I don’t think that this is quite that—I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. You walking out of here as Neil Josten, at the end of all this, is a perfectly satisfactory outcome, and probably the healthiest and best outcome. Yes?”

Neil resists the urge to fuss. He is an _adult_. “Yes.”

“So about that emotional confusion you were talking about.”

Neil waits.

“I’m gonna make you talk about that until we figure out what you were feeling.”

“I don’t _know_ what I was feeling.”

“And I’m not an empath, so you’re going to bumble your way through some bullshit until I figure it out. Start talking.”

Neil will _not_ roll his eyes.

He’s coming to understand Natalie on a deeper level, he feels.

“I don’t know.”

She says nothing.

This feels like an interrogation. She’s using the same tactics.

“I thought you wanted to talk about my endless well of trauma?” He asks. Maybe he can just—change the topic of conversation.

She points her pen at him. “If you don’t know emotions, it’s going to be extremely difficult to sort through them. No sense in talking about your endless well of trauma just yet if you don’t have the slightest idea what feelings are.”

Neil gives in. So be it. “The first time I—well, I don’t know if it’s the first time I _felt_ it, but the first time I _noticed_ it—I think it was—like—grief, it felt close to how I felt when my mom died, anyway, but—I’d bought baked goods. I’d gone to a bakery, a real, expensive bakery, and I bought desserts for all of us—”

“Who’s _all of us_?” She interrupts.

“Me, Andrew, Natalie, and Paige. And I got myself chocolate strawberries, and I _knew_ I didn’t need them, and I knew _none_ of us needed it—”

“In what way?” Erika asks. “Needed the calories?”

“The—no, needed—the desserts, at all. It was a huge waste of money. We had food at home, plenty of it, way more than we needed, and we even had _dessert_ at home, we didn’t need—but I got it anyway. And I _could_. I could—I’d say it was guilt, but it wasn’t. That’s one thing. But half the issue was—I could afford it. My mom and I ran away with less money than I make now in a year. And now, I have all this money, and I can—I can _afford_ things. Our engagement rings. Fancy dessert. And I didn’t have any of that, as a kid.” He’s rambling, but he doesn’t know how to put these thoughts in order. He doesn’t know what the end goal is, how can he know what order his thoughts should be in? “It’s not that I don’t _want_ my kids to have a better childhood. I’m not going to refuse them brownies or whatever because I didn’t get brownies. And it’s not like brownies would’ve made my childhood any _better_. I don’t know.

“The second time—last week I went to a friend’s house for dinner, and they were talking about how they don’t want to have a babysitter over too much. They’ve got family members helping out. And I started thinking about—what it would be like if I’d been raised like that, if instead of the way I was? If my parents had tried to make sure I’d be watched by people who cared about me?” He sounds like a child. He sounds like Natalie. “And all I could think was that they’d probably get frustrated with me and they’d hit me anyway, and—” should he be embarrassed? Probably, but—“and I realized that even in my _daydreams_ I can’t imagine having a good childhood. I can’t imagine my parents—and the problem is that my mom _did_ love me. I _know_ she did. She didn’t need to do any of what she did. She’d have been safer running away on her own than with me, and it would have been cheaper, and _vastly_ easier. She could’ve just gone to her family—she brought me there, but I insisted on leaving—and even then, she didn’t have to _listen_ to me. She tried not to put me in positions where I’d have to kill anyone—didn’t always succeed, but she tried. I _know_ she loved me and I _still_ can’t imagine a scenario where she’d manage to raise me without beating me. _Or_ a scenario where she’d buy me chocolate strawberries, just because she could. And I don’t know if—is that my imagination that’s bad? Or is it me?”

She gives him a minute to take a deep breath. “There’s no easy answer here, Neil.”

Neil’s heart drops like a rock. “You don’t know.”

“Now, that’s not what I said, but I’ll overlook it. What I _said_ was that there’s no easy answer here. That’s not just one emotion, and it’s not just one issue, and it’s not just one traumatic event. On this first pass, I’ve got—you’re grieving for the childhood you should’ve had, furious that you didn’t have it, furious at someone whom you love and who probably loved you back while feeling guilty about hating her because she loved you and did flatly horrifying things to you anyway, but you feel guilty for holding it against her because she was in a tough situation, too, and on _top_ of that I’d say—based on your own assessment of your _overthinking_ —that you’ve probably got anxiety, although that’s a fairly preliminary diagnosis, and I’d assume based on your life history that you’ve got some extreme goddamn paranoia. Stick some PTSD on top of that and I’d say you’re a whole entire fucking wreck, and Neil, dealing with that isn’t going to be easy, and it’s not going to be pretty, and it’s not going to be fast. It’s going to be hard, ugly work, and I can only do so much. Are you willing to do the work here, Neil?”

Neil considers everything she’s said.

It’s a lot, and to be honest, Neil can’t imagine how any of it is supposed to get _fixed_. What is there to _do_ about the way he feels about his mom? What is there to _do_ about the fact that he can’t change his childhood? What is there to do about his paranoia, when he lives the way he does?

But—

Something is wrong, somewhere, with him. He knows it, Andrew knows it, his kids know it. And the more therapy he does, the better shot he and Erika have got at figuring out what it is and how to fix it. And maybe Neil needs to take his own advice, a little bit. Just because he can’t see how things can change doesn’t mean they _can’t_.

And the only way they _can_ change, at this point, is through Erika.

She’s going to tear him apart, and it’ll be more thorough than anything Lola ever did to him.

Neil fists his hands in his shirt. It feels like he’s on a bridge, hovering over a chasm. But, if he’s being honest, that’s where he’s been for a while now, and he’s not getting any closer to the side, and at some point, he’s going to fall. Erika isn’t offering him an express train to the other side, or even a wider bridge—she’s offering him a staircase down, and a staircase back up to the other side. And he’s going to go _all_ the way down, he can see that even from here.

But he was going to hit rock bottom anyway. At least this way, it’s controlled. Less likely to kill him in the process, or to kill anyone he might hit on the way down.

Neil doesn’t do shit halfway. Maybe at the end of this, that won’t be true, but right now, it is.

He looks up at Erika and nods.

A little over half an hour later, he walks out of the office and gets in the car.

Neil puts his head on the steering wheel.

He, oddly, wants to cry.

She’d—closed him up, in a sense, at the end. He doesn’t feel _quite_ as much of a wreck as he did ten minutes ago.

To be fair, though, he doesn’t feel like much of anything.

He feels _tired_. But—

He chases that emotion down. It’s part of his homework, he may as well start now.

Relief? He feels relieved. He’s doing something, and something is definitely happening. It doesn’t feel nice, but neither does soap on a cut.

Maybe he’d been wrong, when he said he didn’t need someone to just talk at so they could tell him he was right. Maybe he just needed someone to yell at him.

That’s probably a sign of trauma, too. Maybe he’ll spend the next few years graduating to nicer and nicer therapists, as he deals with his trauma. He formulates a list, with Bee at the end—proof that Neil has dealt with all his trauma and just needs the human equivalent of a journal.

That’s not fair. Bee is more than that. Andrew is walking proof.

Neil yawns. He wants a nap. He wants to cuddle with Andrew under five blankets. Here’s hoping he doesn’t have anymore emotions today. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to experience them, let alone examine them and write them down.

Neil drives home.

He finds Andrew in the kitchen, making lunch—sandwiches.

“How was it?” Andrew asks.

“Bleh,” Neil says. He taps two fingers against Andrew’s back; Andrew reaches back and taps Neil’s hip with his knuckles, a silent _go ahead_. Neil wraps his arms around Andrew’s waist and sticks his face in Andrew’s neck.

Andrew finishes putting together two neat sandwiches a few seconds later, but he doesn’t move—just stands there, letting Neil lean against his back. Neil isn’t even managing to push Andrew into the counter. He’d have to work hard, to move Andrew.

Andrew had done this, whenever his therapy sessions went a certain way—bad, but not bad enough that he couldn’t handle touch. He’d drag Neil over to a bed, or a couch, whatever was closest, and lie there with him. Sit in his lap. Whatever worked. He never fell asleep; it wasn’t a nap. It was just the best he could do.

Neil understands why, now. This is the best he can do.

Andrew doesn’t seem to agree, though, tugging away from Neil. He sticks the sandwiches in the fridge, and then takes Neil’s hand and leads him to the living room.

Ah. Neil understands, now, because Andrew is lying down and tugging Neil on top of him, and that’s good. That’s nice. He can feel Andrew breathing, can hear Andrew’s heartbeat. Andrew brushes his fingers through Neil’s hair, and that’s nice, too.

Neil almost wants to go to sleep. Is _tired_ an emotion? Should he write that down? He might be wrong, though, because his eyes aren’t closing. It’s not a physical kind of tired. It’s nothing like the way he feels after a long day of training. It’s—nothing. He feels like nothing, and it’s exhausting.

He feels it when Andrew starts breathing deliberately, counting out each breath, and, faintly, Neil feels—amusement? Is _love_ a feeling? That’s a stupid question, of course it is. He times his breathing to match Andrew’s. He feels when Andrew takes a deep breath, about to speak—and when he lets it out, unused, content to sit in silence and stroke Neil’s hair.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Neil feels himself come back to life. His stomach realizes that lunch time has come and gone. Andrew’s fingers in his hair are kind, gentle, tireless—Andrew loves him.

When he’s ready, he folds his hands on Andrew’s chest and props his chin on them. “I’m hungry.”

“I made sandwiches.”

“You love me,” Neil surmises.

“I made the sandwiches with love.”

“That is a nonsensical reply.”

“You replied to _I made sandwiches_ with _you love me_ ,” Andrew points out.

“A sensical reply.”

“I think not.”

“I love _you_ ,” Neil says. This statement, at least, is irrefutable.

Andrew lowers his hand so Neil can feel Andrew’s rings brush against his scalp. “You did not, however, make me sandwiches with love.”

“An oversight, on my part.”

“The love?”

“The sandwiches.”

“Can I live without sandwiches if I have love?”

“Love, and other foodstuffs,” Neil quips.

“Which are enough to sustain us both until we die of old age.”

Neil grimaces. “I’m not allowed to say _die of old age_ anymore.”

Andrew raises one eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It makes old age into a death sentence, which means that it upsets me when our kids call me old.”

Andrew raises the other eyebrow. Neil gears up to make fun of this—it’s _stupid_ , and unnecessary, and just because he thinks words sometimes doesn’t mean they affect the way he thinks—“That makes sense,” Andrew says, dashing Neil’s hopes and dreams. “Love and other foodstuffs will sustain me well into old age, then. Get up so we can eat.”

Neil kisses Andrew’s jaw and gets up. “But it’s _stupid_ , though.”

“What? That you’re not supposed to say you’re going to die of old age?”

“The whole concept of—I mean, the things I say and think don’t affect the way I _think_ ,” Neil argues, following Andrew into the kitchen. “They don’t affect my—”

“Pause,” Andrew says, and Neil snaps his mouth shut. “The way you think doesn’t affect the way you think?”

Neil opens his mouth, and then closes it again.

Andrew retrieves the sandwiches and hands one to Neil, looking on the verge of outright laughter.

“Well, when you put it like _that_ ,” Neil says.

Andrew aims a finger in Neil’s direction. “No. That’s how _you_ put it. I just _repeated_ it.”

Neil takes a bite of his sandwich. His stomach is _empty_ , jesus. When did that happen? “You are _loving_ this,” he grumbles

“I am _loving_ this,” Andrew repeats gleefully. “I always _knew_ you didn’t have a thought in your skull, I am _thrilled_ to hear you confirm this.”

“No, _this_ as in _therapy_.”

“Oh! Oh, yes I _am_ ,” Andrew agrees gleefully. “This is incredible. I am thrilled to have you coming home from therapy and talking about therapy.”

Neil rips a piece of crust off his sandwich and hurls it at Andrew, who gleefully catches it in his mouth. “Gimme some of your crust, I can’t eat less sandwich than you do.”

Andrew blinks at his crust, and then, with an amount of care generally reserved for removing a splinter from the foot of a child, he rips off a piece of crust that Neil is _certain_ is precisely equal to the piece Neil threw at him. He examines it, eyes narrowed, unblinking, a sure sign that he’s deeply consulting his memory. He snaps his head towards Neil, and Neil shows Andrew the place on his sandwich where he’d ripped the crust. Andrew delicately removes three crumbs, and then hands the piece to Neil.

“So how much of that was a show?” Neil asks, popping the crust into his mouth.

“None. I could be wrong, of course. I wonder what happens if my eyes go bad? I assume my memories will be blurry. That’ll be weird.”

“How could you be _wrong_?”

“I didn’t see all sides of the piece, I could be wrong about how big it was. I’m extrapolating. Doing some math.”

“Now _that’s_ a lie.”

“I am very mathematically inclined, I’ll have you know.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

“Are you saying my legs are hot?”

“I’m saying you’re a liar,” Neil says. “You’ve never done math in your life.”

“False. I’ve done math to figure out how much money I could spend on vodka and still have enough gas money to make it to work the next day.”

“May the record show that that kind of math is not the kind of math that would allow you to reconstruct the dimensions of a piece of crust.”

“And how do _you_ know?”

“Because I _know_.”

“Have _you_ ever mathematically determined the dimensions of a piece of crust?” Andrew asks.

“No,” Neil says defensively, “but it’s probably calculus.”

“ _Calculus_?”

“And/or geometry.”

“And what’s the vodka kind?”

“First grade.”

“ _First grade_?”

“Multiplication and subtraction, Drew, that’s first grade.”

“Multiplication is _not_ first grade. At _best_ it’s second grade.”

“Maybe I was just a smart kid.”

“No way in hell you were a smart kid, you’re not even a smart adult.”

Neil flips him off. “I am a reasonably intelligent adult. I know how to do things.”

“Like what? Measure flour?”

Neil double flips him off. “Rude.”

“So, therapy. You’re going back next week?” Andrew asks.

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t scare you off?”

“ _Nothing_ scares me off,” Neil insists.

“You’re a brave boy,” Andrew coos at him. “A brave, brave little boy—”

Neil turns away in his chair.

Andrew huffs in amusement. His chair squeaks across the floor as he pulls himself towards Neil. “Neil, Neil, love, I’m sorry, I’m just so _happy_ —”

“I get it,” Neil says.

Andrew puts a hand on Neil’s back. “I never let myself believe that this could happen, really—”

“Yup, I get it,” Neil says.

Andrew kisses the top of Neil’s spine, kisses the place where his shoulder meets his neck. “I just always thought you’d rather waste away than get some help.”

“I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking or not,” Neil says as Andrew kisses up the side of his neck.

“I’m not,” Andrew says cheerfully, slipping his hands around Neil’s hips.

“I’ve said it before but I’m saying it again, it is _really_ weird that me going to therapy turns you on.” He’s not arguing, though. Andrew’s fingertips feel very nice, gliding across his skin.

“I am _extremely_ turned on by the promise of you someday being mentally healthy.”

“Is that normal?”

“You are the _last_ person to talk to me about normal, Neil Josten,” Andrew says.

“You are _never_ this happy when I’m not in therapy,” Neil says, trying to ignore the way Andrew’s fingers are skimming the waistband of his jeans.

“That’s not true,” Andrew insists.

“Name a time.”

“When you said botanists weren’t real.”

“That’s not as comforting as you think.”

“I don’t think it’s comforting at all, I’m just telling you facts.”

Neil detaches Andrew’s arms from around his waist so he can turn around to face Andrew. He turns his whole chair, this time, instead of just his body, so he can tug on Andrew’s hands, tug Andrew forward into his lap, where he so clearly wants to be. “So what are you thinking?” He asks. “What would you like?”

“I’ll take fingers up my ass for $500, Alex,” Andrew says, eyes amused, but Neil can’t join in. He can’t stop the full-body shudder that runs through him.

It’s been a long time since he was Alex, but after talking to Erika, it all feels—too close to the surface.

“Neil?” Andrew asks.

He’s hovering on the edge, here—Alex wasn’t real, and Neil—what makes Neil real? Not much. A social security card, but he’s faked those before. The FBI, but what do they know? He—

Andrew tilts Neil’s chin up. “Neil.”

Neil takes a deep breath. He doesn’t have to deal with this right now. Doesn’t have to worry about it. Can save it for next week, when Erika can talk him through it.

But the mood is gone, and Neil can’t get it back. He kisses Andrew’s cheek. “Sorry. I—can’t.”

Andrew brushes his fingers through Neil’s hair. “What was it?”

“Aside from the fact that a Jeopardy joke was supposed to turn me on?”

Andrew closes his eyes for a minute. “Okay, I see how that couldn’t have helped. But don’t tell me that my Jeopardy joke ruined the mood altogether.”

“No. You called me Alex. As a joke, I know, but—”

“Ah,” Andrew says. He kisses Neil’s forehead. He doesn’t ask for further explanation, doesn’t try to start again. He just lets Neil hug him until Neil’s legs fall asleep, and then stands up. “Do you need to be alone?”

Neil shakes his head. He’s never been more certain of anything than that being alone right now would be bad for him. “What do you want to do? I’m down for anything.” 

Andrew examines him for a minute. “Read to me?”

Yep, yes, perfect, Neil would love to spend some time translating Shakespeare into Russian. He falls in love with Andrew all over again.

They end up on the couch, Neil reading _Much Ado About Nothing_ , Andrew’s head in his lap.

They get texts, as usual, when the girls are on the bus, when they’re off the bus. And the texts remind Neil—there’s something they forgot to do.

Neil waves his arm over the back of the couch when the girls come in, summoning them into the living room. They appear beside him, and Neil looks at Natalie. “I don’t remember if we told you,” he says, by way of apology if they’d forgotten. “Andrew and I are going to teach Paige exy on Thursday.”

“Paige told me last night,” Natalie says.

“Do you want to come with us?” Neil offers. “We can teach you, too, or you can just hang out.”

Natalie shrugs.

“You could also hang out with a friend,” Neil suggests. Is this pushing? Does this qualify as pushing? Maybe it does. Who cares? He just wants his kid to have a good time, to have a good friend. Is that the end of the world?

Natalie shrugs. “Can’t I just stay home?”

“You can,” Neil agrees. Andrew catches his eye. _Enough_. He’s pushing, and it’s time to stop. “Just let us know if there’s anything you want to do that requires our help,” he offers. _That’s_ not pushing. That’s just an offer.

“I will,” she agrees.

That’s not something Neil can work with.

He suppresses a sigh. What emotion is this? It’s not _sadness_.

Erika had instructed him, on his way out the door, to get a notebook and start writing in it, and find a way to identify his emotions. Why is the notebook part necessary? Can't Neil just think about it—but, actually, if Andrew needs one, maybe Neil needs one. And Andrew _has_ used them before, Neil distinctly remembers that. Neil could probably just ask Andrew for one, but Neil doesn’t want to take from his supply. And anyway, Andrew’s journals are all _fancy_ —everything from Lisa Frank to a hand-bound, gold-leafed journal—and Neil doesn’t want _that_ , either. And he’s not even sure that Andrew has any blank ones. It’s been a while since he needed them.

Neil could just _ask_.

But he doesn’t want the answer to be _yes_.

Well, they’re going to the bookstore in a couple days—the bookstore probably sells notebooks. Neil just has to remember to get one. 

He could just tell Andrew, and then Andrew will make sure they don’t forget.

The problem is that if he tells Andrew, and Andrew has a spare journal, he’ll offer it to Neil, and Neil doesn’t want to say yes.

“There’s a video we need to watch,” Paige says, opening her laptop.

“There is?” Neil asks.

“Yes.”

“There is?” Natalie asks.

“Diana showed it to me,” Paige says, turning a little pink.

“Oh,” Natalie says, launching herself into a recliner. The recliner inches backwards under the force of her throwing herself at it.

Neil pretends not to notice, and pretends not to notice the way Natalie and Paige tense and go still, waiting. “What’s the video about?”

It takes Paige a second, but she forcibly drops her shoulders. “You’ll see.”

Neil _does_ see. Immediately.

 _Moroxesual Icon Andrew Minyard Comes Out_ , the title reads. Paige hits play.

Lavar spins around in his chair and looks directly at the camera. “Andrew Minyard watches my channel,” he says. “I have never felt so vindicated in my life. Hi, all, welcome back, today’s topic is that Andrew Minyard watches my channel. Hello, Andrew, I assume you’re watching this. I assume you have viewed all videos on my channel, which I think are extremely good. I assume I can stop bothering your PR agent and just ask you, directly: _Please_ come let me interview you.

“Now, if you’re _not_ Andrew Minyard, and if you, for unknown reasons, are not keeping up with the Minyard-Josten streams, you need to understand things.” He points at the whiteboard behind him, where words appear as per his usual magic. “Andrew apparently has the world’s best memory, because while Neil needs to scroll through the chat to find a question, Andrew just kind of keeps one eye on it and brings up his favorite questions—and the usernames of people who ask them—at the drop of a hat.”

He points at a second bulletpoint. “Sometimes they agree on a quick answer, sometimes they kind of end up giving weird advice of a sort, and sometimes they just—argue for ten straight minutes, resulting in absolute piles of bullshit that are impossible to trace. It’s good. Really, just go watch it, I’ll wait.

“Third.” He points at a third bulletpoint. “The chat was fucking crazy, so I would understand if you missed it, but I asked _no questions_ on that stream. Why? Because my questions are personal and I’m not going to spam chat with personal questions that no one wants to answer. But what this means is that when Andrew ended the stream telling me that he is, in fact, a morosexual, he did it because he’d watched my video on the topic and assumed I’d hear about his answer.”

Lavar clasps his hands in front of him and leans forward. “Andrew. If you’re out there. I would fucking _love_ to interview you. I don’t even know what questions I’d ask you. You could just get on here and talk and I’d post the whole goddamn thing, I don’t care. I’m not saying I’m your biggest fan. I’m just saying that I am _a_ fan with a lot to offer, including nearly 100,000 subscribers, as you will see below, thanks to YouTube telling everyone how many subscribers everyone has. What are you looking for from an interview? I have heard rumors that Gianna Rosetti utilized essential oils and a middle-school-esque poster full of positive sayings. If you would like to come to my house in person, I will provide these things. If not, that’s on you, but you’ve got money, I’m sure you could provide them for yourself. All I’m saying is—we could have a very good partnership, if you’re open to it.”

Neil glances at Andrew and finds him on his phone. On YouTube, specifically.

Andrew tilts his phone so that Neil can see what he’s doing. And what he’s doing is pulling up the video and commenting: _I’m considering it._

Andrew puts his phone away.

“So that’s all for today,” Lavar is saying. “I’m sure there’ll be more tomorrow, when I’ve found my mind again, because right now it is _lost_ and I am _so_ unwilling to go hunting it down. See you all soon.”

“So anyway,” Paige says, “you got noticed.”

“That’s the goal,” Neil agrees.

“Do you get a notification when someone responds to your comment on YouTube?” Andrew asks.

“I have no idea,” Paige says thoughtfully. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“We’ve been streaming from your account, right?” Neil asks Andrew.

“Yup.”

“Very good,” Neil says.

Paige disconnects her laptop, closes it, and stands up. “Can we do homework? I didn’t get the math lesson today at _all_.”

“Yup,” Neil agrees, standing. He pauses by Natalie. “Coming?”

Natalie makes a face at him, but stands. “I guess.”

Neil wraps his arm around her shoulders, and Natalie wraps her arm around his shoulders, and they cart each other to the kitchen.

Riley turns up on their doorstep after lunchtime on Wednesday with a literal bucket of popcorn in her arms, and two video games sticking out of her purse.

“What the fuck?” Neil asks by way of greeting.

“I said I’d bring the good stuff,” Riley says, shrugging, by way of greeting. She heads straight for the living room, so she can put the popcorn down.

“Did you bring the good stuff?” Andrew asks, emerging from the basement and spotting her by the couch.

“You know I did,” she says.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had an edible,” Andrew says. “I just have to shower real quick, and I’ll be down.”

“An—oh, shit, Andrew, they’re not _that_ good.”

“A bad edible is still an edible,” Andrew says, holding one hand up to forestall any protest. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure your baking skills were up to the task.”

“It’s popcorn,” Riley says, sounding genuinely apologetic. “Nothing fun about it.”

“Popcorn? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Andrew asks, pausing in the front hallway. And then he shrugs. “Well, I guess I’m not hip anymore. Whatever. Don’t have to be young to do weed. Just give me ten minutes, I’ll be right down.”

“Andrew, it’s _not weed_!” Riley calls after him. “ _Andrew!_ Neil, you’ll have to tell him, I don’t have the heart to break it to him—”

“He’s kidding,” Neil reassures her. “I think.”

“You _think_? You can’t _tell_? He’s your husband!”

“And I’m fairly certain he’s kidding. I just don’t know for sure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him—well, actually, there _was_ that one time in college—but honestly, that was more of an accident—well, the first half of the brownie was, anyway, and then Jack was like _idiot, those are pot brownies,_ and started making fun of him, which didn’t work, because Andrew just looked him in the eye and took another bite of the brownie.”

“I honest to god can’t picture Andrew doing drugs at all.”

“Really?”

“It just seems like a—I can’t imagine Andrew being willing to lose control.”

“That’s fair. He usually didn’t. Kevin and I had to be the bad guys, that time, and insist on some night practice— _the season just started, who cares—_ to get Andrew out of there. We just let him lie down on the edge of the court while we practiced. Anyway, he worked his way through $20 worth of vending machine snacks and half a pizza and when he woke up the next morning he made us swear not to let him eat a brownie ever again unless he was the one who made it. So I’m reasonably certain he’s joking.”

“Okay. That’s—not comforting, actually.”

“Why not?”

“Not sure, but it’s not.”

Neil shrugs. He can only do so much. “How’s Maria?”

Riley grins. “She’s good. Hanging out with some other friends today—they’re going to a bar later. She says hi.”

“Tell her we said hi too.”

“She told us to do something less nerdy next time, and she’ll come hang out with us.”

“She says that like she isn’t herself a nerd.”

“She’s cute like that,” Riley says, still grinning. Mushy. That’s cute. “She says if we ever wanna watch some Doctor Who, she’ll be here, but Sherlock was too much for her.”

“The highest hypocrisy,” Neil says gravely.

“And anyway, we’re about to watch it get shat on—although I guess it’s more in the way of, like, I can make fun of my brother, but anyone else who makes fun of him will get kicked.”

“That’s fair,” Neil says, hearing the creaky stair creak. “We’re here to make fun of _ourselves,_ not to be made fun of.”

“I’m not here to make fun of myself,” Andrew says, joining them in the living room. “I’m here to make fun of a shitty TV show. And possibly also Nicky, since he’s the one who made us watch it. Are we ready?”

“I have to set it up—and hang on, look at this, it’s a 10-foot HDMI cable, so we can stretch it all the way across the room,” Riley says happily, handing it off to Neil when he extends a hand.

“It’s on YouTube, right?” Neil asks, opening his laptop.

“Yeah. _Sherlock is Garbage._ You know how to use an HDMI cable?”

“My kids showed me. Now I can impress all the ladies.”

“As long as you know you’re not impressing me,” Andrew mutters. “ _I_ know how to use an HDMI cable, now, too.”

“You’re too cool to be impressed, anyway,” Neil says, pulling the video up. The cable _does_ stretch all the way across the room—he leaves it next to Riley, so she can have control of when it stops and starts, and takes the middle seat of the couch.

“You hold the popcorn,” Riley says, giving Neil the popcorn. It _is_ the good stuff—chocolate and caramel, not just butter—and Neil accepts his role.

Andrew looks at the popcorn with raised eyebrows. “It _is_ the good stuff.”

“I told you,” Riley says, jumping a little as Sir appears on the armrest next to her. 

This is going to be nearly two hours long.

Neil isn’t going to sit up for _two hours_. Fuck that. He swings his legs into Riley’s lap and puts his head down in Andrew’s lap, holding the popcorn tin on his stomach. Andrew and Riley both reach in for a handful of popcorn without comment, and Riley presses play.

“Did he just pronounce _Hugh_ as _huge_?” Andrew mutters, a minute and a half in.

No one answers.

“Did he just call Sherlock _over-pissed_?” Neil asks.

“Yup,” Andrew and Riley say.

 _Primal hallucinatory nightmare_ , the video says.

Oh boy.

The video takes a tangent almost immediately, talking about Doctor Who.

“You’ve only ever seen, what, three episodes of Doctor Who?” Riley asks Neil.

“Whatever you and Andrew have shown me.”

“Then pay attention,” Andrew orders. “You don’t know this.”

Neil pays attention.

His takeaway is that Doctor Who is a worse show than he realized. “Hit pause,” he tells Riley, and she complies. “Hey. Why is it that whenever you both want me to watch a show, it’s fucking terrible?”

“Doctor Who isn’t _terrible_ ,” Riley says, offended. “It’s just—okay, Eleven wasn’t great—look, Moffat isn’t a great writer—”

“That sounds like a bad show,” Neil points out.

“It’s about—it’s about the _companions._ The _humans_.”

“Yeah, but this guy just said outright that Moffat takes that away,” Neil says, pointing at the TV. “That’s what he just said—that the show becomes about the Doctor and not about the stories and people he interacts with. I mean, I _liked_ the episodes you showed me from Nine—”

“Objectively the best Doctor,” Andrew opines.

“Even if they were kind of shitty in terms, of, just, visual whatnot.”

“Visual whatnot?” Riley repeats.

“Visual whatnot. But that whole line of— _In 900 years I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important?_ That’s what _you’re_ talking about—the importance of the people he helps, the importance of the stories he’s interacting with. And what this guys is _actively saying_ is that Moffat takes that away—and didn’t he start sometime during Ten?”

“Okay, no, he started with Eleven, which as I already admitted, wasn’t great, but consider,” Riley says. “The Van Gogh episode.”

“I’m considering it, but one episode doesn’t make a whole show good,” Neil argues.

“I’m on Neil’s side here,” Andrew says, hand dangling above the popcorn tin. “First of all, the Van Gogh episode wasn’t produced, directed, or written by Moffat, so of _course_ it doesn’t have the same problems most of Moffat’s writing has. But by the same token, if Moffat had just written one episode at a time instead of looking at the show as a whole he’d have avoided precisely what this guy is talking about in that—”

“Okay, fine, but I didn’t make you watch a _bad_ show, I made you watch good parts. Can we keep watching?” Riley asks, finger hovering over the play button.

“Yeah,” Neil agrees.

Not two seconds later, hbomberguy says he liked Nine, and Andrew waves a hand as if to say, _see?_

The hand motion makes several appearances over the next few minutes, becoming ever more emphatic, and Neil can’t help but agree—hbomberguy is right.

He discusses an excerpt from _Scarlet_ —here’s what Sherlock has deduced, look at his knowledge, look how he knows things—and Andrew nods, muttering, “Like Peter Wimsey, same concept.”

“Phryne Fisher,” Riley says, and Andrew nods at that, too. “Nancy Drew.”

“The point isn’t that they’re special,” Andrew says, Riley hitting pause so he can say it, “the point is that they’ve put in the effort, and happen to have a mind geared towards that kind of problem solving.”

“Exactly,” Riley agrees. “You could be Nancy Drew, if you trained yourself to observe things, and watch people.”

She hits play, but two seconds later Andrew waves at her to pause it. “That whole wedding ring thing makes no sense, anyway,” he says, annoyed. “I mean, the inside of _my_ wedding ring is clean—”

“Who’ve you been cheating on me with?” Neil asks.

Andrew puts a hand over Neil’s mouth. “It’s clean because I don’t take it off. How is it supposed to get dirty? It’s up against my skin. The only thing that gets under there is water. And how is it supposed to be clean if I take it off? What am I doing, dipping it in mud like I’m salting the rim of a glass? If I take it off and it gets dirty, the whole thing should be dirty, not just the inside. Stupid.”

“And the whole thing about scraping the charging port of your phone,” Riley grumbles. “I think about that every day of my life. I barely drink.”

“It’s fucking stupid,” Andrew agrees.

Riley hits play.

And then hbomberguy mentions Neil’s biggest, absolutely forgotten, pet peeve—“Why the fuck _wouldn’t_ he use his other hand to shoot a gun_?” Neil asks, annoyed, watching Sherlock do unfunny contortions as he explains that a man couldn’t have committed suicide by shooting himself with his wrong hand. “ _I_ use my left hand. Because when the kickback yanks my hand up, I don’t want to lose the ability to write for a little while. And because you don’t want to do that to the hand capable of fine motor skills, not if you plan on shooting guns often. I mean, they get guns wrong in movies all the time—you don’t shoot one-handed, what the fuck is wrong with you, your hand isn’t braced against anything, it’s not steady, there’s not a lot of people who can kill other people with a steady hand, and even if you’re _not_ anxious and puking about it, your heart might be pounding because you’re being chased, your blood sugar might be low—”

Andrew pats Neil’s hair.

“I’m done,” Neil says, calm. “You can hit play.”

None of them have much to say about the stupidity of the visual and audio effects. They’re stupid. Stupid effects are annoying, but none of them are big on film. This is none of their pet peeves.

“The weeping angels _were_ cool,” Andrew says offhand, to generalized agreement.

Neil eats some chocolate popcorn. It’s sweet. Neil is getting tired of it. He should’ve made his own regular butter popcorn. If chocolate and caramel is the good stuff, is butter the bad stuff?

John Watson is irrelevant in the show, that’s true, that’s fair. How long have they been watching this? It must’ve been, what, 20 minutes? Jesus.

Neil glances at the clock and does a double-take. It’s been nearly an hour.

Okay, maybe this is good, maybe this is worth the time. Neil acknowledges that maybe he’s interested. Maybe he’s into this.

Mary Watson got fridged, that’s true. That’s fair. They all know this. She was a plot point.

“Making her into a plot point,” Riley mutters as Neil thinks it. “Sexist. Never trust a man.”

Neil and Andrew nod.

“Irene Adler was cool,” Riley says as the analysis delves into her character. “Not in this show, obviously.”

“No, in this one her story fucking sucked,” Andrew agrees. “Also, imagine being straight, and being shocked by a naked woman.”

“That was the only part I related to,” Riley says, grinning. “Thoughts on that one shot of Benedict Cumberbatch’s neck?”

“There’s approximately 81 of those,” Andrew points out. “Academically, it was interesting the first time, and then I got bored. Oh, hang on, he’s talking about the boomerang.”

“The boomerang,” Neil says, disgusted. “A _boomerang_.”

“So fucking stupid,” Riley agrees.

“She shouldn’t have been attracted to him after that,” Andrew says. “Boomerangs are inherently unattractive.”

“She shouldn’t have been attracted to him at all,” Riley says. “He’s unattractive. _Definitely the new sexy_ ,” she says mockingly. “All right.”

“I’m gonna start hiding a boomerang around the house,” Neil tells Andrew. “Watching you find it will be a turn-on.”

“Finding it will be a turn-off for me.”

“The greatest paradox.”

“Oh, shit, the machete,” Riley says, looking at the machete. “I forgot about that—did he just say he _stumbled_ on the theory about the secret fourth episode?”

“That was _crucial_ to my enjoyment of the fourth season,” Andrew says.

“I thought you didn’t watch that one?”

“I didn’t. Nicky was back in Germany, so he couldn’t make us watch it.”

“Andrew just followed the reviews,” Neil explains. “And read some of the blogs.”

“Okay, but this part is real shit,” Andrew says, watching the analysis of fan theories that the fourth season was bad on purpose.

“Sometimes you want to believe that people are telling you the truth,” Riley says. “And you get _used_ to trusting media. You see something and go, oh, that’ll come back, and when the show says, yeah, it will, you think it _will_.”

“And then you get invested,” Andrew adds. “And don’t want to think you were stupid. Or that you wasted all your time.”

“Anyway,” Riley says.

They watch in silence.

“It’s a delightful romp where the story makes _sense_ ,” hbomberguy says about a different adaptation.

“Would be nice,” Andrew mutters.

“Would _love_ to watch a show that makes sense,” Riley agrees.

“We could do that,” Neil says.

“Why would we do that?” Riley asks.

“So we could watch a show that makes sense?”

“Harder to hate a show that makes sense,” Riley says, popping a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

“Still very possible,” Andrew says. “I could do it. I’m better at hating things than you are, I guess.”

“False. I’m just better at controlling myself so I can be happy sometimes.”

Andrew throws a piece of popcorn at her.

“Caramel? In my _hair_?” Riley asks. “Fucking _rude_ , Andrew.”

“It didn’t hit your hair.”

“It came close, though,” Riley grumbles.

“Your cheek isn’t really close.”

“I have long hair, Andrew. Not a buzz cut.”

“I do _not_ have a buzz cut. What am I, a fucking soldier?”

“No, you’re too cool for that.”

“Thanks.”

“Can we watch now?”

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees.

“Oh, yeah, the friend who he remembered as a dog,” Riley murmurs through a mouthful of popcorn.

“The _what_?” Neil asks.

“He had a friend who died and it was traumatic so he remembered the friend as a dog.”

“Is that how trauma works? Am I going to find out next therapy session that the squirrel I chopped up when I was five was actually my best friend?”

“That’s not how trauma works,” Riley says, “and also, that’s fucked up.”

“If we were lost in the woods and starving it would be very useful.”

“ _If_ you had a knife,” Andrew reminds him. “But you never carry them.”

“Maybe I’ll get therapy about that.”

“You’re going to tell your therapist that you won’t carry a knife, and you think she’ll therapize you into carrying a knife?”

“Maybe. Clearly, I’ve got an aversion there.”

“Most people have an aversion to carrying weapons,” Riley says. “That’s normal.”

“Is it?” Neil asks rhetorically.

“Yeah,” Riley answers, definitively.

Andrew pats Neil’s head.

“Oh, shit, is he going to talk about how much Moffat hated their fans?” Riley says, sitting up straighter. “Fuck yeah, let’s _go_.”

They do go.

“Say it,” Andrew mutters, while hbomberguy rants at length about how, both in the show and in interviews, Moffat made it clear that he hated his fans. Riley is snapping her fingers in agreement. Neil feels his eyebrows crawl up his face—he remembers full well finding out they’d never know how Sherlock had survived. Remembers exchanging a glance with Andrew. Nicky’s excitement— _more to theorize about,_ Nicky had said.

Neil isn’t the theorizing type. Or—maybe that’s wrong, because he doesn’t _mind_ reading mystery books. He just likes to know whether or not his theories are _correct._

The video ending is nothing short of a shock to Neil’s system. It’s been nearly _two hours_? Riley has her hands above her head, cheering like she’s just scored a goal.

“He’s _right_!” she yells. “He was right about _everything_ , it really was just a shitfest—they _swore_ it was going to be good, that was the whole goddamn _premise_ , that it’s _smart_ and has something _planned_ and it’ll be _good_ and then it wasn’t even bad in a _good_ way,” she says, hands in front of her. “They didn’t even have the decency to toss something _good_ in there.”

“Like what?” Neil asks. “What could they have done?”

“I don’t know, good character interactions?” She waves a hand. “Like, can’t we see them be _friends_? There’s just that one part where they’re drinking together and I’m like, look, that’s great, but I just want them to sit down and chat, you know? I mean, even if the _plot_ is shitty, I’ll _take_ a shitty plot and good characters.”

“Both, preferably,” Andrew says.

“Sure, but there’s only seven conflicts in the whole world _anyway_ , what makes a story _different_ is the characters. It’s, just, so _absolutely_ irredeemable.”

“Unless you’re a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch’s neck,” Andrew snarks.

“In which case there is much to love,” Riley agrees. “But, anyway, there’s a second video, but—the kids will be home in, what, ten minutes?”

Neil checks his phone and, sure enough, he’s got texts telling him the kids are on the bus. “Yeah, about that.” He texts them to let them know the door is unlocked.

“I’ll be honest, I figured we’d be bored and would just kinda skip through it—”

“You said it was supposed to be really good!” Neil accuses.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think it _would_ be, I figured we’d have enough time to also skip through the other one, but maybe we’ll do that some other day. It is also nearly two hours long. It’s also supposed to be really good.”

“For real, or are we just going to skip through it?” Andrew asks.

“For real. Or maybe we’re just going to skip through it. I have no idea, I haven’t watched it.”

“Fair. What’s it about?”

“The Johnlock conspiracy.”

Andrew takes a deep breath. “That could be fun.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Riley says, grinning.

The kids come bursting through the door—“Riley!” Paige says happily, sliding on her socks into the living room.

“Hey, kiddo!” Riley says, grinning.

“Riley,” Natalie says, nodding, a little more dignified.

Riley matches it, nodding back. “Natalie. I brought L.A. Noire, do you want to play?”

“What’s that?” Natalie asks.

“Detective game.”

“Sure,” Natalie agrees.

“Okay,” Paige agrees.

Riley disconnects Neil’s laptop, while Paige plugs in the Playstation.

“It’s technically one-player,” Riley explains, “but we can all contribute our detective skills.”

“Sounds good to me,” Paige says cheerfully. “Nat, do you want to work the controller?”

“No.”

Paige looks fairly resigned at the rejection—she must be picking up on Natalie’s distress, but Neil is fairly certain she doesn’t know the origin of it. She’s just trying to get Natalie—involved, in some way. Trying to cheer her up.

Nothing has ever depressed Neil more.

It’s similar to Andrew and Aaron—one protective to the point of murder, the other trying to live a different life altogether. The difference here is that Paige doesn’t hate Natalie for it. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Paige _adores_ Natalie for it. And Neil is fairly certain that Natalie would never force Paige into the same deal Andrew had extracted from Aaron—she’d said herself that she didn’t want her friends to be _unhappy_ , that she didn’t want them to _not_ fall in love or find other people important. It was just that she wanted to be important to someone, too, and that person is no longer Paige, and—and while Neil’s upbringing was abnormal, being 14 was terrible for him and that’s probably pretty universal. Neil had hoped Natalie would talk to Bee about this, but she’d come home from therapy yesterday just as moody as she’d been on Monday, so maybe not.

Neil represses a sigh and turns his mind to the story unfolding on the TV.

“Do I go in the house?” Paige is asking. “I want to _know_.”

“You don’t have a warrant,” Andrew says. “You go in now and anything you find is impermissible as evidence in a court of law.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” Natalie snarks.

“Not technically, but I came close.”

That brings the game to a halt—Paige turns bodily to face him. “What?”

“I was pre-law,” Andrew says, like they should’ve known that. “After I graduated, I chose exy over law school, but the goal—insofar as I had one at all—was to become a lawyer.”

Paige stares at him.

“Should I be offended by this level of disbelief?” Andrew asks drily.

“I never would’ve thought you’d be a lawyer,” Paige says.

“What’d you think I went to school for?”

“I mean, everything I read sounded like you really just went because Aaron and Nicky went,” Paige says. “I figured you’d pick something like English or German, something you were already good at, just so they’d let you stick around.”

“I also went to keep Higgins happy. The person in charge of my case.”

“Oh. Is that why you chose law?”

“Pretty much.”

“Would you go back to it?”

Andrew shrugs. “Maybe. Are you going to keep playing?”

Paige blinks, confused, and then remembers the game. “Sure, I guess. So don’t go in the house?”

“Don’t go in the house,” Andrew confirms.

That turns out to be the right choice, and they move on.

Riley stays for dinner, attentively listening to Paige describe the trials of being a teenager—it’s a terrible time, Vanya got her period in the middle of class and had to wear her gym shorts the rest of the day, Dave got in trouble for talking in class, Sandy nearly got sent home for wearing a shirt with spaghetti straps and instead had to wear her whole winter coat for the rest of the day, so Natalie and Tina spent any spare time fanning her with their notebooks so she wouldn’t overheat.

Natalie doesn’t contribute at all.

She _is_ eating, so that’s comforting, but—

Neil sighs.

School sounds like shit. Maybe he and Andrew should just homeschool their kids, so they can wear spaghetti straps and talk. Would that be so hard? Most of the school year is Neil and Andrew’s off time, so it would be doable. And they wouldn’t necessarily have to follow the usual school timeline, anyway. And they could hire tutors—they can afford that.

Of course, then all the _other_ kids are still in school, and _that’s_ terrible, too.

Maybe they should just—buy the school.

If they own the school, they can change the rules.

Riley asks Natalie a question, gets half a word in response, and accepts that with more grace than Paige does—Paige gives Natalie a look that says _why are you being so rude?_

Natalie gets up and goes upstairs without a word.

“I don’t know why she’s being like that,” Paige says.

“She’s 14,” Riley says. “You’re allowed to be like that when you’re 14.”

“ _I’m_ not behaving like that,” Paige points out.

Riley shrugs. “Well, when you do, I won’t judge you for it.”

“14-year-olds aren’t _inherently_ rude.”

“No, But you’ve got a lot going on, and sometimes that makes it hard to be nice.”

“I’m _being_ nice.”

“Congratulations,” Riley says. “I’m glad.”

“You don’t have to sass me.”

“It wasn’t sass. I was serious.”

Neil watches as Paige decides to give in on this one.

“Maybe we should watch _The Good Place_ ,” Neil suggests.

The looks he gets tell him that everyone here knows he’s changing the subject, but no one objects, and Andrew squeezes his hand, and they move on.


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> exy practice. sister conflicts. youtube stream. the good shit

“Do you want to come with us?” Neil asks Natalie, sprawled across the couch.

“Nah,” she says.

Neil wavers, but Andrew and Paige are standing at the door, waiting for him.

She said no. So—no it is, then.

“We’re going book shopping after,” Neil adds. “Want anything?”

“Nah.”

All right, then. “See you in a bit.”

They pile into the car, and Andrew takes off.

It really _will_ just be a bit—they’ve picked a terrible day for it, given Andrew and Neil have to stream tonight. They haven’t even eaten yet. Andrew’s got chicken defrosting in the fridge.

“We have to go Christmas shopping at some point,” Neil mentions offhand as they approach the stadium.

“After Thanksgiving,” Andrew agrees. “Allison snoops around, I don’t want her finding her own present on Thanksgiving.”

Neil nods. That’s fair.

“Is it weird that the stadium looks bigger when I know I’m gonna be, like, _playing_ in it?” Paige asks, staring out the window as Andrew parks.

“Nah,” Neil says. “Brains are weird.”

Paige doesn’t respond to that. She just trails them inside, pauses when Neil strides forward in the dark, before Andrew remembers that she doesn’t know her way around and flicks the lights on.

She’s silent as she follows them to the storage room, to pick through extra gear and cobble together something that’ll fit her. Racquets aren’t a problem—Charlie’s only a couple inches taller than Paige is, and he’s got a spare. Neil can’t imagine Paige will break it, but—they could replace it before Charlie comes back. They’ve got time. And if Paige likes this, they’ll get her her own racquet, and it won’t be an issue.

She heads to the women’s side to get changed, and Andrew and Neil change in silence.

Neil _badly_ wants Paige to like this.

Andrew knows it. Neil can see it in his eyes. Andrew _knows_.

Andrew puts his helmet under his arm, pulls Neil down for a kiss, and leads the way out towards the communal section.

It takes Paige a little longer to get ready—she’s not used to the outfit. And it looks odd on her. Not fitted properly.

Well, it doesn’t matter much. It’s not like she’s going to be doing much work.

They head onto the field, and Neil is confronted with the fact that it’s been a very, very long time since he worked with a brand-new goalie. He has _no_ idea what kind of training is involved.

Andrew has Paige next to him. She may be the taller of the two, but she looks awkward—no idea how to stand, no idea how to hold her racquet, uniform barely fitting, and Neil feels like—oh, hang on, this is a good opportunity to hang out with his emotions, while Andrew teaches Paige about what kind of stance she should have. He feels—protective. Not violently so, but protective nonetheless, and that’s—fun. It’s a positive emotion, anyway, which is good.

“Give me the ball,” Andrew calls—not that Neil is far away. In a game, Neil managing to get this close would be a significant failure on the part of the defense. “ _Gently_.”

Neil pops the ball into his racquet, breathes in the smell of the court—feels something _horrible_ , an odd twist in his stomach, bad—and, gently, tosses the ball at Andrew, who sends it right back to Neil.

“And that’s just how we’re going to have to do this,” Andrew tells Paige. “There’s exercises we can do and drills we can do, but—just get used to the idea of having a ball thrown at your face. Get used to the weight of the racquet.”

Paige nods and readies herself, and Neil feels it again.

Is there a name for it? Neil has no idea. It’s—he knows that this will end, soon. One day, he’ll leave the court for the last time, and he can’t stand that.

Neil can’t do this right now. His daughter is standing in front of him waiting for him to toss her the ball.

He does, gently, and she bats it away.

Neil chases after it, Andrew congratulating Paige on hitting it, and returns to do it again.

And again. And again.

And then Andrew decides that she should try some drills, and there’s not much for Neil to do except do his own drills and consider what to do about Christmas presents. The logistical hurdle they’ve faced for years now is that many of them will have to get shipped to New York, and a bunch will have to come with them to Germany. They could just have the gifts shipped directly, so at least they wouldn’t be responsible for packaging them, but—packing presents to bring to Germany ensures that they’ll have space in their bags to bring home whatever Nicky and Erik give them. And Allison, Renee, Dan, and Matt always go to the trouble of wrapping presents and sending them over. Neil isn’t sure how much of that is something they do and how much of it is something _everyone_ does, but either way, he’s not going to break that tradition.

What the fuck can he and Andrew get everyone that they don’t already _have_?

He’s contemplating the concept of candles when Andrew calls it a day.

Neil hasn’t even _done_ anything. A few drills, but he’s barely worked up a sweat.

He glances at Andrew when they get to the locker room. “I’m probably not going to shower.”

“After that? No. The most movement you did was walking in from the car.”

Neil has no argument for that.

Paige is quiet when she emerges, dry hair suggesting that she didn’t see the need to shower either.

“Bookstore?” Neil asks.

Paige perks up a bit. “Yup.”

Did she not like it?

To be fair, there wasn’t much to _like_. Doing drills isn’t the same as playing a game, and it’s hard to appreciate the expertise, the pinpoint precision, the predictive ability, the dexterity—

Is Neil thinking about exy or about Andrew specifically?

Both, Neil decides as they get into the car. Andrew is, after all, the _pinacle_ of all that is good about exy, and the best goalie there is.

They march into the bookstore on a mission.

They are here to get a _book_.

Paige heads straight for the Young Adult section, bypassing the YA Non-Fiction with barely a glance, Neil and Andrew trailing in her wake.

It takes them a minute to find the books anyway, because they’re not just in the YA Fiction section—they’re in the YA Romance section. _The Raven Boys_. Does Paige _like_ romances?

Oh, if Neil asks that, it’s going to come out much more judgmental than he intends for it to. It’s going to come out _mean_.

He keeps his mouth shut.

“Do you want the whole series?” Andrew asks. “If you like the first book, you don’t want to have to wait to read the second one.”

“But what if I don’t like it? That’s a waste,” Paige says, frowning.

Andrew’s face twitches. “Then we’ll donate them to a library. The only waste is our money, and we’ve got plenty of it. Let’s get you the series.”

“Okay,” she agrees, just a hint of eagerness in her voice.

“Hardcover,” Andrew says, as she goes for the paperback versions.

“But those are more expensive.”

“If you’re going to keep them for a long time, you’ll want them hardcover. And if you’re donating them to a library, _they’ll_ want them hardcover. Get the hardcover. Want me to carry them for you?”

Paige shakes her head, carrying the stack of books with an amount of pride Neil hasn’t seen in her before.

“Lead the way,” Andrew says, gesturing her towards the cash registers.

“Oh, wait,” Neil says, remembering, “I need a journal.”

“A journal?” Andrew asks.

“For therapy.”

Andrew looks at Neil, and Neil _knows_ he _knows_.

“Sure,” is all he says, though. “Gigi, do you and Nat need journals too?”

“Maybe? Can’t hurt.”

“We can text her pictures of what they’ve got,” Andrew decides. “That way she can choose.”

They head over to the journal section.

Paige chooses hers immediately—it’s a blue and gold thing that looks like a mini bible, and Paige is drawn to it like a magnet. Andrew whips out his hand when she flips it over, covering the price.

“It’s yours,” he says. “Want me to hold the books so you can send Natalie pictures?”

Paige looks torn—give up books? Or make Andrew text Natalie? She chooses Natalie, passing the stack over so she has her hands free to text.

Neil browses.

Andrew bumps his hip into Neil and nods at a bright pink monstrosity.

Neil ignores him. He’s fairly certain that’s a joke, anyway.

Andrew bumps Neil with his hip.

Neil ignores him.

Andrew bumps him more insistently.

Nope. Neil is _not_ looking at whatever horror Andrew’s found now.

Andrew bumps into him so hard Neil actually stumbles a couple steps over. He looks at Andrew— _What?!_

Andrew points at a plain, grey, leather journal.

Oh.

Neil picks it up and adds it to Andrew’s stack.

Andrew raises an eyebrow at Neil.

“Thank you,” Neil says dutifully. He presses a kiss to Andrew’s temple, an added attempt at making up for ignoring him.

Andrew accepts this, and they move to a corner to wait for Paige to be done.

A few minutes later, she brings them a journal from the same series as hers—equally fancy, but darker.

“Do we want fancy pens?” Andrew asks.

“Fancy pens?” Paige asks right back, a light in her eyes. The concept of _fancy_ has clearly caught her attention.

“Special pens, special notebook. Makes writing therapy things more enjoyable.”

“I’ll take a fancy pen,” Paige agrees, practically skipping over to the assortment of pens.

Still making up for ignoring Andrew, Neil allows him to pick out a fancy refillable fountain pen. Neil is going to get ink _everywhere_.

Although, actually, he’s fairly certain Andrew uses the same pen. And he’s never seen Andrew with ink stains on his fingers.

Neil sighs. He’s going to get ink _everywhere_.

Andrew carries the stack to the cash register.

“Why does dad always pay for things?” Paige asks on the way out the door, carrying her bag of books and pens.

“He has more money than I do,” Neil explains.

“So what?”

Neil shrugs. “It just—makes sense.”

“What are you saving yours for?”

Neil shrugs with his hands, this time. Variety is the spice of life. “Just in case?”

“But you guys are basically drawing from the same pool, right?” Is this an interrogation? “And if something _big_ comes along, wouldn’t you rather put it on dad’s account? Rather than having to maybe spread it across both accounts? And don’t you guys have, just, enormous amounts of money? So what difference does it make?”

Neil looks at Andrew— _do you want to explain_?

The look on Andrew’s face says _no_.

“I don’t know,” Neil says. “Drew, do you want to explain?”

Andrew sighs. “I’m fine spending money. I don’t care. I won’t go _over_ what I’ve got in my account, and I’m not going to buy shit I don’t want or need, but we just spent over $150, and to me that’s _well_ within spending money. That’s _fine_. I spent too much time without money to just—act like I have none, now. But if _Neil_ spent that much money? It would be an ordeal. There would be anxiety. There would be crippling guilt. And he’s never been to therapy before. I’m not going to force him to spend money that I could just as easily spend myself when he has no one to talk to about that.”

Neil opens his mouth to protest, but he’s got nothing. What’s he going to say? That Andrew has just pinned him down like a dead moth on a corkboard? That Neil needed a therapist to be able to think about what Andrew has apparently known and been accommodating for years? That Neil hadn’t even connected those goddamn dots? Jesus christ. Neil _knows_ he has issues spending money. He’d thought he’d hidden them better. Andrew has _known_? Neil has been a child hiding in a corner shutting his eyes because if he can’t see his issues, they don’t exist, while Andrew has been staring his issues down while holding a knife.

“Oh,” Paige says.

Neil stares out the windshield. What the fuck? _That_ was why Andrew hadn’t wanted to explain—he hadn’t wanted to expose Neil’s bullshit brain. How did he _know_? He’s just been—sitting on that. Pretending it didn’t exist to spare Neil’s feelings. What the fuck.

Paige doesn’t ask anymore questions.

What the _fuck_.

Okay. Okay. Feelings analysis. What the fuck is he feeling?

This isn’t new—this isn’t a new concept. He doesn’t like spending money, that’s true. He hadn’t thought of it as something Andrew had been sparing him for years, but he knows he doesn’t like spending money. He doesn’t care that Andrew has just told Paige this. It’s that—he hadn’t realized Andrew knew him so _well_.

Or maybe—he knew Andrew _knew_ him, but—he thought he’d been better at—

Or maybe Neil is giving himself too much credit, it’s not like he’d really _understood_ how deeply his issues with spending money ran, probably in part because Andrew has spent the past several years protecting him from that. _Enabling_ Neil to just—not realize how much was wrong with him. Maybe ‘enabling’ is too strong a word—well, maybe not. Well, maybe.

Neil glares out the windshield. Isn’t this what a therapist is _for_? Isn’t he not supposed to have to deal with this, now that he’s in therapy?

He wants to go home so he can write this in his journal. Maybe he’ll write a strongly worded letter to Erika asking her why she didn’t predict this precise breakdown. _Is_ this a breakdown?

Neil takes a step back.

He remembers having a breakdown, and this isn’t it. But it _could_ be.

He’s not going to do this in the car, but he makes a mental note to write this down. What’s he writing about? He has no idea. Something, though.

He squeezes Andrew’s hand. Andrew squeezes back. Neil calms down.

They find Natalie on the floor when they come in.

She blinks up at them over her phone, head towards the door, and doesn’t move. “Don’t step on my head.”

“Okay,” Andrew agrees, stepping over her and heading for the kitchen. It’s dinner time.

Paige squats, puts her face three inches above Natalie’s, and stays there for a couple seconds. They stare at each other.

Paige stands, and then lies down on the floor with her feet by Natalie’s feet.

Natalie kicks Paige’s feet. “Go away.”

Paige kicks right back, but gets up, sticking her tongue out at Natalie. “Rude,” she says, before heading upstairs.

Hmm.

Neil looks into the kitchen, and makes eye contact with Andrew.

They should really learn sign language.

 _What do I do?_ Neil asks, eyes wide.

Andrew shrugs, at a loss. Makes a face and a hand motion. _Want help_?

Neil shrugs back. _I don’t even know what I need help with. Stay there._

_Stay here?_

Neil considers, and then nods. This way, if Neil fucks up, Andrew can be the good guy.

Natalie or Paige?

Paige, Neil decides. Natalie sort of started this—at least, _she_ knows why she’s angry. Mostly. Probably. Paige has no idea. Neil can’t tell her, of course, so it doesn’t make much difference, but—

“Do you want to come lie down in here with me?” Andrew asks, as Neil climbs the stairs.

Natalie doesn’t respond.

Is the answer yes or no? Neil has no idea. He knocks on their bedroom door. He’ll trust Andrew to do whatever he’s doing.

“If you’re Natalie you’re not allowed in,” Paige calls.

“I’m not Natalie.”

Silence for a minute, and then the door unlocks and opens. Paige abandons him at the door, sitting back in her unmade bed, pulling her blanket over her head and tugging it tightly around her until she’s cocooned in it.

“Can I come in?” Neil asks.

The cocoon nods.

Neil shuts the door behind him. Should he lock it again? No, he doesn’t want her to feel locked in with him. But maybe she’d rather it be locked? “Do you want me to lock the door?”

The cocoon nods.

Neil locks the door. What’ll he do if Natalie comes up? He can’t take sides between them—although, actually, this is Natalie’s room, too, so he’s not sure how locking her out works at all.

Well, here’s hoping she doesn’t come up. “Can I sit here?” Neil asks, pointing at her bed.

She nods.

Neil sits down next to her.

What is he supposed to say, here? What _can_ he say?

She leans against his shoulder, still cocooned. Neil wraps his arm around her shoulders.

“I didn’t even _do_ anything,” she says, choking. He can _hear_ the shock in her voice. Natalie is her sister, her protector, her friend. You don’t kick your only ally.

“I know,” Neil says. What else is he supposed to say? Is he supposed to tell her that Paige is no longer Natalie’s only ally? That, from Natalie’s perspective, Paige abandoned her first? “I know, Gigi, I know.”

“I just wanted to keep her company,” Paige says, voice tiny. “We left her alone this whole time, I just wanted to keep her company.”

Neil rubs her shoulder.

“It’s not _fair_. What did I _do_? Just because I—went out? Had some fun? She didn’t even _want_ to come! Was I supposed to just—stay home? Forever?”

Oh, no.

It’s Andrew and Aaron, all over again.

But not yet. It’s not them yet. There’s still plenty of time. “No, Gij, you weren’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She’s being _weird_.”

“I think,” Neil says, slowly, he’s not a therapist, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t want to make it worse, “maybe—the two of you need to talk, a little. By yourselves, or maybe with Bee.”

“This has nothing to do with _me_ ,” Paige says defensively.

“I know,” Neil agrees. “But it might help you both to—talk it out.”

“You’ve only been to therapy _twice_. And once was a consultation. You don’t _get_ to be this pro-therapy.”

“I have a long history of talking people into therapy. It generally works out well.”

“Like who?”

“Andrew and Aaron. Not Andrew, alone—he was already in therapy. But Aaron had been refusing to talk to Bee for a year. I got Aaron to agree to go to therapy with Andrew, so they could handle their issues, and I’m just saying that it could be helpful for you too.”

“How’d you do it?”

Ah. “I told Katelyn to take a stand and refuse to see Aaron unless he agreed to go to therapy.”

Paige actually laughs at that. “ _I_ don’t have a girlfriend you can take away. Also, I don’t think that’s talking Aaron into it, I think that’s coercion.”

Neil shrugs. “It worked, didn’t it? I fight dirty. I know better now, though.”

“What would you do, now?”

“In that situation?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, _absolutely_ the same thing I did. It worked, didn’t it?”

“Then what do you mean, you know better?”

“I wouldn’t take away _your_ girlfriend.”

“I don’t _have_ one.”

“Still. I’ll just tell you that you have a therapist already, and if Natalie agrees, Bee has a proven track record of helping siblings maintain a relationship.”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ to,” Paige says spitefully. “She _kicked_ me.”

“That she did,” Neil acknowledges. “And she didn’t need to do that. But maybe talking to her about it will help you get to a place where she doesn’t think she needs to.”

“I don’t need a therapist to talk to my sister.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m gonna talk to her right now,” Paige says, throwing off her blanket.

“ _Well—_ wait. Maybe—maybe wait.”

“Why?” she asks, standing. “You want me to talk to her, right?”

“Yes, but if _she_ isn’t ready to talk to _you_ , it might not go very well.”

“Then what do you _want_?”

“I didn’t expect this to work so fast,” Neil admits.

Paige side-eyes him.

“I really figured I’d have to—inch you both into agreeing.”

“So what do you want me to do? Just _sit_ here?”

“Maybe?”

“You’re my dad, you’re supposed to know!”

“I didn’t get an instruction booklet!”

“You literally have at least five in your living room.”

“Yeah, but they’re all about babies and parenting styles, not about siblings fighting.”

“You didn’t think to brush up on that?”

“We didn’t know we were getting two kids, so I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.”

Paige makes a face, and then flumps back onto the bed. She leans against Neil’s shoulder again.

This is not conducive to getting up and going downstairs.

He rubs her shoulder. What else is he supposed to do?

After a few minutes, Paige sighs and sits up. “You can go talk to Natalie now.”

“Thank you,” Neil says honestly, getting up.

“Do you know what’s up?” Paige asks. “With her?”

“Maybe,” Neil says. “But I could be wrong.”

Paige reaches out and pats his head. “Go forth and godspeed.”

“Thank you,” Neil says gravely.

He heads out into the hallway.

When he makes it downstairs, Natalie is still in the hallway, although her head is in the kitchen doorway now, instead of the front doorway.

“I thought you didn’t like the floor?” Neil asks.

“Well, maybe I do now,” she snaps.

Neil shrugs. “Can I join you?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t know if I should leave or not.”

“I guess you can.”

“I can leave? Or I can stay?”

She shoots him a glance over her phone that says he’s annoying her. “You can stay. I guess.”

Neil takes a seat. “So what’s up?”

“I guess you decided to talk to Paige first?”

“I did.”

“ _Her_ being sad is more important than _me_ being sad, isn’t it,” she says, growing more and more angry by the second.

She’s not just angry at him, if Neil had to guess. She’s angry because she’s always put Paige first, and because instinct dictates that she do it now, too, and because she doesn’t know what to do with that _except_ be angry about it.

Here’s _one_ area where Neil doesn’t need help. He’s _extremely_ good at identifying anger.

“No, it’s not,” Neil says mildly. “But I had to start somewhere, and I’d guess that she doesn’t know what’s going on, whereas you know _exactly_ what’s going on.”

“No, I don’t,” Natalie says, annoyed, still on her phone. “And yes, of _course_ she fucking does.”

“She knows why you’re angry at her, but you don’t know why you’re angry at her?”

“I don’t know. So what? Why do you care? It doesn’t matter anyway,” Natalie snaps, rolling away from him.

Neil shrugs. The movement is more for him than for her, since she can’t see him, but—whatever. “I care because I do. I don’t have much control over it. And it matters because it matters to you, and to Paige.”

“Does it?” she asks.

“I think it does.”

She gets up. “Too bad.”

Neil watches her go upstairs.

He waits, silently.

He hears nothing—maybe a door shutting. But no voice. No words. Natalie hasn’t gone to her bedroom, she’s gone to their homework room.

Neil looks over at Andrew.

Andrew looks at him.

“There’s not even a blanket in there,” Neil says. “Or a pillow.”

“Just the couch,” Andrew says.

Neil feels himself crumple. Andrew’s falling, too. They can’t just _leave_ her there without even a _blanket_. No doll. Nothing to hug. “Do you want to bring it to her, or should I?”

“I don’t want to be—distant,” Andrew says. “I also don’t want it to feel like you passed her off to me.”

“Could we both go up there? Or is that too much?”

They stare at each other.

“Neither of us had parents who cared enough to bother, huh,” Andrew says. “We have _no_ idea what to do.”

“No. I’ll go. Then, if she’s angry, there’s still you.”

“Can’t believe I’m the good cop.”

Neil shrugs. It is what it is. Somehow, this is Neil’s job, and if he gets chewed out by a 14-year-old, so be it. He’ll go out with pride.

He grabs a blanket from the living room and, on second thought, a pillow, too, and heads upstairs, graciously accepting a salute from Andrew as he passes the kitchen.

What if she’s not in the homework room? What if she’s in her and Paige’s bedroom, and Neil is going to stand there knocking on the door like an idiot?

His kids already think he’s stupid, this’ll be no different. He knocks on the door. “Nat? I brought you a blanket.”

Silence.

Should he wait here? Or leave? Or leave the blanket and pillow here and walk away? Should he tell her he’s doing that? Can Paige hear him? Guaranteed she’s eavesdropping.

Natalie opens the door.

Neil holds the blanket and pillow out to her.

“What? Am I stuck in here for the night?”

Neil shrugs. He’s done the wrong thing. What else was he going to do, though? “No, but you’re up here right now, and I didn’t want you to be cold. Or uncomfortable.”

She’s getting angry again. Angrier by the second. Neil knows this anger, too—what was it Kevin had said? When you want something, and know you can’t have it?

Neil moves the blanket and pillow half an inch closer to Natalie, and she breaks down.

Neil almost doesn’t catch her. He barely drops the pillow in time. He gathers her up, mostly, as their bedroom door opens, Paige peeking out—Neil shoots her a look, _shut the door_ —and she does, and Neil hauls Natalie into the homework room and onto the couch.

He should’ve made Andrew do this. He’s stronger, he’d have had no problem carrying Natalie outright.

Well, but it’s Neil here, not Andrew, so he wraps his arm and the blanket around Natalie’s shoulder and lets her cry on him. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Neil can’t tell either way. She’s not angry, mostly, just sobbing her eyes out. Neil rubs her shoulder and waits.

She cries herself out.

Neil should have brought her a glass of water.

Well, maybe not. He’d have dropped it when he dropped the pillow.

There’s a knock at the door.

Neil glances at Natalie.

Natalie gives him Andrew’s hand wave— _it’s your problem_.

“Yeah?” Neil calls.

The door opens to reveal Andrew, Natalie’s doll tucked in his elbow and a glass of water in his hand.

Oh.

Neil has the world’s best husband.

Andrew snags the pillow on his way over. “Paige suggested you might want your doll,” he says quietly, giving Natalie the water and doll and setting the pillow on the couch. He pats her hair, gives Neil a look that says _good luck_ , and walks out.

“It’s just not _fair_ ,” Natalie says, voice hoarse. “I’ve spent _years_ doing _everything_ —I didn’t have _friends_. Because we were supposed to stick together. Because we didn’t have a choice. And now she won’t even eat _lunch_ with me and I don’t want to be _selfish_ I don’t want her to just hang out with me _forever_ I’m not trying to make her—I just—I don’t know, why is she _abandoning_ me just because I can’t help her anymore?”

Neil pats her shoulder. Was that rhetorical? Was it an honest question? What is he supposed to do? What does she _want_?

He takes a deep breath. There’s one thing that’s never failed him, and it’s just fucking asking. “Is that a question you want me to answer? Or is it—do you just want to vent?”

“Do you _have_ an answer?”

“Yes. But you won’t like it.”

“I don’t like anything,” she mumbles.

“Talking to people who aren’t you isn’t the same as abandoning you.”

“I _know_ that.”

“That’s the answer. She _isn’t_ abandoning you.”

“I _feel_ like she is.”

“That’s why you have a therapist.”

She mulls that over for a few minutes. “I _don’t_ like that answer.”

“Maybe you could try what Andrew and Aaron did,” Neil suggests. He can smell balsamic vinegar—whatever Andrew’s cooking must be nearly done.

“Don’t want to do whatever they did. They see each other once a month and on holidays and it’s terrible every time.”

How much of this has Andrew told them? Neil is fairly certain there’s a bunch, but—fuck it. If he repeats himself, he repeats himself. And he said basically this to Paige five minutes ago, and _she_ didn’t think anything of it. “Well, they’re getting better, but the _reason_ why they’re like that is because—Andrew killed their mom to protect Aaron. Aaron didn’t understand, and thought it was because _Andrew_ didn’t want to get beaten, and hated him for it, and Andrew hated Aaron for not understanding, and Andrew forced Aaron to stay with him for years. Andrew didn’t think Aaron would stick around, at all, once he released him from that promise. The once monthly thing is—better than either of them expected. And they’re getting better, now. But the reason why they spoke to each other at all once they weren’t on the same exy team is because of Bee.”

“You’ve told me all this before. What did Bee have to do with it?”

Oh. “They went to therapy together. Sorry, by the way. I forget.”

“It’s because you’re old.”

Neil reacts with nothing short of an adrenaline boost. Like he’s getting a chance to use a new toy. “I _am_ old. Thank you. But they went to therapy together.” Is Natalie going to say _nothing_? She’s not interrupting him. “And Bee helped them come to an understanding, so that they could—start forming a relationship. From the ground up, basically. It might help you and Paige, too. Not just therapy alone, but therapy together. To help you work out what your relationship looks like when you’re safe.”

“You want us to go to _more_ therapy?” Natalie asks, aggrieved. “You only just _started_ therapy.”

Deja vu. Natalie and Paige could be the same person. “I’m a hypocrite. But—maybe not _more_. You two go one after the other, right? Take 10 minutes from each of your sessions, and you’ve got 20 minutes for group therapy.”

“Maybe I _need_ my whole hour.”

Neil shrugs. “All right. If you don’t think it’ll work, don’t worry about it.”

She sniffles. Drinks her water.

Neil’s stomach growls. Dinner smells _good_.

Natalie heaves a sigh.

Is this kind of emotional turmoil normal for a 14-year-old, or is it all trauma-induced? Neil was, apparently, a deeply traumatized 14-year-old, so he can’t really speak from experience.

And what’s he going to do if it’s _ab_ normal? Put her in therapy? She’s already there.

“I’m hungry,” Natalie mumbles.

“I think dinner might be ready.”

“ _Paige_ is going to be there.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be angry at her. She’s my sister.”

Neil pats her shoulder. What’s the right answer to that?

“I guess we have to eat fast, though, you and dad have to stream soon, right?”

“We could always reschedule.”

“No, I don’t want—no. It’s okay. I’ll just say sorry or whatever.”

What is Neil supposed to say to _that_?

She doesn’t wait for him to figure it out, getting up and heading for the door, leaving behind doll, blanket, pillow, and water.

Maybe she plans on coming back in?

Neil follows her downstairs.

Paige and Andrew are already eating. Paige freezes like a deer in headlights when Natalie walks in the room.

When is Natalie going to apologize?

The answer, apparently, is that she isn’t, because she doesn’t.

They eat in silence. It’s—Neil doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like that the kids aren’t talking. That they’re ignoring each other. That shouldn’t be. It feels wrong. Andrew and Aaron’s relationship, which they’re mending ever-so-slowly, keeps popping into his mind. What would it do to Natalie and Paige, to go from absolutely dependent on each other to not talking at all?

But when they finish eating, Andrew looks up and says: “Neil and I have to stream tonight.”

And Paige nods and looks at Natalie. “Are we watching in the homework room?”

“Yeah,” Natalie agrees.

And, somehow, Neil doesn’t like that either. A bandaid isn’t stitches. It won’t heal what’s broken.

Well, maybe that’s just how siblings are. What does he know? They put the dishes in the dishwasher and head upstairs, Neil and Andrew splitting off into their bedroom.

They set up in silence.

How are they supposed to do this? Neil isn’t known for his ability to pretend that things are fine.

Andrew catches Neil’s chin, and Neil looks at him.

Right. Andrew’s here.

Things will be fine. Neil leans in, and Andrew leans up, and, yes, things will be fine. They take their seats. Stare at the screen. Watch the clock tick over to 8:00.

“Ready?” Andrew asks, hand on the mouse.

“Yup,” Neil agrees, and Andrew starts the stream.

“Hello,” Neil says, half a second later, after he’s seen the view count jump. He isn’t keeping track of how many people are watching. Unlike with exy, more people doesn’t equal an adrenaline boost. “We don’t have a fun opener today, I don’t think—do we?”

Andrew shakes his head. “Nothing fun has happened this week. So what do you have for us to argue about? Actually, fuck that,” he interrupts himself, staring at the chat. “I’d like to talk about Shufflepunk changing their username to Sirfatcatmccatterson, which is—”

“ _What_?” Neil scrolls back up the chat, searching, and sure enough—Sirfatcatmccatterson has asked them a question. “That’s no good. I hate that.”

“ _I_ think it’s _extremely_ good,” Andrew counters. “A _very_ good choice—”

“King Fluffikins is _clearly_ the better option, and I think you should change your name again—”

“King Fluffikins was the first, but Sir Fat Cat McCatterson _built_ on that structure to become something _clearly_ better and more refined in every way—”

“Now, there’s where you’re wrong, because sometimes copies are just kind of _derivative_ —”

“Don’t you use math terms on me,” Andrew accuses.

Neil cackles. “ _Derivative_ is an English word, it has uses beyond math, and you should know that—but more to the point, ‘King Fluffikins’ is _clearly_ more concise—in much the same way as poets don’t waste a single syllable, neither does ‘King Fluffikins’—”

“Just because ‘Sir Fat Cat McCatterson’ is _longer_ doesn’t mean the syllables are _wasted_ ,” Andrew says scornfully. “You wouldn’t compare _Hamlet_ to an Emily Dickinson poem and say that _Hamlet_ is worse because it’s longer.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Neil asks.

Andrew looks at Neil. “Well, you would, but it’s because you’re an idiot.”

Neil snickers. “I mean, Emily Dickinson was depressed and gay too, and _she_ managed to get the point across way faster—what’s that one about meeting death?”

“ _Because I could not stop for Death—He kindly stopped for me_ ,” Andrew recites. “ _The carriage held but just ourselves—And immortality_.”

“See? Depressed and gay, _and_ I can read it in a single sitting.”

“Now—where did you get the gay subtext in _that_ particular poem?”

“Well, hang on, I don’t have the whole thing memorized,” Neil says. “Give me my hand back—” Andrew lets his hand go so he can google the poem. He scans it.

Okay, maybe there’s no gay subtext in this one.

He can’t _say_ that. He can’t _lose_.

“Oh, no, Neil,” Andrew says, “no, you can just—you don’t have to make something up, you can just say you were wrong if—”

“Death is a lesbian,” Neil says.

Andrew closes his eyes for a minute. “Why?”

“You can’t just ask why someone’s a lesbian, Andrew.”

Andrew looks at Neil. “Our children are cheering in the other room.”

“I hope it was a good _Mean Girls_ reference,” Neil says seriously.

“But I wasn’t—okay. Not _why_. More—how do you know? Give me your textual analysis, Neil.”

Neil _has_ no textual analysis here and Andrew knows it. “My gaydar.”

“Okay, _that’s_ bullshit. Out of everything you’ve said in the past five minutes—don’t _grin_ at me— _that_ is the biggest pile of bullshit. You _have_ no gaydar. You found out that Kevin, one of your best friends, was bisexual the same day he did a press conference about it, and you found out by _watching the press conference_. Jesus christ. _Gaydar_.”

“I’ve got _something_ ,” Neil argues, grinning. “I mean, I think the only straight friend I have is Aaron, and _he’s_ technically my brother, so how’d I make friends with all these people if—”

“Because you got stuck with us for years on end, don’t—what about _Matt_?”

Oh yeah. “I forgot that he’s straight, actually.”

There’s silence, for a second.

“And on that note,” Andrew says, “we’ll get to actual questions now. Sirfatcatmccatterson asks _who would win in a fight between kermit the frog and elmo_.”

“Well, I think this is the classic question, Andrew,” Neil says, settling back in his seat.

“Classic, Neil?” Andrew asks, delighted.

“Yes—who would win, youth or experience? Unfettered rage or cold calculation?”

“And in your experience, Neil?”

“Well, it depends on the terrain, Andrew. See, older, more experienced fighters are better able to use difficult terrain to their advantage, and may actually be at a _disadvantage_ on a wide-open, flat terrain that is more conducive to high-energy activities like running or activities like long-distance shooting, which require better vision than an older person might have. And if you’ve fought your whole life and made it to an old age anyway, you’ve _had_ to survive on difficult terrain, whereas if you’re young, you might have only experienced a tougher geography in training, and never in the thick of battle.

“Now, I hear you saying— _if they’re too old to run, could they really make use of a landscape that requires climbing_?” Neil continues. “But the thing here is that it’s all about _efficiency_. If you can _hide_ , you’ve got a better shot at winning. You _could_ climb, of course—get the high ground—but you can also camouflage yourself, or use your surroundings in your battle rather than limiting yourself to the weapon at hand.”

“But consider _The Lion King_ ,” Andrew suggests. “Simba and Scar fought on reasonably difficult terrain—shouldn’t Scar have won, then?”

“That requires a certain assumption of experience,” Neil explains. “We never _see_ Scar fight. The only thing he _does_ , actually, is make clever use of his terrain, pushing Simba’s dad off a ledge. Simba, on the other hand, unlike most male lions, didn’t _have_ a female lion to do the hunting for him. And while we mostly see him eating bugs, getting enough bugs to feed a lion would still take time and effort, not to mention I’ve killed bugs before and those fuckers _run_ , so he would have to have a certain dexterity, a certain speed. He’d have to be trained to spot food in his environment, which would give him a leg up over someone like Scar, who was _so_ bad at spotting food in his environment that he led the tribe into a famine. Simba was trained to take it easy, but he was also trained to _survive_ , whereas Scar took it easy and was very bad at surviving.

“This brings me to my next point.” Is he getting horribly off-topic? Yes. Does he care? No. Andrew looks like he’s having the time of his life. “Simba had spent the past several years living, if you will, the good life, physically speaking if not mentally. He showed up well-rested and well-fed. Scar was starving, and, given his fears of mutiny, probably _not_ well-rested. So Simba had several advantages, but you will note it was _still_ a tough battle for him. So I’m not wrong.”

“The problem _I’m_ having with this analysis,” Andrew says, “is that—can we even _apply_ it to Kermit and Elmo? Do we _know_ that both are trained fighters, and that Kermit has experience?”

“Of course. Elmo is easy—he’s surrounded by kids. You’re telling me no kid has ever tried to bite him? He’s _had_ to learn to fight to defend himself. And then look at Kermit. Just—consider his life. Look at the expression on his face. That’s the face of someone who has _experienced_ youthful rage, and is now tired. He’s done it all before. This is all meaningless to him. But if he has to fight again, he will put Elmo in the _dirt_ , because you _cannot_ look me in the eye and tell me they’ll be fighting on flat ground. They’re puppets, there has to be somewhere for the puppeteers to hide.”

“Now, hang on,” Andrew says, frowning. “You’re introducing a whole new element, which is the puppeteer. _I_ assumed that we would be operating under the rules of the shows itself, but you’re putting two human beings into this, and now we have to take _them_ into account, too, and we can’t zombie-apocalypse this, we don’t have set rules for age, stamina, and carpal tunnel level of the puppeteers. Also, if we’re admitting that they’re puppets, can we ascribe to them the personalities and experiences on which your whole argument is based? Because it’s possible that Kermit is actually puppetted by a younger man than Elmo.”

“No, I think this is _precisely_ within the bounds of the show,” Neil counters. “I’m working under the assumption that this fight is taking place within TV show territory, as opposed to Kermit and Elmo being real, horrifying, living beings, fighting each other without the constraints of the TV. I’m saying that if the muppets and Sesame Street had a crossover and Elmo and Kermit discovered a moral impasse to which the only possible response was a one-on-one duel, then _within the show_ , it would have to take place on a rocky, hilly terrain, in order to provide hiding places for the puppeteers, thus giving the character of Kermit a leg up, as per my previous arguments.”

“What _moral impasse_ could Kermit and Elmo _possibly_ have?”

“I’d assume it would be dietary habits,” Neil points out.

Andrew smiles, there and gone. “I’m sorry?”

“Dietary habits? Kermit’s probably vegan, right?”

“ _Is he_?”

“His wife is a pig. Are you telling me they go out on a date and get bacon burgers? No, I’d assume they’re vegan—”

“That’s not what I remember about Miss Piggy’s diet.”

“Well, _she_ can be a cannibal, that’s on _her_ , but she’d probably be offended if Kermit was eating her brother.”

Andrew holds up a hand, opens his mouth, and fails absolutely to get anything out. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “So—okay. Okay. Everything you just said is wrong, but I’m honestly more concerned with why Elmo would be a meat-eater? He’s got flat, plant-eating teeth, from what I recall of his mouth.”

Well, _that’s_ a wrench in his argument. “Okay, maybe we flip it. You said there’s no reason to believe Kermit is a vegan, right?”

“You can’t just _flip it_ ,” Andrew says. “You’re making the argument, you can’t change the rules.”

“These aren’t rules, and why can’t I change them? I’m not even _arguing_ , you’re not arguing with me. You’re just making me explain. I’m just making things up.”

Andrew puts his elbow on the desk and leans his face against his hand. “That’s true. I’ll take a step back. You go at it.”

“Okay, so, if Miss Piggy and Kermit are _not_ vegan, and _do_ eat meat, is it possible that Elmo—diagnosed vegan due to teeth—is furious about this? That not only are they not vegan, but that Miss Piggy is, potentially, a cannibal? And actually, I say _potentially_ a cannibal—pigs are known to be cannibals, they’ll eat whatever. And maybe, while Elmo understands that different people have different diets, he is _strictly_ morally opposed to cannibalism, even when dictated by nature, and is incapable of leaving without a fight to the death. Miss Piggy, obviously, isn’t going to fight—I’m not saying, here, that she _doesn’t_ fight, or that she isn’t a ruthless fighter just like her husband, I’m just saying that for the sake of drama and the optics she’d have Kermit fight for her honor. And _that’s_ why he fights Elmo, and as proven earlier, he _will_ win, and Miss Piggy _will_ eat Elmo’s corpse.” Neil leans back. His argument has been made.

Andrew stares at him for a second, and then straightens, staring at a point above the camera. “You know, Neil’s... every week we do this, and... I have a PR agent. I do. I haven’t spoken to him in nearly a year. Sometimes he tweets on my account and then I delete his tweet. Every once in a while he deletes one of my tweets and I repost it. I have never once done what this man has told me to do. Neil, on the other hand, has a PR agent that he speaks to, and she has discovered some truths, which are—Neil and I are by and large a package deal, and I will, by and large, listen to Neil. Which means that _my_ PR is _Neil’s_ PR, which means that if she wants Neil to have good PR she needs me to have good PR, and if she goes through Neil I’m more likely to do what she wants. Anyway, every week, we do this stream, and at a god-awful time on Friday morning Neil’s PR agent calls him and wakes me up, and every week she _begs_ us not to talk about violent things,” Andrew says, continuing in an absolutely monotone voice even as Neil starts giggling, “and we just spent—let me see—ah, half an hour talking about a fight to the death between Kermit the frog and Elmo. So if, next week, we seem a little—next week is Thanksgiving, actually, we’re not streaming next week—but if the week after that we seem absolutely terrified, it’s because Neil’s PR agent is sitting two feet away from us with a hatchet.”

“Yes,” Neil says, answering questions in the chat, “she _is_ the one moderating and, presumably, seething. I _will_ note that she hasn’t yet called to stop us.”

“We appreciate that,” Andrew adds. “And we’ll move on. LilyC10 asks _Intelligence vs. Wisdom?_ And I think the obvious answer is wisdom.”

“When you say _obvious_ , you mean…?”

“I mean exactly what the word means,” Andrew says. “Your thoughts?”

Neil shakes his head. “I _carried_ the last one. Your turn.”

“You just want to hear the sound of my voice.”

“Yup,” Neil agrees. No arguments there.

Andrew stares at him for a second.

Neil grins.

“Intelligence involves learned things,” Andrew says. “You can always learn new shit. _Wisdom_ is the ability to _do_ something with that knowledge.”

“So, for instance, I may _know_ that I should measure spices out for a particular dish, but if I’m _wise_ I know to just go at it,” Neil says.

“That. Or, perhaps, _lack_ of wisdom could lead to you _not_ measuring, and thus fucking up irreparably.”

“I wouldn’t say _irreparably_.”

“I thought it was my turn to talk?”

Neil grins at him, waves him onwards.

“If I am wise and fuck something up, I can ask for instruction, or clarity. If I’m wise enough, I may realize I don’t know what to do before I fuck it up in the first place. If I’m intelligent, but not wise? Non-stop fuckup-land.”

“Non-stop fuckup-land,” Neil repeats.

“You heard me. So _that’s_ why wisdom is better than intelligence.”

“On the other hand, maybe you just fuck up all the time and never learn anything, and are wise enough to know it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not wisdom, it’s nihilism, or maybe just terminal jackassery. Fucking things up and not caring isn’t wisdom.”

Neil nods. He can get behind that. “Argument conceded.”

“Another from LilyC10: _When do you stop being sarcastic and start being rude_? I would posit never. My sarcasm is _always_ intended to be rude.”

“Oh, so you’re not saying that sarcasm is _never_ rude, you’re saying it’s _always_ rude.”

“Correct.”

“See, I’d argue that it’s when it gets _personal_. For instance, if I’m talking to you about the stadium and I say, ‘oh, yes, and it’s _always_ known for being clean,’ that’s not rude, it’s sarcasm. If I’m talking to the _janitors_ and I say the same thing, it’s rude. Because it’s personal.”

“I don’t think that rule always holds, though,” Andrew argues. “For instance: If someone asks you to carve a turkey, and I look at you and say ‘yes, because you’re _always_ playing with knives,’ referencing rumors of violence, that’s sarcasm, but it’s not rude. I don’t think.”

“I thought _all_ your sarcasm was rude?”

Andrew gives him a look.

“I think it’s not rude because it’s _not_ personal. You’re being sarcastic _with_ me, not _at_ me—you’re being sarcastic about _someone else_. With me.”

Andrew frowns. “I think that this involves a lot of not caring about other people. Going back to your janitors example—isn’t that being rude to the janitors? The fact that they’re not there to hear it doesn’t make it _less_ rude.”

“Is it _rude_ , or is it _mean?_ Hang on.”

“Looking it up?” Andrew asks, giving Neil his hand back.

“Yeah. ‘Mean’ is _unkind, spiteful, or unfair_. ‘Rude’ is _offensively impolite or iIl-mannered_. So I would argue that it’s not rude, it’s mean.”

“That’s semantics.”

Neil shrugs. “All of this is. Anyway, kids, don’t be mean to janitors.”

“Or rude.”

“Or rude.”

“Now, maybe we need to question the way we’ve answered this,” Andrew says. “Because we answered the _letter_ of the question, I think—it’s rude when you get personal about it. But have we answered the _spirit_ of the question?”

“Which is?” Neil prompts.

“When does sarcasm become _hurtful_? Where is the line drawn?”

“I’m listening.”

“Not going to take part?”

“Again: Kermit versus Elmo. _Carried_.”

“I did the last one!”

“Kermit versus Elmo took 30 minutes. Intelligence versus wisdom took two.”

“You know, my therapist says that it’s not healthy to obsessively keep score like that.”

“ _My_ therapist says I should know my worth.”

“She does?” Andrew asks, derailed. “She’s right, you—”

“She’s never said that to me, I made it up.”

“Oh.”

“You couldn’t tell I was lying?”

Andrew looks thrown. “Oh my god. I couldn’t tell you were lying.”

“Am I getting good at it?” Neil asks, grinning. It’s about time he gets better at lying to his husband. “Or was that just too small a lie?”

Andrew shakes his head. “You’ve told smaller that I’ve caught.”

“This one was _very_ low-stakes, though.”

Andrew considers that, and accepts it. “That’s fair. I’ll talk about sarcasm now. I think it becomes mean when the people you’re being sarcastic about or towards aren’t in on the joke.”

“Sarcastic _at_ someone, not sarcastic _with_ someone.”

“Yes.”

“So if the janitor I’m talking was furious that his colleagues consistently did a poor job,” Neil tries, “I could say _because the stadium is always_ so _clean_ and it would be fine.”

“Assuming it’s accepted knowledge that you _know_ that this particular janitor has nothing to do with it _and_ that the janitor is pissed about it. You don’t want to say that only to find out that the janitor’s teammate had a death in the family.”

“So basically, sarcasm isn’t rude as long as you know you’re not being rude.”

“Yes.”

Neil turns to the camera. “So that’s the answer to _that_ one. And, looking at the clock, it’s fucking late, so we’re going to go now, I think?”

Andrew nods in agreement. “As we’ve been told before, we’re old, and can no longer pull all-nighters.”

“Now, I hear you saying, _isn’t it only 9 at night where you are?_ And the answer is yes,” Neil confirms. “But please understand that Eliana is going to wake us up nice and early in the morning, and also, we have other things to do, like help our kids with their homework. So to Eliana, we’re very sorry, and to everyone else: Good night.” He looks at Andrew. _Anything else_? _Lavar_?

“Or good morning, depending on where you are,” is all Andrew adds. “We’ll see you in a couple weeks, assuming we survive them. Bye.”

Neil ends the stream.

They sit there for a second.

“Have you heard anything from the kids?” Neil whispers.

Andrew shakes his head.

Now, maybe that means they were just quiet. Certainly they’re not in the habit of being _loud_.

Andrew slides a knife out of one of his sheaths and passes it to Neil.

Neil follows him out into the hallway.

Paige is quietly, carefully, shutting the door to their homework room. She puts a finger to her lips when she sees Neil and Andrew. “Nat’s asleep,” she says quietly, voice pitched low.

Neil hands the knife back to Andrew and holds his arms out to Paige.

Paige points at the knife, eyebrows pulling together.

Andrew shrugs. “It was quiet,” he says, matching her pitch and volume. “We were—concerned.”

Paige shrugs and steps forward, hugging Neil, and sighs.

Neil pats her back.

“Why is she _being_ like this?” Paige asks. Is that a bit of a whine in her voice? Maybe.

“Come downstairs,” Neil says, tugging back. “Don’t want to wake her up.”

Paige follows them downstairs.

Andrew pulls a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and hands it to her.

Neil knows this routine. He hands Paige a spoon.

She gives them both odd looks, like this isn’t normal, but takes a seat with her ice cream.

“Look,” Andrew says, sitting down at the table with her, “for the past eight years, Natalie’s whole goal has been to keep you safe and to stay together. That’s _it_.”

“I know,” Paige says, annoyed. “I was there.”

“Eat your ice cream,” Andrew says. “She would kill to keep you safe, and she would starve to keep the two of you from being separated.”

“But what was the _end game_?” Paige asks, annoyed, waving her spoon. “Like—what—what did she _think_ was going to happen?”

Andrew shrugs. “I would assume she didn’t think that some random foster parents would end up adopting you two. She probably assumed that you’d have to stick it out until you were both legal adults—and she’d have time to think about it then, too, because you weren’t going to age out of the foster system and emerge with enough money to go your separate ways. And I don’t think she thought much about _that_ , either. When you’re concerned about day-to-day survival, the long term doesn’t bother you too much. She didn’t think _anything_ was going to happen at the end, because she was too busy dealing with any given moment. And—don’t tell me _you_ were thinking about it. I remember being 14. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a teenager, and she started dealing with it when you were _children_.”

“To recap,” Neil says, “she poured all of her thought and energy into sticking with you, and absolutely none into preparing for the fact that, unless you both died young, that would change, someday. And she’s been living like that for more than half her life.”

“It’s not like _I_ wasn’t living like that, too,” Paige says, annoyed. “It’s not like I was—just—fucking—chilling. But _I’m_ happy to let _her_ make her own life. It’s not _my_ job to—to—I don’t know, glue myself to her?”

Oh. That’s guilt, isn’t it. She feels _guilty_ about this.

To be fair, Neil and Andrew haven’t exactly been making it clear that she _shouldn’t_ be.

“I’m not suggesting it is,” Andrew says patiently, before Neil can open his mouth to tell Paige that this isn’t her problem to solve. “And I’m not suggesting that your life has been easy. I’m saying that different people react to things differently. And you have found someone to spend your time with. She has not. You feel like you’re _making_ a life. She—does not. And here’s the thing: That’s not your fault, Paige, and it’s not on you to fix that. It’s not your problem _to_ fix.”

“I _know_ that,” she snaps, even as Neil breathes a sigh of relief.

“Do you?”

“Yes!”

Andrew shrugs. “Have you considered going to therapy with her?”

“ _You_ want me to get _more_ therapy _too_?” she whines.

“Eat your ice cream and think about it,” Andrew says.

Hmm. Maybe _that’s_ what Neil had done wrong. He hadn’t given the kids ice cream.

Paige, obediently, eats her ice cream. Neil can’t tell whether or not she’s thinking about it.

After a minute or two, though, she sighs. “I guess we can’t do homework tonight.”

“Why not?” Neil asks.

“Natalie’s asleep. Can’t do it without her.”

Andrew glances at Neil.

Neil agrees completely. This is fucked, and Neil has no idea how to help. Neither child has a committed girlfriend Neil can half-blackmail.

They sit there.

Paige eats ice cream.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” she says, capping the pint halfway through.

“Are you sure?” Neil asks. “We could—” What would she _want_ to do? Play a goddamn board game?

Paige gives him a minute, and then smiles. “You’re bad at this.”

“Most dads get to start when their kids are too young to remember anything,” Neil says. “But, really, if you want to watch TV or—”

“I’m good,” she says.

Neil shrugs. “Good night, then.”

She hugs them both and heads upstairs.

Andrew looks at Neil. “Want to watch TV, or?”

Neil shakes his head. “Nah. Bedtime?”

Andrew nods.

They do their rounds, lock up, and head upstairs.

Neil gets in bed and pulls out his journal. His new special pen.

He doesn’t know how to start. He doesn’t know how to start writing something that no one but him will ever read, and he feels endlessly awkward—he shouldn’t have saved this for bedtime, he should’ve coerced Andrew into taking a nap or something so he could cringe at himself in peace—

Andrew gets out of bed.

Neil watches him. He likes watching Andrew. It’s more pleasant than trying to write about his emotions. And he doesn’t know what Andrew’s doing, which adds a little thrill to things.

Andrew pulls a journal out of his desk.

Oh.

Andrew pulls one of his special pens out of his desk.

Oh.

Maybe Neil should be using his own special pen.

But he hasn’t filled it. And he doesn’t really want to. It sounds like a messy operation.

Andrew returns to bed, scoots back against the headboard, opens to the first page of the journal, takes a deep breath, and starts writing.

 _Love_ , Neil writes in his journal. It’s what he’s got right now. It’s not a complete thought, or even a complete sentence, or an introduction (who is he introducing himself to? _The journal_?) or anything at all, but it’s what he’s got.

He takes a deep breath.

Andrew hasn’t stopped writing since he started.

 _Intimidated_ , Neil writes. He feels intimidated. By the fact that his husband can write things in a journal. _Stupid_.

 _Love. Intimidated. Stupid_.

It’s odd, to see them written down like that. Acknowledged, even if they were fleeting.

Neil sighs.

Andrew’s pen moves steadily across the paper. He, clearly, is not confining himself to listing his feelings.

What else is there to _write_?

Has _anything_ happened to him since Monday?

Oh. Wait. On the way back from the bookstore, he’d wanted to write down—what was it? Neil taps his pen against the paper. Oh—how he’d felt when he realized Andrew had spent the past few years paying for everything to spare Neil the trouble of feeling the way he feels when he spends money.

And what is he supposed to write about _that_?

Erika should’ve given him some instructions. Maybe a couple examples. He can’t go asking his friends to read their therapy journals.

Is he supposed to do this story-style? _Once upon a time, when I was but a boy, my mom and I ran away from home with just $5 million and had to make it last until we died._ _From that experience stemmed a trauma surrounding money._ Ridiculous. Maybe essay style? Neil can make an outline, just like everyone else. He doodles some fox paws in the margins. A bird—a raven. The Ravens are nothing like what they once were, but—he still doesn’t like the birds.

He’s getting off-topic.

When he was a teenager, in—where were they? They only stayed for two weeks. It doesn’t matter. He’d attended a few English classes, and they’d done stream-of-consciousness writing—sit down, start writing, don’t stop, even if all you do is write _I don’t know what to write_. It hadn’t worked well, for Neil; he hadn’t been particularly focused. He also hadn’t cared. And, of course, there was always the threat that someone would _see_ what he’d written, which precluded the possibility of actually _writing_ anything. He draws a tree. Sketches half a raven. Finds the wings bleeding into words—what else is he being protected from? By Andrew, or by anyone else? How much better do other people know him than he knows himself? Andrew has been enabling him—but, well, maybe that’s not right. It’s not very in keeping with the man who forced a cell phone on him, and then gave Nicky the job of forcing him to get used to it. But, then, as much as Andrew likes to pretend that he’s principled and constant, that’s not always true.

Neil glances at the block of writing. He skips a line and starts a new paragraph, because it’s not that Andrew _enables_ him—Andrew is usually the first to point out when Neil does something that shows his need for therapy. And he’s been pushing Neil to _get_ therapy for an absurdly long time. And this isn’t—Andrew can’t _enable_ Neil’s breakdowns. Forcing Neil to pay for things wouldn’t have spared Neil any of this. It might have taken one thing out of the equation, but it wouldn’t have saved him. It’s more that Neil—failed to take responsibility. If he’d gone to therapy years ago, this wouldn’t be an issue now. It’s only a problem because he’s been putting it off for so long, only a problem because he’s refused to face it. Andrew did everything he could do, and, honestly, it was more than Neil should have asked for—Andrew shouldn’t have been forced to deal with Neil’s flat refusal to acknowledge any of his own problems.

Speaking of which, maybe Neil should write about those, too.

Neil flags again. None of his other, presumably myriad, problems are coming to mind.

Can he write about his breakdown?

What is there to _write_ about it? Neil doodles some clouds above the tree. Dots some stars in—this is a nighttime scene now.

He’d been scared, at the time.

At least, he’s fairly certain that’s true. It feels—blurry. Maybe he wasn’t scared at the time. Maybe it’s that he’s scared, now, of _that_. What is he scared _of_?

Why does he even need to ask himself that? How is it possible that he doesn’t remember?

He takes a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth. He’s learned something from meditation.

What _does_ he remember?

He remembers being on the floor. He remembers being— _something_. Suspicious, maybe, of Andrew. What emotion was it, when he forgot to trust Andrew, to listen to him?

How can he bring any of this up, when he can’t tell Erika about the Moriyamas?

He closes his journal. What’s the point in writing more when he can’t bring any of it up?

Neil looks over at Andrew, still writing.

Andrew glances up and catches Neil’s eye. He waves the pen. “It’s fun. To be the good guy.”

Neil leans over and kisses his cheek, eyes closed so he can’t see whatever Andrew’s writing. “You’ve always been the good guy to me.”

“I haven’t, but that’s all right.”

Neil shrugs. He pulls out his phone.

He has no fewer than 14 unanswered texts.

He could answer them.

Well, but none of them are _urgent_. None of them are—well, okay, that one is. “We have to pick up Allison and Renee at the airport on Monday. Why did they pick my therapy day?”

“Not until the afternoon,” Andrew says, clicking his pen closed. “You’ll have time to pull yourself back together.”

Neil heaves a sigh as Andrew sets his journal aside and slumps against his shoulder.

Andrew finds and squeezes Neil’s hand, fingers sliding over Neil’s rings.

“I need help,” Neil says.

“This is not news to me.”

Neil chooses to ignore him. “I need to find a way to tell Erika about the mafia without telling her about the mafia.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a minute. Neil brushes his thumb over Andrew’s.

“Did you want me to help with that?” Andrew asks.

“ _Yes_.”

“Oh. Well, shit, it’s not _my_ fault you didn’t specify.”

Neil tilts his head so he can stare at Andrew.

“Don’t give me those fucking puppy eyes.”

Puppy eyes? Neil tries to give Andrew puppy eyes.

“Now you just look demented.”

“You think I’m cute.”

“Not right now I don’t.”

“Liar.”

“May the records show that my pants are _not_ on fire. I don’t know, just tell her not to ask any questions.”

“That’s her _job_.”

“I thought you didn’t want someone who just asked questions?”

“Well, look, it’s different when she does it.”

“How’s she do it?”

“She kind of—yells it at me.”

“You’re so fucked up. Neil, love, you’re so fucked up, it’s really incredible.”

“Thanks. It’s not like I’m her only client.”

“I’m sure you’re not the only fucked up person in this world. Doesn’t make you less fucked up.”

“This is not helpful.”

“Talking to your beloved husband isn’t helpful?”

“ _Drew._ ”

“Okay, okay, just—just tell her that there’s background information she needs to know, but you can’t give her all the details and she can’t ask questions about it. Tell her that—you are peripherally and unavoidably still involved in some shit, and you were put into a situation wherein you had to kill someone.”

“Which, of course, will lead to no questions, and _certainly_ not to her finding a way to take the kids away.”

Andrew shrugs.

“I guess I don’t _have_ to tell her I killed someone.”

“You probably should.”

“For what?”

“So that she can help you with that.”

Neil snorts. “That’s the part of this that I need the _least_ help with.”

“Again. Neil, I love you, I love you _so_ much, you are _so fucked up_. You should probably tell her you’ve killed multiple people, honestly.”

“Does Bee know _you’ve_ killed people?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Neil picks his head up at that. Really?

“It’s something I needed help with.”

“You _did_?”

“I’m not actually a sociopath, Neil.”

“So what?”

It’s Andrew’s tun to look at Neil head-on. “Killing other people fucks you up, Neil.”

“In what way?”

Andrew is looking at Neil like he’s stupid. “In the way where you’re sitting in bed with your husband, absolutely _shocked_ that killing people might fuck you up.”

“That’s not—that’s not a _weird_ —it’s—”

“It is. Whatever the fuck you’re trying to say, it is.”

“And how am I supposed to get past _that_?”

Andrew shrugs. “It took weeks for me, and my kill count is two. I’m assuming you and Erika are going to have to come up with quite the fucking plan.”

Neil will reserve judgment on that. For a long time, _everyone_ he knew had killed multiple people.

Now, to be fair, they were all horrible, and knowing that most of them are dead brings Neil absolute joy and peace. The world is, quite clearly, better off without them. But it’s fair to say that they’re not fucked up _because_ they killed people—they killed people _because_ they were fucked up. Or maybe out of self-defense. But if it was self-defense, wouldn’t the traumatizing part of the situation be the thing they were defending themselves from? Obviously, killing a gang member in self-defense could result in entering a gang—if only to avoid retribution—but if someone’s trying so hard to hurt you that you have to kill them, why would killing them fuck you up? _Maybe_ Andrew killing his mom would be an issue—it had been planned in cold blood, Neil supposes, although he’d argue otherwise. But killing Romero had _absolutely_ been in self-defense. They couldn’t have done anything else. The idea of being ambushed in an empty parking lot by two men with guns? Traumatic. The idea of killing one of them on the spot? Should have no mental health repercussions. They’d done nothing wrong.

Aaron _had_ had nightmares after killing Drake, though.

But again, was it _actually_ about _killing_ Drake, or about the—

Neil kisses Andrew’s cheek. He’s done there. He’d much rather think about the Andrew sitting next to him, face smooth and calm, left thumb flying across his phone screen as he texts, healthy and safe and happy and raising one eyebrow at Neil, allowing Neil a portion of his attention.

Neil finds this acceptable.

Andrew finishes his text, turns his phone off, sets it aside. Looks at Neil. _Yes?_

“I love you,” Neil tells him.

“I’m glad,” Andrew says, “because I love you, too.”

And isn’t that just the weirdest thing? How did Neil ever earn that?

“Maria wants to go on a double date. I have suggested roller skating. She says she’s never done that. I told her Riley has, and would probably teach her, so she’s on board. Also, we’re going to hang out this weekend. Not sure what we’re doing, but we’re adults, we’ll work it out.”

“Sounds good to me. Do we have a date for this double date?”

“After Thanksgiving.”

“Sounds good. When is Hanukkah?”

“The second to the tenth.”

“So based on historical precedent, we’re probably going to be at Riley’s on the eighth,” Neil surmises. “We’ll have to check with her.”

“Find out if we’re bringing the kids,” Andrew agrees. “Also, I’m worried about them.”

“Yes.”

Andrew takes a deep breath. “Why are we so _busy_?”

“I don’t know, but we should probably start working training into our schedule again, as well.”

“ _Gghguhgh,_ ” Andrew groans.

Neil squeezes his hand. “Life’s tough.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“No problem.”

Andrew twists a little towards Neil and taps two fingers to his cheek. Neil puts his face where Andrew wants it, and lets Andrew kiss him until they’re braindead enough to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neil: me? Therapy? No. Absolutely not. Never. Would rather die. Would rather endure any consequences other than therapy
> 
> Neil, the minute he gets a therapist: I had A Thought? I’m telling my mom
> 
> [This](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/home-gift-paperblanks-azure-hardcover-journals-mini-240-pg-lined/35114744?ean=9781439726839) is paige’s journal and [this](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/home-gift-paperblanks-nocturnelle-hardcover-journals-grande-240-pg-lined/35114742?ean=9781439722053) is natalie’s


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid struggles. 
> 
> There's porn in the beginning after like the first scene, prior warning

Neil’s phone is ringing, and the light is nowhere _near_ where it should be, setting Neil’s heart racing as he grabs his phone—an emergency? What’s happening? What’s going—

“Good morning,” Eliana says brightly.

Neil takes the phone away from his ear for a second. Glances at the clock. 7:30. “ _Really_?”

“This is called revenge, and I’m taking it. I ask you for _one thing_ , Neil, _one thing_ —”

“It’s not _my_ fault that that fan asked about Kermit versus Elmo,” Neil retorts. Andrew gives Neil a look that says that, if they weren’t largely reformed, Eliana would be dead.

“You are _not obligated to answer!_ Pretend they’re police, Neil, I’ve heard that you clam up like a—like a—”

“Like a clam?” Neil provides.

“Like a fucking clam, Neil. And now I’m cursing.”

“Probably, because it’s too early. Are you really in the office?”

“Right now? No, I haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”

Andrew reaches over and plucks the phone from Neil’s hand. “Eliana?” His voice cracks. That’s adorable. “This is Andrew. I want you to know that if I were not, by and large, reformed, you’d be dead right now.”

“He’s kidding,” Neil says, retrieving his phone.

“No, he’s not,” Eliana says, but she doesn’t seem to care. She sounds nearly as furious as Andrew does. And it doesn’t even seem like she’s angry at _Andrew._ She’s angry at _Neil._ That doesn’t feel fair.

“No, he’s not,” Neil agrees. “But he’s not dangerous.”

“I’m also not _house trained_ ,” Andrew growls.

“Neil. Look. I am serious. You aren’t obligated to answer. Andrew doesn’t need to read those questions. You can say you don’t want to answer. You can talk about it in a non-violent way—which one of them would win in a cooking contest. In a fucking philosophical discussion. You do _not_ need to actively work to _make_ people want to take your children away.”

“Do people want to take our children away?”

There’s a pause. Neil hears the sound of a refrigerator being opened and closed. “Not that I’ve seen. But I haven’t exactly done a deep dive yet. Neil. Honest to god, if you can’t cool it, I’ll quit.”

“We’re going to give you the world’s biggest end-of-year bonus.”

“I don’t accept bribes.”

“It’s not a bribe, it’s _earned_.”

“Oh, I fucking _know_ it is, Neil. Just—just _don’t_! Is that so hard! Thank _god_ you’re taking this week off. Make sure your kids are seen outside alive and happy, please, have them be laughing and taking selfies or something—”

“They’re not _plants_.”

“Then be better—”

She may have cut herself off, but Neil isn’t stupid. “Were you about to tell us to be better parents?”

“No, I was about to tell you to be better public figures, but I don’t think that’s the right word either. Work on your public relations, Neil.”

“You know, none of my coworkers have this kind of relationship with their PR agents.”

“None of your coworkers get online and talk about Miss Piggy eating Elmo’s corpse, either,” she snaps. “Most of us are used to working with people who say slurs, not people who talk about cartoon cannibalism.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s fair. Are slurs really _better_? Never mind. Look.”

“Don’t _look_ me.”

“You _could_ just not do your job. Andrew’s PR agent doesn’t do shit, and he hasn’t been fired yet.”

“He’s a white man, Neil.”

Andrew makes a noise that sounds like it _would_ have been a snort, if he wasn’t half asleep.

“That’s fair,” Neil agrees. “I make no promises.”

“I need you to make me this promise, Neil.”

“I won’t. But I’ll try to tone it down. I didn’t think yesterday was _that_ bad.”

“See, this is what concerns me. Yesterday _was_ pretty bad. People have thoughts about you that don’t mesh well with a discussion about battles to the death. We want them to think about you and think about kindness, and intelligence, and, if you insist on interacting with the public this way, calm, reasoned, philosophical debates. Also, if Andrew is listening, calling your husband stupid live on YouTube isn’t great either.”

“Unfortunate,” Andrew mumbles.

“Well, you don’t know what people are saying about us yet, right?” Neil asks hopefully.

“I don’t,” Eliana admits. “But I can’t imagine it’s great. Although your fans have surprised me in the past. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll call you back in an hour with proof.”

“Sounds good to me,” Neil agrees. “Talk to you in an hour.”

“Bye.”

Neil ends the call, and Andrew opens one eye to give Neil a look that, for some reason, says he’s going to kill Neil. “It’s not _my_ fault,” Neil objects. Why is everyone after him this morning? He hasn’t done anything!

“Isn’t it?” Andrew asks, grumpy, closing his eye. “You’re the one who has a PR agent who gives a shit.”

“Again, no one _else_ I know deals with this.”

“No one else specifically gave their PR agent the issue of: _People think I’m violent and want to take my kids away, and I don’t want that to happen. Now I’ll be fucked up in public._ ”

Neil sighs.

Andrew crinkles his nose. “Ew. Morning breath.”

“Then get me a mint.”

“Wanna go back to bed.”

“Then don’t complain.”

“I can do both,” Andrew says, snuggling down into Neil’s chest.

“Humans aren’t good at multitasking.”

“I am the exception.”

“You _are_ exceptional.”

Andrew rolls away.

What did Neil say wrong?

Nothing, apparently, because Andrew goes for the mints, rolls back, and puts one in Neil’s mouth.

“I’m so sick of you,” Andrew grumbles, voice cracking again, chewing his mint, looking on the verge of falling back asleep.

He’s adorable.

“Just how sick of me are you?” Neil asks, grinning, ghosting his nails up Andrew’s throat.

“ _Extremely_.”

Much to think about, there. It wasn’t a no; it was, actually, more of a gasp than a statement. And Andrew is hard, Neil can feel it.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a yes, either.

Neil kisses Andrew’s forehead, his nose. “We _could_ go back to sleep.”

“Mmhmm.”

“But we don’t really have anything to do today.”

“A perfect reason to go back to sleep,” Andrew says, but the hand sliding up Neil’s shirt to curl around his ribs isn’t sleep-inducing. And he’s not putting his head back on Neil’s chest, either, he’s snuggling down into Neil’s neck, teeth first, one knee pressing itself between Neil’s legs.

“We could also just—stay up until Eliana calls, and _then_ go back to sleep,” Neil suggests, sliding a hand into Andrew’s hair. That’s safe, in this odd halfway-state, where Andrew isn’t agreeing or disagreeing.

“Look,” Andrew says, picking his head up, “here’s some rules. I just happened to have morning wood, you touched my throat, this isn’t personal—don’t laugh at me—and don’t talk about your PR agent—”

“Is this a yes or a no?” Neil asks. He doesn’t feel like sitting in the grey area. _This isn’t personal_. That’s going to keep being funny, whether Neil is allowed to laugh at it or not.

“It’s a yes. Also, I’m tired, and really, _you’re_ the one who started this—”

“Then why are you on top of me?” Neil asks, putting his hands on Andrew’s hips. “I’ll do the work. Where’s a towel?”

“If _you’re_ doing the work…”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, you’ve _got_ fingers.”

Neil snickers. “That I do. And, I’ve been told, I know how to use them,” he says, gently pushing Andrew off of him.

“Who told you that?” Andrew asks, reaching behind one of the untouched pillows on his side of the bed to retrieve towels.

“Oh, is _that_ where those went?”

“They’re our ugliest towels, I figured we could sacrifice them.”

“And our worst pillow,” Neil agrees. He climbs over Andrew’s legs and scoots over to his bedside table to retrieve the lube and condoms.

“Why is _my_ side of the bed the sex store?” Andrew asks.

Neil shrugs. “It used to be just lube. It just—expanded, recently. If you want anal, you’re going to have to take your pants off.”

“But I’m tired,” Andrew says, absolutely affronted.

Neil pats Andrew’s stomach. “You’ll have to compromise somewhere. The compromise here is that I jerk you off, but it’s your choice.”

“You could take my pants off _for_ me.”

“That’s true. You’re going to have to lift your ass up, though, to get that pillow under it, so you may as well take your pants off too.”

“Please?”

Neil takes a deep breath. He’s spent the past 10 years avoiding that word like the plague; Andrew shouldn’t get to use it like this, early in the morning, voice still just-woke-up deep, asking Neil to take his pants off. Andrew should let Neil get used to it a little, first.

Neil picks up Andrew’s hand and kisses the back of it, kisses his rings. When he lets go, Andrew reaches up, wraps a hand around the back of Neil’s neck, stretches up for a kiss.

For all he’s insisting he’s too tired to take off his own goddamn pants, he’s _not_ too tired to push his tongue into Neil’s mouth, not too tired to kiss Neil like it’s their last chance to do so, not too tired to take Neil’s breath away.

Neil is fine with this.

He follows Andrew as Andrew drops back down onto the pillows, holding himself up on his elbows, letting Andrew reach down and shove his fingers in the waistband of Neil’s pants, tugging them down an inch or two until he can’t reach anymore. But Andrew can still reach Neil’s dick, and he doesn’t waste time there, grazing his thumb over the head, making Neil gasp, and then Andrew pulls away.

“Pants?” Andrew demands.

Neil laughs. “Mine or yours?”

“Both, preferably,” Andrew says, right before making the job exponentially harder by sitting up to take his shirt off.

That’s fine, Neil can fill the time. He strips himself down, and then, gently, pulls off Andrew’s pants, while Andrew uses the opportunity to slide the pillow under his butt.

Neil collects himself. This isn’t the first time he’s seen Andrew sprawled out in front of him. He takes a breath. He can go slow, here. There’s no reason to rush.

So he does. He gets the condom on his fingers, lubes up, and then Andrew grabs his arm and tugs, insistent, so Neil gets one finger lined up and then moves to hover over Andrew, letting Andrew pull him into a kiss.

Slow.

To be fair, sticking fingers in Andrew’s ass already lends itself to moving more slowly, but Neil commits to it. Slow kisses, slow fingers, the soft sounds of Andrew slowly losing his mind. Andrew, apparently, has no problem with this—maybe it’s more in line with his general drowsiness, allowing him to keep his eyes lidded, nearly closed, even when Neil drops his face to Andrew’s neck, even as Andrew wraps one hand in Neil’s hair. Neil evades Andrew’s other hand, reaching for Neil’s dick—there exists a world wherein Neil would ignore all the skin Andrew is presenting him with, but it’s not this one. He kisses Andrew’s shoulders, his chest, the top of his stomach, one of his ribs—considers—“Drew.”

Andrew’s eyes flick half open to look at Neil.

Neil forgets, for a second, what he was going to say, what he was going to ask. Andrew looks—flushed, turned on, but also—something in the vicinity of content. Peaceful. Maybe—trusting? He’s holding Neil’s free hand, and that’s nice, too. “Can I put my mouth on your dick?”

Andrew considers this, with much less emotional distress than Neil might have thought. “I trust you,” he says after a moment. “I’ll tell you to stop when you need to stop.”

Hmm.

Neil hates that.

He’d rather have clear boundaries. Prevents him from fucking up.

Well, maybe it’s better this way. Err on the side of caution. Let Andrew get used to the concept, a little at a time.

Neil folds himself over, two fingers rocking in and out of Andrew, and kisses just under the head of Andrew’s dick, watching Andrew’s stomach contract. He’s kissing everywhere else; why not here?

And then he leaves well enough alone, pulling back up to kiss the corner of Andrew’s lips, his cheek, his jaw, until Andrew—eyes still closed—turns his head sideways, searching, and Neil indulges him, meets his lips, and leans into the rhythm and curl of his own fingers. His dick is feeling untouched, but that’s not the end of the world—they’ve got time, after all, and Neil likes listening to Andrew’s breath, deep and heavy, growing increasingly unsteady.

Andrew reaches down again, and this time Neil lets him wrap his hand around both of them. Not that Andrew seems to be speeding things up—he’s going slow and steady too, letting Neil rock against him, a slow slide and drag that, given enough time, will absolutely drive Neil crazy.

They take their time.

Neil pulls away from Andrew’s mouth, just to examine him—lips parted, face flushed, eyes at half-mast until he blinks them open and locates Neil’s face.

“I love you,” Neil says, finding a different angle for his fingers, one that makes Andrew gasp, shudder, one that makes Andrew’s hand squeeze a little tighter, pulling a quiet groan from Neil. It occurs to Neil that there’s no real reason to stay quiet—the kids are long gone—but—but the house is _quiet_. And Andrew is quiet, content to let Neil handle the details, and that, too, is nice—Andrew, relinquishing so much of his control, knowing that Neil won’t let him regret it, knowing he can just—let it go. Let himself be half-asleep and quiet and safe and slowly worked to a climax.

“I love you too,” Andrew gasps, hanging onto Neil, moving his thumb in a way that takes Neil out of his rhythm for a moment. That moment is all it takes, though—Neil can’t hold onto his rhythm anymore, doesn’t have the patience to keep slowly wearing Andrew down, gives up, nips at Andrew’s neck—

Stops altogether.

Andrew looks up at him like he’s lost his mind.

“The other towel?” Neil asks. “I don’t have a free hand.”

“I have to do _everything_ around here,” Andrew grumbles, releasing Neil’s hair to grab the second towel. He takes a second, wiping up what’s already on his stomach, before flipping it messy-side-up and sliding it down. “This is stupid. This is so fucking stupid.”

Neil grins. Rubs his thumb in a crescent shape and angles his fingers right.

Andrew’s eyes roll back in his head.

“Not stupid,” Neil says, kissing his cheek. “Pretty.”

Andrew blinks at Neil, says nothing but his name, and comes half a minute later, one hand tight in Neil’s hair, the other squeezing their dicks together in a way that has Neil right on the edge, but—

But not there.

On the other hand, he also can’t move, because Andrew is still holding his dick, but he doesn’t want to pull his fingers out unless he’s got his other hand free to remove the condom—“Drew—”

Andrew pulls Neil down for a kiss, lazy and tired, and lets go of his own dick to wrap his hand fully around Neil’s. “I know.”

“No—I need you to let go, my fingers are still in your ass, I don’t want it to get painful.”

Andrew looks almost confused for a second, but he lets go of Neil so that Neil can pull back, pull his fingers out, dispose of the condom.

Maybe Neil should go to the bathroom to get himself off.

But—

But Andrew isn’t kicking him out, doesn’t look as fucked up as he had last time, and Neil doesn’t want to leave him alone.

Fuck it. He’ll survive. He takes the towel off Andrew’s stomach, goes to toss it aside, but Andrew stops him.

“You’re gonna make a mess too, you know. Your dick isn’t special.”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t need to. Was considering going to the bathroom, but—don’t want to leave you alone, unless you’re kicking me out. But you look like you’re about to fall asleep, so I’ll just—wait it out.”

Andrew stares at him for a second. “You’re so stupid,” he says. “I hate you. Come here. Bring the fucking towel.”

Neil flops on his side next to Andrew, and Andrew wraps a hand around his dick, one finger at a time, making Neil shiver. Neil puts the towel beneath him, where hopefully it’ll do the most good, and wraps an arm around Andrew’s shoulders as Andrew’s hand speeds up, trying to shift until he can put his forehead against Andrew’s without squashing Andrew’s hand, which is rapidly bringing Neil to the edge, and then—

—Over it.

When Neil blinks his eyes back open, Andrew is tossing the towel away, twisting back to kiss Neil’s mouth before locating the blanket and dragging it over them both. Neil wraps his arm around Andrew’s waist, and Andrew doesn’t object to Neil’s hand on his back; he just cuddles in closer.

Andrew falls back asleep within two seconds, and Neil isn’t far behind.

At 8:30 on the dot, as promised, Eliana wakes them up, the noise making them jump.

Neil rolls away, grabs his phone, hisses when the arm he and Andrew were lying on starts to wake up—that’s gonna hurt. He answers the phone. “So how bad is it?”

“I’m so furious, Neil.”

Neil waits. His arm statics back to life.

Andrew rolls closer, sprawling across Neil, so he can hear Eliana through the phone. Neil exhales carefully, suppressing his reaction to Andrew rolling over his arm. Why are pins and needles so _painful_? “Why?” Neil prompts.

“There’s approximately four people who give a shit.”

Neil laughs.

“Okay. One of those people wrote a dissertation on how the fact that everything turns violent with you is emblematic of a preoccupation with hurting other people and a sign that you’re probably abusive, but comments are largely in your favor. There’s starting to be a backlash—in your favor—because people are starting to get pissed that these thinkpieces connect a violent upbringing with being bad people and parents, they’re extremely upset at—and I quote— _the implication that people can’t be better than their worst inclinations._ So now there’s thinkpieces about the struggle to overcome your upbringing but how worth it it is—so, anyway, public opinion is turning in your favor.”

“So maybe,” Andrew says, voice cracking, “there was really no need to wake us up at 7:30 in the morning.”

“Maybe,” Eliana agrees. “But, hey, if you didn’t ignore the _one instruction I gave you_ —but. Regardless. Some people are starting to cheer for you specifically _because_ you are—and I quote— _showing that it’s possible to grow up in a terrible situation and still become a good person and a good parent and find love_. So, fuck it, what do I know.”

“Probably a lot,” Neil says. “It’s just that we—I don’t know.”

“Me neither. Probably the fact that you are so ridiculously unscripted, and yet your kids look healthy—which, by the way, there’s a bit of buzz about the fact that they weren’t there yesterday, but not much—after all, as some fans have pointed out, it’s _your_ show, not the kids’ show.”

“So to sum up: we’re fine?” Neil asks.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“I’ll let you go, then, and I’ll let you know if anything changes. Don’t do anything stupid. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Neil says. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Neil lets his hand and his phone fall to the side.

“Canbleve,” Andrew mumbles.

Neil frowns at him. “Was that a word?”

Andrew waves a finger and makes a few more noises.

Okay.

That’s fine by Neil.

He can feel approximately all of Andrew’s skin. This feels like the best possible time to go back to sleep, probably. It feels like therapy of some kind. Skin-to-skin.

He wakes up again half an hour later, thanks to Andrew pushing himself up and away. Neil watches him roll out of bed and stumble towards the bathroom.

It’s distinctly possible that there will come a day when this is unremarkable. When Andrew will wander naked around their bedroom and Neil won’t give it a second thought. But today is not that day, and Neil wastes three seconds hoping it never comes before he gets up to join Andrew in the bathroom.

They brush their teeth. They wash their faces. They get dressed. They head out into the hallway. They jump as Natalie shuts the door to the homework room behind her, looking equally shocked to see them, absolutely disheveled, and completely confused.

“Good morning,” Neil says automatically. Did he miss something? A text? The only thing he remembers seeing is something from Paige saying she was on the bus, but he doesn’t remember it mentioning Natalie. She couldn’t have left and come _back_ , not looking the way she is right now, like she’s been sleeping since halfway through their stream last night. Neil suppresses a semi-hysterical giggle at the fact that _she_ looks shocked to see _them_ , like _they’re_ the ones who aren’t supposed to be here.

“Oh,” she says. “I.”

Right. “We’re going to make breakfast,” Neil says. “You can join us when you’re ready.”

“Okay.”

Neil nods at her—what else is he supposed to _do_?—and jostles Andrew downstairs.

“So we’re okay with this, right?” Andrew whispers frantically as they enter the kitchen. “This is fine?”

“Yeah. Yeah. We’re okay with this. Are we acknowledging this?”

“I don’t know how to acknowledge it without making it sound like we’re not okay with it.”

“Say we’re fine with it?”

“Sounds sarcastic. Do we have rules for this? We said we don’t have rules for this, we can’t go back on that. We’re making pancakes?”

“We’re making pancakes,” Neil confirms, dumping mix into a bowl.

“Wanna measure that?” Andrew asks.

Neil retrieves a measuring cup, transfers the mix to the cup, shrugs, and dumps it back in the bowl. “Good enough.”

“I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“I love you,” Andrew agrees, kissing Neil’s cheek. “Do we do anything about this?”

Neil shrugs. “Check my phone? Did we get anything from Paige? Did I miss something?”

Andrew pulls Neil’s phone out of his pocket and checks Neil’s and his own phone. “She didn’t say shit about this. Her way of fucking over Natalie?”

“I don’t think so. Her way of letting Natalie have control over the situation, maybe.”

They wait.

Neil flips pancakes. Andrew pours orange juice.

Every single one of Neil’s senses is attuned to the kitchen doorway, and he still only has half a second’s warning before Natalie appears there.

“Oh,” she says again, looking at the table, where Andrew is laying out whipped cream, strawberries, sprinkles, like he’s preparing for an ice cream social.

“Felt like pancakes today,” Neil says casually. It’s not going to come off as casual. He knows it’s not going to come off as casual. He’s trying anyway.

Natalie eats.

She eats slowly—she knows, now, that she doesn’t need to eat fast—but steadily, working her way through a stack of pancakes.

Neil feels oddly seasoned, in this matter. He knows what it’s like to break down, and he knows what the aftermath is like.

Andrew keeps nudging the whipped cream closer to Natalie until she gives him a _look_ that makes him take it back.

What are they supposed to do here? Andrew already said they can’t address it. Maybe they have to wait for Natalie to bring it up.

“We were going to clean the house today,” Neil lies. “Want to help?”

Natalie nods.

Neil hadn’t thought it would be that easy.

But they clean off the table and give Natalie the vacuum, and she puts headphones in and goes at it with a vengeance.

Andrew shrugs.

Neil cleans the bathrooms. Andrew dusts. Neil hauls out the swiffer. Andrew washes the windows. Natalie starts a load of laundry, and then starts organizing the pantry—Neil’s fairly certain that’s what she’s doing, anyway. She’s got everything on the floor. Neil would assume it’s for cleaning purposes.

When they’re done, they reconvene in the living room.

“So,” Neil says.

Natalie straightens up, lifts her chin, like she’s ready for a tribunal. She looks better, though. More alert.

“You can talk to us if you need anything.”

Her eyes flick over to Andrew, waiting for him to add, to contradict, but he stays silent. “Can I go out tonight?”

“Sure. Need a ride?”

Natalie gives it a second—waiting for something about that to change—but Neil and Andrew say nothing. “Maybe. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. Coordinate with Paige and decide when you want to do homework. She didn’t want to do it without you last night.”

“Okay. Can I go outside and practice knife throwing?”

“As long as you don’t mind if I come with you,” Neil says, warning bells going off in his head. It would be so easy for her to let go of the knife at the wrong time. “Just to make sure you don’t get hurt.”

She shrugs and heads upstairs.

“I guess that was too much,” Neil surmises.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand. “Can only do so much.”

But Natalie is already on her way back down the stairs—she’d gone to get her knife.

Right. She needs that.

Neil and Andrew follow her outside, Andrew pausing to grab the first aid kit.

Neil watches Natalie out of the corner of his eye. He’s trying to lead by example—here’s how to properly throw a knife—and she’s watching, a little, and throwing well, and not stabbing herself, and that’s important, and then Andrew steps up beside Neil, tries to throw—at what? The tree?—and lands the knife right in their fence.

Neil gives Andrew a look that says _if our child wasn’t standing right there failing at this also, I’d be laughing at you_. Andrew gives him a look that says _I’d gut you if you did_.

They throw. They retrieve their knives. Repeat.

There’s a hole in the tree where Neil keeps landing his knife. Natalie and Andrew aren’t having that level of success, but they don’t once have to use the first aid kit, and that’s good enough for Neil.

Also, maybe he likes watching Andrew throw a knife. Is that a crime? Neil thinks not.

Natalie follows them around, stands there aimlessly while they make lunch, belatedly retrieves plates when Neil is reaching for them anyway.

Is this normal? Would a better parent punish her for this? Neil can’t do it. It wasn’t long ago that he was doing the same exact thing to Andrew, and it was only a couple years back that Andrew was doing the same exact thing to him—the exhausted, silent, aimless wandering. And Natalie’s just a kid.

She eats in silence, and then follows them into the living room.

“Any preference for what we watch?” Neil asks.

“No, thanks.”

They put on House Hunters, and watch Natalie play with Sir and King for half an hour until she gets into a chair and curls up with her phone.

Andrew gets up a couple minutes later, grabbing a blanket to put over her—she’s asleep.

He sighs as he takes his seat next to Neil again. “We’re above forcing her into extra therapy, right?”

“For now.”

“Where’s that line drawn?”

“Who knows?”

Andrew gives him a look, but Neil doesn’t have any other answers.

They watch House Hunters and wait.

Paige coming home is what wakes Natalie up, a few hours later.

Natalie does her best to look like she hasn’t just woken up, and Andrew and Neil silently agree not to mention it.

“How was school?” Neil asks.

Paige shrugs and sits down on the floor. “We have to do homework at some point,” she says.

“Was something due today?” Andrew asks.

“No, it just has to get done.”

“You could do it alone,” Natalie snaps.

Paige gives Natalie a dirty look. “I mean, I was waiting to do it with you so you wouldn’t _have_ to do it alone, but whatever.”

“No,” Neil says. The girls turn laser eyes on him, which is unfortunate, because Neil has no idea what he was about to say. That’s fine, though, impromptu speeches are his thing. “Don’t fight over a fake thing. There’s an actual issue here, and you’re not willing to address it—”

“ _I_ am,” Paige huffs, sitting up straighter.

“But you don’t get to sit here and argue about things you’re not really fighting over just because you’re not talking about the actual issue. That just means that you’ll build up problems until you both hate each other, instead of addressing _the issue_. So be nice to each other until you can find a way to talk about it, or else you’ll never fucking bother. Yes?”

“I mean, the _issue_ is that Natalie is overbearing and controlling and—and—clingy—”

“No,” Natalie interrupts, “the issue is that Paige is a leech—”

Andrew stands up, and both girls go silent. He moves to stand between them, blocking their view of each other, like he’s getting between dogs who are taking things a bit too far. “No.”

Natalie stands up. “I want to move my bed into _my_ bedroom.”

“Fine,” Paige says. It takes her a second—trying to find a comeback—“I get to keep the stars, anyway.”

“You _need_ them,” Natalie says nonsensically, flinging her hair over her shoulder and speedwalking out of the room.

Paige waves at Neil and Andrew as Natalie disappears up the stairs. “She’s too weak to pick that shit up by herself, are you going to help or are you just gonna fucking stand here?”

Neil suppresses a sigh. There’s no confusion about this one—a different parent would punish Paige for that.

But he’s not that parent. She’s feeling angry, and sad, and guilty, and Neil doesn’t have the heart to yell at her for not knowing how to handle all of that politely. She’s 14. He ruffles her hair. “Are you going to need a haircut soon?”

She pinches a clump of her hair. “Like, two months ago, why? Who cares?”

“I care, and I’m sorry I didn’t realize you needed one. We’ll take you to get one soon. Do you usually keep it short?”

“Harder to pull if it’s short.”

Neil refrains from asking. He doesn’t want to know. He knows he doesn’t want to know. He shrugs. “If someone pulls it, let me know and I’ll shave their heads. If you want to grow it out, you should. If you like it short, we’ll take you to get it cut more often.”

“Okay.”

Neil turns and nods at Andrew—they can go upstairs now.

They find Natalie moving all her dresser drawers into the homework room.

Oh, she’s _really_ moving.

Neil suppresses a sigh. There’s a distinct chance that they’re going to have to move this all back again in a week. But so be it.

They move Natalie into the homework room, and move Paige’s desk into her room.

“Do you want the pull-out couch?” Andrew asks her.

“It can stay,” Natalie agrees listlessly. “Also, Dave is picking me up in an hour. His mom is. We’re going to the mall with Tina and Ruth. She’s gonna drop me off later, too.”

“Okay,” Andrew agrees. “Text us if you need anything, and text us when you have an idea of when you’ll be home.”

“Yeah.”

Are they supposed to stick around? Is that a dismissal?

Andrew doesn’t seem to know either. He pats Natalie’s shoulder and heads out, though, so Neil follows him.

“Thank god Renee and Allison usually stay in the basement,” Andrew whispers in Russian. “We can’t ask the kids to share a room right now. Can we?”

“I mean, we probably _could_. But I don’t think we _should_.”

“I guess we—”

Paige is right where they left her, but crying.

Lord.

Neil and Andrew pick a side and sit with her, because what else are they supposed to do? Jesus. Can’t she and Natalie just _talk_ to each other? For thirty seconds? Nicely? Paige is trying—more than Natalie is, anyway—but they both need to be willing to make that effort.

Neil is in no position to lecture either of them on the benefits of talking to each other with intent to come to a mutual understanding. Traditionally he’s been very bad at that. In fact, historically speaking, opening his mouth is usually what gets him tortured.

Andrew lets Paige sob herself out on his shoulder, but not before Natalie appears at the end of the hallway. She glances up from her phone, sees Paige, and Neil can see her refusing to react, refusing to give in.

“I’m headed out.”

“All right,” Neil says. “See you later.”

Natalie shuts the door behind her, and Paige shrinks down. “She doesn’t even _care_ ,” she cries.

“She does,” Neil reassures her. “She just doesn’t want to lose.”

“She started it!” Paige complains. “She should _apologize_.”

Neil pats her shoulder. He can agree all he wants, it won’t change anything. And he can say _sister therapy_ all he wants, but that won’t change anything, either.

She heaves the world’s biggest sigh, stands up, and scrubs her face with her sleeves. “I’m going upstairs.”

“Do you want water?” Andrew asks, and she changes course, swerving into the kitchen.

She emerges a minute later with a glass, and then goes upstairs.

“Cool,” Neil says, scratching his hand along the floor so King can scramble after it. “This is good. Everything’s good. I think I need to talk to Erika about my kids. They’re traumatizing me.”

Andrew snorts. “I always knew about parents traumatizing kids. Never realized it would go the other way around.”

“Life is really hard for the two of us, because we’ve now been traumatized by our parents _and_ our kids.”

“I’d like to add that I was traumatized by my siblings, too, so I’m more traumatized than you are.”

Neil spends half a second considering before he concludes that he doesn’t have a third segment of people who traumatized him. “That’s fair. You can get therapy first.”

“I already did, it’s your turn.”

“I already am.”

“Then what are we fighting about?”

“Probably, we’re just fighting to delay standing up, because getting off this floor is going to hurt.”

Andrew sighs, nods, and shoves himself off the floor. Neil follows suit. Why did they decide to keep the hardwood? It’s hard. They should’ve gone for plush carpet. Neil’s butt hurts, and he _didn’t_ start the morning with someone’s fingers in it. He takes Andrew’s hand, kisses the back of it, and they read until dinner.

Hopefully Natalie will eat while she’s out. He doesn’t want her to be hungry. But it’s four teenagers. They’ll eat, right? Neil briefly considers transferring more money into her bank account, but he doesn’t want to give her more than Paige, not right now, when that’s seen as taking sides, and when he’s fairly certain Natalie doesn’t need the financial help anyway. And she’s out with at least three rich people. Or, at least two—Neil doesn’t know who Ruth is, so maybe she’s not rich. As far as he’s concerned, she and Natalie are each other’s protection against being a third wheel.

He and Andrew walk on eggshells for the rest of the day, letting Paige read her book in peace, welcoming Natalie home quietly—it’s nearly 11 by the time she gets back, anyway.

And then they go to bed.

And they lie there, awake, because there’s no point in falling asleep when—

Andrew jumps up at a knock on their door.

It turns out to be Natalie. Is that a surprise, or was it expected? She’s the one who decided to sleep in a different room, but—but somehow, Neil isn’t surprised that she came in first.

“Sorry,” she says, quiet and small. “Can I sleep in here?”

Neil pats the bed, and she climbs in next to him, holding her doll, and is barely there for two seconds when there’s another knock on the door.

Natalie sits up as Andrew lets Paige in, and Neil may be behind her, but he knows she’s giving Paige laser eyes.

Paige, clearly, doesn’t give a shit. Why would she? She’s watched Natalie do this to other people for years, and she must know that Natalie won’t hurt her.

“What?” Paige snaps.

“Why are _you_ in here?” Natalie snaps right back.

“Why are _you_ in here?” Paige snaps right back.

All right. “Hey,” Neil says, trying not to snap. “Neither of you like sleeping alone, that’s why you’re here. And, unfortunately, this is my and Andrew’s room, not yours, so neither of you can kick the other out. Either you be nice to each other or you go somewhere else.

“ _I’m_ staying,” Natalie says, hugging her doll furiously.

“Me _too_ ,” Paige insists, making her way to Andrew’s side of the bed.

Andrew and Neil scoot to the middle, where they belong anyway, and wait.

It takes time. Neither kid is happy with this situation.

But eventually, they fall asleep, and Neil tangles his fingers with Andrew’s and falls asleep too.

And that’s their weekend.

The girls do their homework separately, and alone. Neither one of them asks for help. They stay upstairs in their respective bedrooms. Meals are silent.

Andrew goes out with Maria on Saturday. Neil takes the opportunity to write things in his journal—nothing coherent, nothing that even feels worthwhile, just various words. _Confused? Concerned? Kids doing bad. Love Andrew. Love kids. Worried about family._ He draws a person. Makes an attempt at anatomy. He should take a drawing class.

Andrew gets in late, smelling distinctly of movie theater popcorn and Auntie Anne’s pretzels and carrying two bags from Nordstrom’s.

“Have fun?” Neil asks.

“We went shopping. Window shopping, technically, but also some real shopping.”

“Get anything good?”

“Got you a shirt. Got me a couple outfits, too. Next time we have an event to go to we’re going to look _so_ good.”

“You always look good.”

“Try this on,” Andrew commands, tugging a shirt out of the bag.

“You have to put yours on too,” Neil orders, before he heads into the bathroom to get changed.

It’s a button-down, but it’s cut differently—a little more fitted. It’s comfortable, which is nice, and when he walks out into the living room, Andrew is wearing an equally fitted button-down, and—oh, Neil likes that. Likes how Andrew looks in that. Likes being able to see the lines of Andrew’s body. And Andrew looks at Neil and stops breathing for a minute, which is nice, and then he pushes Neil up against the wall, which is nice, and lets Neil stick his tongue in Andrew’s mouth, which is _very_ nice.

A cabinet shuts in the kitchen and they break away. Adjust their clothes. Neil gives Andrew the bathroom and changes his shirt at top-speed in a corner.

Their bedtime routine is precisely the same, both Saturday and Sunday. The kids come in one at a time, snap at each other like two cats meeting for the first time, and then settle down and fall asleep.

How did Neil and Andrew get involved in this? To this extent? They could’ve left Natalie’s bed in Paige’s room and gotten the same outcome.

Monday comes as half a relief, because at least the kids are both in school, but Neil has therapy, and that’s only so good.

But he doesn’t try to get out of it, which counts as personal growth, and he strides into the building with an amount of confidence that he probably shouldn’t have. He is liable, after all, to get out of here, go home, and spend an hour and a half cuddling with his husband. And his opener for today is going to be difficult.

Maybe that’s _why_ he feels confident. He knows what he’s going to talk about.

He signs in, sits down, and waits.

It’s not long. The woman whose appointment is before his comes sailing out, looking perfectly happy, as she has been the last two times he’s seen her.

What’s her life like? What kind of issues does she have, where she needs therapy but walks out happy? Why not just talk to a friend?

Maybe that’ll be Neil, one day. Coming in to vent until he feels better.

He stands, feels his confidence drain out through his feet, and walks into Erika’s office, shutting the door behind him.

“Neil!” she says, clicking her pen rapidly in welcome. “How are you?”

“I have problems,” Neil says, sitting down.

“Yup. Correct. Which ones are we talking about today? I have plans, but we can scrap ‘em.”

Neil opens his mouth, and nothing comes out.

Erika isn’t a Fox. She can only know the front-facing shit—Neil’s dad, Neil’s mom, Neil’s years on the run. The mafia—what made Neil think he could ever tell her? What made Andrew sound so sensible, when he said _just don’t say the word_? Why did he try to _open_ with it instead of feeling it out? If Mary was here, she’d murder him—because he planned to tell her anything at all, because he’s _here_ at all, because he was stupid enough to rush in.

“Spit it out,” Erika says, which sounds shockingly kind to Neil’s ears. “I checked the room for bugs before my last appointment. I’ve invested in a little metal detector. And I did some incognito googling about how to detect bugs hidden in walls. Went ahead and turned my phone and computer off. Whatever you tell me, stays with me.” She puts her pen down and holds her hands in the air. “I won’t even write it down.”

Neil almost _does_ spit it out. The word _mafia_ is on the tip of his tongue. He has to physically swallow it down—this is more than he ever expected, and still, somehow, not enough, because he doesn’t know enough about how cell phones can be hacked to understand if they’re a problem, doesn’t know enough about what technology is listening to him.

But.

He pulls out his phone and shuts it off. Looks up at her. “I’m not—out.”

“Sexually?”

Neil chokes on a laugh. “No. No, I… my dad ran a gang. You can’t ask questions.”

“I’ll ask questions,” Erika contradicts, “but you don’t have to answer them. Continue.”

That feels like the best Neil can expect, so he takes a deep breath and keeps going. “My dad ran a gang. But he wasn’t the only person running a gang. And I—wasn’t his. I’d been… transferred. To someone else. And he—he doesn’t care about me, this person—”

“We’ll call him B,” Erika suggests.

“No, I know someone named Bee.”

“C, then.”

Neil nods. “C doesn’t give a shit about me, but I know too much—and am too good a source of money—for him to just… let me go. So I don’t often see him. Or deal with him. Went ten years and the only times I saw anyone associated with him was when I did my taxes. But—there was—an issue. A couple months ago. And one of C’s men turned traitor. And came to my house, and tried to kill me and my family.”

“Oh,” Erika says, neutral.

Neil doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like not knowing what she’s thinking. “I killed him, and dealt with that, and I don’t think that that particular problem will come up again, but—”

“Pause,” Erika says, holding up a hand. “You _killed him_?”

“Yeah. So, actually, I _know_ that that particular problem won’t come up again. But it’s—it’s not impossible that there could be another problem in the future. And my issue is that—I’m way too paranoid, I know I am, and, I think, sometimes I’m too quick to jump to violence as a solution—not one I act on, don’t worry—but I don’t know how to balance, sort of, my necessary paranoia and ability to react to a situation with the fact that—none of that is necessary, most of the time. I’m trying to figure out how to stop—looking over my shoulder all the time, and reacting to the littlest issue by figuring out the fight-or-flight methods of getting out of it, without completely… eradicating those instincts. Because I could still need them, at some point, and last time I needed them, they saved the lives of my husband, kids, and myself, and I’m not really willing to risk the four of us for the sake of… thinking less.”

Erika steeples her fingers on her desk. “So you think that the issue here is that you’re paranoid?”

“It is and I am.”

“Neil, you killed someone.”

Neil shrugs. “It was self-defense.”

There’s a silent pulse of hysterical laughter in Erika’s eyes for a split second before she takes a deep breath. “I’m not commenting on the morality or legality of your actions, I’m commenting on the fact that, as I see it, the fact that you killed another human being is likely to be more detrimental to your day-to-day mental health than what sounds like fairly reasonable paranoia. Which, I’m not saying we can’t work on that, and I’m not saying I can’t help you cope with that constant source of anxiety, but I’m saying that the traumatic event of killing someone might have to come first.”

Neil sighs. That’s the same thing Andrew said. He should stop contradicting Andrew. “Killing him wasn’t the traumatic part of that event,” he explains. “The fact that someone came into my house and tried to shoot my daughter, and the fact that my husband stepped in front of her, and the fact that all four of us could have died—that’s the traumatic part.”

Erika blinks at him. “I see that. Neil, do you think that killing someone had zero effect on you?”

Neil waves a hand. “He’s not the first person I’ve killed.”

“Explain.”

Neil shrugs. What is there to explain? “I was on the run from people who like to kill. Sometimes, I also had to kill. My mom tried to mitigate that—she dealt with a lot of it. But I was trained to use a knife as a kid, and my mom taught me how to use a gun, and sometimes there was only one way out of a situation.”

“How old were you when you first killed someone?”

“It was my eleventh birthday.”

Erika closes her eyes for a second, and then looks back up at him. “And that was the first time you saw someone die? Violently,” she specifies.

Neil laughs outright at that. “No. No. I was—young. I don’t remember how old I was.”

“Ah.”

“Are you going to take the kids away from us?” Neil chokes out. It has to be asked. He won’t get any farther if he doesn’t ask.

Erika shakes her head. “Maybe I should. But no. I won’t. Are they in therapy?”

Neil nods, relief pinning him to the seat.

“Neil, if I ever manage to get you healthy, I’m going to bring you with my to conferences to show you off.”

“My husband’s therapist regularly threatens to do the same to him. If you and Bee go to the same conferences, maybe we’ll actually go. Make a vacation out of it.”

Erika clicks her pen. “There are—you came to me as a patient to ensure my continuing education, I guess. Exposure to violence as a child can lead to depression, substance abuse, it can make you more likely to engage in violent behavior as an adult, and if you were a child, I’d be considering removing you from your environment outright, I’d be helping you process all of that, I’d be looking to prevent those outcomes. Given you’re an adult, my first step would usually be to find out what social programs you could use—a special addiction program, in addition, maybe—do you drink?”

Neil shrugs. “I think I’ve had two shots of whiskey in the past two months.”

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“Not compulsive purchasing, either. Do you _have_ a behavior you would characterize as addictive?”

Neil grins. “My husband calls me a junkie, sometimes. Not sure if he’s referring to my love for exy or my love for him.”

“See, _loves husband too openly_ isn’t a typical outcome of exposure to violence as a child.”

Neil holds his hands out. See? He’s fine.

“Anyway, I’d be working on ways to find you stable housing and a stable food source if you didn’t have it, but you do. Next we’d have to process your trauma, while working on empathy. Do you have issues with empathy?”

“Probably.”

“What does that mean?”

Neil shrugs. “I’m not always a very good friend.”

She waits. Waves a hand. _Go on_.

“I forget to ask them questions about themselves. I forget to—to care, sometimes. I care _about_ them, I want them to be safe and healthy and happy, it’s just that sometimes I forget to—listen.”

“That sounds more like self-absorption than problems with empathy, but I’ll stick it on the list.”

“Thanks.”

“That said, I don’t think it’s unrelated. You told me last week that you were encouraged to only think about yourself, and, in fact, violently punished when you tried to connect to anyone else. That indicates to me that what we’re working with isn’t a personality disorder of some kind—rather, we’re working to overcome deeply ingrained training. And given you’ve managed to build a life and connect with your friends and coworkers, I’d say you’ve done a good job there already, and that we just have to find some techniques you can consciously use to be better at interacting with people. Maybe I’ll just make you read _How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies_. Or Emily Post’s etiquette book. That’s doable. I’ll add that to the list.”

“Oh, also. I found out last week that Andrew has been paying for everything since we moved in together—and, actually, since way before that, too—because he _knew_ I had issues with spending money. Oh. Shit. Wait. Is _that_ why he bought our wedding rings?” Neil stares at Erika, like she might have this answer. “Not because he figured I’d take too long because I’d just gotten out of the hospital, but because he was trying to save me the anxiety of paying for them? Oh, fuck, that makes _way_ more sense—I hate this.”

“Why?”

“I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it. Of— _I_ knew I didn’t like spending money, but I didn’t realize—I didn’t think _he_ knew how much it bothered me. How much—distress it caused me. But Paige was asking why he always paid, and I made him explain, because I was being an asshole, and he said he was trying to protect me from repeated anxiety attacks since I didn’t have a therapist and wouldn’t have anyone to talk to about that, so we need to talk about that so _I_ can buy the goddamn groceries next week.”

“It is astonishing to me,” Erika says slowly, “that you think that killing another human being is no big deal, but that having anxiety over spending money is what we need to talk about _now_ so that you can spend money next week.”

Neil shrugs. “One of these things affects my life much more than the other.”

“Yes, that’s the problem I’m talking about.”

Well, there’s nothing Neil can do about that. “Can we get started on—something?”

“Sure,” Erika agrees, and they get started.

By the end of the session, Neil almost wishes they hadn’t.

He gets into his car and puts his head on the steering wheel.

Why does this _happen_? How have humans not evolved past the need for trauma responses? Sure, they keep him safe in the moment or whatever, but why can’t it be _fine_ for him to watch people die? Erika is racking up a list of things for him to confront, and he’s not a fucking fan. Who decided that it was _healthy_ to feel bad when he sees someone die? Get murdered. Whatever.

They hadn’t even talked about the money thing.

Neil drives home.

When Neil killed the man with the Moriyamas, had Andrew felt sick? Had his _kids_ felt sick? Had they felt _bad_? Not just _endangered_ , but— _bad_? Even ignoring the fact that their lives had been in danger?

But their lives _had_ been in danger. There was nothing else Neil could have done. Maybe aimed to maim instead of kill, but—the man would have screamed, which would have attracted attention from the neighbors, and it wouldn’t have just been one scream, it would’ve been many, and Neil can’t imagine that that would have been _less_ distressing for the kids. For Andrew. And anyway, the man been a traitor. Neil knows what happens to traitors, and death by a knife to the throat was nothing short of merciful. Is Neil supposed to feel _bad_ about it? About doing what had to be done? About protecting his family?

He’d brought that up to Erika, and she’d asked where that ended. If he’d join another gang to keep them safe. How often he’d kill.

Neil could only protest so much. Thus far, he’d flatly refused to _really_ join the mafia.

Of course, Erika has no idea that the thing he’s peripherally involved in is the actual literal mafia, but Neil isn’t certain that that makes things _better_.

But the other problem is that, sure, he’d kill all the goddamn time to keep them safe, if that was what it took. He’d specified that murder wasn’t his _first_ option, that he wasn’t particularly knife-happy, just that—if someone pointed a gun at his kids, he didn’t see the need to try to talk them down, not if he had another option. The people he deals with aren’t the kind who can often be talked out of murder.

“Where does that end?” she’d asked.

Neil wouldn’t have thought the question needed to be asked. He’s never killed for a reason other than self-defense.

Neil walks in the door and finds Andrew coming out of the kitchen.

“Lunch is in the fridge,” Andrew says, reaching out.

Neil takes his hand and lets him lead the way into the living room, so they can curl up on the couch.

Neil inhales the smell of Andrew’s soap. Focuses on the feeling of Andrew’s fingers in his hair, the rhythm of Andrew’s breathing.

How much can therapy really help him?

If he was free—

What would that be like? To not belong to Ichirou?

More dangerous, in one sense. Ichirou is protecting Neil and his family. Without that—Neil is known. He is known to the Italian mafia, now. And unless Neil was somehow released of Ichirou’s own free will, he’d have to contend with members of the yakuza possibly coming after him.

But.

 _But_.

Realistically, in his day-to-day, it might not make much of a difference. The FBI can listen in on him and track him just as easily as the Moriyamas. They can call on him as easily as the Moriyamas can.

But Browning can be reasoned with. And the FBI, as far as they know, don’t _have_ a reason to bug his house. Or even necessarily the resources to track him the way the Moriyamas could, if they were so inclined.

And of course no Moriyamas would mean Neil doesn’t have to give them 80% of his salary. He’s survived without that money just fine thus far, but it could go to college savings for the kids, could go to _actual_ charities. To people who actually need it. He wouldn’t be giving it to the organization that’s spent most of his life trying to kill him. An organization that exists to kill people. That might be nice. To stop giving money to the people who tried to kill his kids.

Neil takes a deep breath and lets himself look at it. At the idea of not spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for Ichirou.

It’s a weight lifted off his chest. One he didn’t even know was there.

Neil buries his face in Andrew’s chest. He’s not free. He’s not free, and Ichirou has ensured that he never will be—that even when Neil retires and isn’t paying out anymore, that he’ll be here, at the ready, Ichirou’s guard dog. Neil can’t really put too _much_ work into therapy, because what happens if he has to kill someone else? Neil can’t refuse, can’t guarantee that he’ll never be in that situation. And is he supposed to give up everything that makes it possible for him to do what he has to do and still function?

Andrew strokes Neil’s hair. Holds him.

Neil is lucky, in this. It could still just be him. Just him, playing exy to survive, talking to his coworkers at work, but instead he has friends, a family spread across continents, Andrew. Neil makes room for the weight of the knowledge that he belongs to Ichirou, and pads it a little with the knowledge that he’s not alone.

He can live like this. He’s done it for years.

He hates therapy. Can’t he and Erika just talk about Neil struggling to spend money? Can’t they just find ways for Neil to think up questions to ask his friends so they can talk about themselves? Why do they have to talk about things Neil can’t have?

 _Frustration_. He’ll have to write that down in his journal. _Fury_. The anger emotions.

He takes a deep breath and suppresses them. He’ll have to write them down in his journal later. His journal is full of a lot of anger emotions. Is that a product of him actually being angry more often than not, or is it a product of the fact that those are the ones he’s best equipped to recognize? He doesn’t know. But right now, he’s hungry, so he kisses Andrew’s cheek and stands.

They eat lunch listening to Andrew’s podcast. Sawbones.

One of the hosts makes retching noises as the other host talks about a broken bone, and it occurs to Neil that there are people for whom that’s disturbing. Maybe he shouldn’t be calmly eating a sandwich while listening to this.

Is Erika going to turn him into someone who can’t listen to this?

He glances at Andrew, and Andrew glances at him, and—well, Andrew’s listening to it just fine, and he’s spent years in therapy, so maybe Neil won’t lose _that_.

Why is he clinging to the ability to eat undisturbed while listening to someone talk about broken bones?

Neil resolves to write that down, too. Maybe it’s indicative of severe brain problems. Worse than what he’s already got, anyway.

They clean up, and they get in the car, and they head to the airport.

Andrew holds Neil’s hand.

That’s not unusual. It’s just—nice. Comforting. Neil kisses the back of Andrew’s hand. Intercepts a glance from Andrew.

“I’ll carry this, if you want,” Andrew offers, as they idle on the side of the road leading up to the airport, awaiting a call to let them know that Renee and Allison have arrived.

“Hmm?”

“The conversation.”

“Oh.” Neil considers this. “No, I think I can talk.”

“I’ll contribute,” Andrew promises.

“That would be appreciated.”

Andrew leans over, and Neil meets him in the middle for a kiss.

Neil’s phone rings.

Andrew answers it. “Hello?”

Neil waits.

“Yeah, we’re around the corner. Be there in five.”

Neil waits.

Andrew hangs up without saying goodbye—must have been Renee who called, then. “Ready?”

Neil nods. Squeezes Andrew’s hand.

Andrew pulls around the corner.

Neil rallies himself.


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> allison and renee arrive! kids talk. neil and andrew talk. much to consider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i'm dying over here. thanksgiving was supposed to happen two weeks and now i'm concerned it might not even happen next week... look i know that it's quite obvious at this point that i'm bad at doing short things but I really thought i'd be able to condense at least five days into one chapter. i'm so tired of writing the word thanksgiving

Andrew and Neil pull up to the curb. Andrew pops the trunk.

Neither of them bother getting out. Allison and Renee are already swinging their suitcases in the trunk; if Andrew or Neil got out, it would double the amount of time this’ll take.

“Andrew! Neil!” Allison cries as she gets into the backseat, sliding over so Renee can get in after her.

“Ah, the maserati,” Renee sighs, shutting the door behind her. “It’s been so _long_.”

“Fuck you both,” Allison says. “Making me risk my nails swinging my bag around.”

“Renee,” Andrew says.

“Andrew.”

“We didn’t have time to get out before you were already manhandling your bag,” Neil says.

“ _Manhandling_ ,” Allison scoffs. “Don’t make me sound so incompetent.”

“I’ve been watching your YouTube streams,” Renee says, blissfully ignoring Neil and Allison’s squabbling. “Neil, your Kermit versus Elmo analysis was absolutely _insightful_.”

“Thank you.”

“Can’t believe you thought Miss Piggy might be a vegetarian, though,” Allison says.

“I never said _she_ was, I just said _Kermit_ might be,” Neil defends himself.

“Did you even _watch_ the muppets?”

“Once.”

All he gets from the back seat is silence.

“Okay, so that’s what we’re—”

“That’s what we’re—yes,” Renee agrees, nodding at Allison, “that’s what we’re doing tonight. _Once_. Good lord. I mean, it was still a good analysis. Even your characterization of Miss Piggy in the final moments before battle was good.”

“Agreed,” Allison says. “I’m done complimenting you now. Compliment _me_.”

“You’ve got some kind of perfume line coming out, right?” Neil asks. He gets an approving glance from Andrew—Neil _has_ remembered correctly.

“I _do_ , Neil, but that’s not a compliment.”

“It’s really impressive that you’re coming out with a whole perfume line.”

“Better, thank you.”

Maybe this is why Neil has friends, against all odds and in spite of Erika’s experience. None of Neil’s friends are afraid to tell him what to say. Makes it hard for him to say the wrong thing. Hard for him to _fail_ to say the _right_ thing.

“Looking forward to moving out of the city?” Andrew asks.

Neil squeezes his hand. Lightly. Not enough that Allison or Renee would notice. Not that they’d say anything. But.

“I’m thinking we need to get someplace with a backyard,” Renee says, excited. “Because if we’re not in an apartment, then in the off-season maybe we can foster dogs?”

“This is a topic of much debate,” Allison says. “Will we, won’t we. Will we get the dogs, won’t they pee on my clothes—”

“Clothes can be washed,” Renee argues. “And we could call them our Foxes. Wouldn’t that be cute? We could have a little photo album of all the dogs we’ve helped—”

“See, this is the problem. That’s a compelling argument. And I feel like it’s just manipulation—”

“It is _exactly_ manipulation,” Renee agrees.

“Think how proud Wymack would be,” Neil wheedles, like he’s got a dog in this fight. “He’d probably cry.”

“I _would_ love to be his second favorite child,” Allison muses.

“Pushing out Dan or Kevin?” Andrew asks.

“Kevin, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Andrew agrees.

Renee hums disagreement. “I don’t know that that’s fair. I think Wymack loves all his children equally. I think you’d push them _both_ out, if you were to push one.”

“No, I like Dan, she can stay,” Allison.

“Speaking of,” Renee says, “we need your help—we need to figure out a way to get Dan and Matt down here.”

“I’ve been harassing Wymack,” Neil says. “I’ve been doing my part.”

“How _much_ have you been harassing Wymack?” Allison asks. “When was the last time you called him?”

“Tuesday morning,” Neil says proudly.

“And did you ask him about Dan?”

Actually, they’d spoken for all of ten minutes, and Andrew had been there, so Neil hadn’t gotten half of the conversation, and it’s not _his_ fault he forgot. “Really, you should be yelling at Andrew for forgetting, he’s got the better memory.”

“So that’s a _no_ ,” Allison surmises.

“I didn’t _forget_ ,” Andrew says scornfully. “I feel that Dan and Wymack are both adults who can do things on their own. Solve their own relationship issues. Swallow their own pride. I’m not going to third-wheel for them.”

“Don’t be weird,” Allison says, flicking her nails at him. “We can all take part in this collective effort, and we _should_.”

“To be honest, I don’t think it matters much,” Renee contradicts. “Not at this point. I think we’re done trying to wear Wymack down. If Allie and I are moving, Dan and Matt should be, too. This might take different strategies. While we’re house hunting, we should be looking for a house for Dan and Matt, too—if they find the perfect house, they’ll want to jump on it, they won’t want to risk losing it by waiting, correct?”

“The issue _there_ is that there’s a chance the contract might fall through,” Neil says, mentally noting the pros and cons of the excuse. “In which case, you’d have to find them _another_ perfect house, and you lose the excuse.”

“Easy way around that,” Allison says. “Don’t tell anyone we found them the house until they’ve got the keys in hand.”

“That would work,” Neil agrees.

“Alternatively, they move down here and we just don’t tell Wymack.”

Andrew snorts.

“Seriously,” Allison says emphatically. “They move down here, and we tell _no one_. We drive them to the airport before holidays and make Wymack pick them up.”

“Wymack never picks them up,” Neil says.

“You think I care?” Allison says. “I do not. We say we’re all busy and make him do it.”

“That’s absolutely hysterical,” Andrew says, deadpan.

“That’s what I’m _saying_. But also, _crucial_ to maintaining the illusion that they’re still living in New York.”

“This is psychopathic,” Renee says. “Sincerely. But also, I _would_ like to point out that we could have quintuple dates.”

“Sextuple,” Neil corrects. “Riley and Maria.”

“Works for me,” Allison agrees. “Unless we have to discuss sensitive topics. Such as the mafia.”

“When would we have to do that? And why would we go on a date for it?” Renee asks.

Allison shrugs. “We’ve done stupider shit before.”

“We’re adults now.”

“And old, according to our kids,” Andrew grumbles.

“And you guys are _young_ ,” Allison complains. “ _We’re_ old.”

“Also, how are the kids?” Renee asks. “How are they doing?”

Neil grimaces. “They’re fighting.”

Allison snorts. “That’s what siblings do.”

“I don’t think they’re used to it, though. I don’t think they’ve fought before.”

“Of course not,” Renee says. “They had to rely on each other, they weren’t going to fight.”

“ _We_ had to rely on each other as teammates,” Allison reminds her. “That never stopped us.”

“It was different, though. That was for a sport; this was for their _lives_. And don’t forget,” Renee reminds her, “we always came together against a common enemy. And for the past few years, it seems like, for them, _everyone_ has been a common enemy. This is the first time when they don’t _have_ to be united. Was it over something big?”

“Yes,” Neil says. “I’m not giving any details, though.”

“No, it’s their business,” Renee agrees.

Neil glances in the rearview mirror in time to see Allison’s disappointed face.

“Well, we’re used to twins fighting, so it won’t be a big deal,” Allison says.

“We don’t fight anymore,” Andrew says. “We’re all grown up.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Allison says darkly. “Are Aaron and Katelyn coming to Thanksgiving?”

“I have no idea,” Andrew says.

Allison makes a sound and a face that say: _see?_

“Katelyn has a family that she likes,” Andrew points out. “And they spend Christmas with us. So I don’t think that whether or not they spend Thanksgiving with us is really a sign of whether or not we’re actively fighting.”

“They _should_ ,” Allison says thoughtfully. “I mean—Katelyn’s family is spending this Thanksgiving at Myrtle Beach, so.”

Neil avoids the rearview mirror. She’s trying to figure out if this news will get a reaction from them. If they knew about it. Neil will _not_ look. He can _hear_ the look Renee is giving Allison.

“I know,” Andrew says, “but everyone eats dinner at the same time.”

He _knew_? Neil didn’t know. Is Andrew lying?

Regardless, as _soon_ as he’s done driving, Andrew is going to text Aaron. They’re going to get home and Neil is going to have to cover for him for five minutes so Allison doesn’t see him texting.

If Andrew and Allison weren’t both so petty and dramatic, this wouldn’t be an issue.

On the other hand, what does it say about Neil that he’s friends with Allison and married to Andrew? Probably that he is equally petty and dramatic.

They pull into their neighborhood.

“Slow down,” Allison orders. “I wanna look at the houses.”

Andrew slows down, and Allison and Renee examine the houses they pass.

“Turn right,” Neil says. “There’s a house on that street that’s for sale.”

Andrew turns right. He gives Neil a look that says that Neil will pay for prolonging the amount of time until Andrew can text Aaron. Still, he slows nearly to a stop as they approach the house—kids aren’t out of school yet, no one’s home from work, there aren’t any cars on the road for him to worry about.

“Mm,” Allison says. “Wonder what it’s like on the inside.”

“Probably pretty much the same as ours,” Neil points out.

“But open plan,” Andrew adds.

“But how much water damage, black mold, stained carpet? Do the people who live there smoke? Do they smoke _inside_? No offense, but I do _not_ want to live in a smoked-out house.”

“None taken,” Andrew says.

“Fair enough,” Neil agrees.

“Anyway, if none of the showings we have set up for the next couple days work out, we’re going window shopping for houses,” Allison says.

“Window shopping?” Neil asks.

“We’re going to drive around staring at houses.”

Neil twists to look at her head-on. “You just drove around and looked at _one_ house and decided it had more problems than you were willing to deal with. You want to do that for a _longer period of time_?”

Renee’s face says no.

“Yes,” Allison says.

Neil turns back around and refrains from commenting as they pull into their driveway. At least he won’t have to be in that car. It’s going to be Renee’s problem.

Andrew decides against blocking Neil’s car in—Allison and Renee will probably use that.

Allison hands her bag off to Andrew, who carries it inside without complaint.

“I’ll bring your bags downstairs?” Andrew offers.

Renee opens her mouth to argue, and then reads something on Andrew’s face, smiles, and hands him her bag. Andrew heads down the basement.

“Need something to drink?” Neil asks Renee and Allison, heading for the kitchen.

“Gimme a glass of whatever you’ve got,” Allison says, taking a seat at the table.

“Soda, please,” Renee says, sitting down next to her.

Neil obtains the drinks while Andrew slips into the kitchen. That was fast. Neil glances at him, a question in his eyes— _didn’t wait for a response_?

Andrew’s face says _oh my god oh my god oh my god oh—_

“We should go grab blankets,” Neil says. “I think all the pillows are upstairs, too—don’t want to do it when the kids are home, don’t want to disrupt whatever they’re dealing with.”

“That’s fine,” Renee agrees, smiling, serene. “I think Allie had to pee anyway.”

Allison looks absolutely betrayed.

“You can go,” Renee tells her. “You won’t miss anything.”

Allison sticks her tongue out at Renee, but kisses Renee’s cheek on her way out.

“Sorry,” Neil says, “I didn’t really mean to leave you alone—”

Renee waves him off. “Gives me some time to myself.”

Andrew is already in the doorway, waiting, so Neil gives in and follows him upstairs.

“Aaron texted while we were driving,” Andrew whispers in Russian. Why? Just in case Allison is listening in from the bathroom a whole floor beneath them? Just in case Aaron is hiding in one of the bedrooms listening?

Neil shouldn’t laugh at Andrew for his paranoia. Neil is the poster child for paranoia. “What’d he say?”

“He’s on hospital duty next week, and neither their babysitter nor Katelyn’s parents can take Freddie on Wednesday, and Aaron wants to know if we can.”

Oh. So Wednesday is the day when both the babysitter _and_ Katelyn’s parents are free, so if Andrew and Neil fall through or fuck up, someone will be able to take Freddie off their hands.

Not that that’ll happen. Andrew’s mouth isn’t saying please, but his eyes sure are, and off the top of his head Neil can’t think of a single thing that could stand in their way. Renee and Allison are leaving on Monday; by Wednesday, they’ll even have the house clean. “Sure. Of course.”

Andrew stretches up to kiss Neil’s lips and pulls out his phone. “Do I ask him if he’s coming for Thanksgiving _now_?”

Neil pulls pillows out of the hallway closet. “Sure.”

“How? I was going to be passive aggressive about it, but I don’t think I can now.”

Neil shrugs. “Just ask if he plans on coming. Tell him what time it is.”

“All day. Maybe we move it up to lunch. Katelyn’s family usually does dinner.”

“Dan and Matt aren’t getting in until 11 the night before,” Neil objects. “Lunch might be early.”

“Who cares? They’ll be here, won’t they? Fuck, if it’s lunch, Kevin and Thea can come for the whole thing, Wymack and Abby and Bee can come for the whole thing—shit, will the kids feel awkward about their therapist being there?”

Neil shrugs. “You could ask them.”

“Neil. I need you to stop shrugging, and tell me what to _do.”_

Neil looks at Andrew.

He can’t tell Andrew that he has less idea what to do than Andrew does. Can’t say that while Andrew is just now getting the family he’s wanted for a very long time, Neil doesn’t even _have_ a family. Doesn’t have much of anything. Has no idea how to politely ask his brother, with whom he has a half-estranged relationship, to Thanksgiving. Certainly he has no idea how to _casually_ do that. The problem is that Andrew looks absolutely lost, and what is Neil doing if he can’t help, at least a little?

Neil takes a deep breath. What does he have experience in if not manipulating people and situations to his advantage?

Well, not that, really.

“Okay. First of all, don’t ask or text Aaron or change anything. Yet. Take these pillows. We’re bringing them downstairs.” They can’t take too much time up here, or Allison will know something’s up. Neil takes a breath to explain, but Andrew takes the pillows and leads the way downstairs without question.

“Were you guys up there for that long?” Allison asks, emerging from the bathroom as they pass.

“None of the pillows were in pillowcases,” Neil lies. “Took a hot minute.”

“Not a cold one?”

“A hot one,” Neil repeats. “Also. Okay. So this is a change from tradition, I know, but it would get Dan and Wymack in the same room, for an extended period of time, after eating bunches of food—”

“Wait, wait until we get back upstairs so Renee can hear it too,” Allison says, dumping a couple blankets on the bed and immediately turning to head back up the stairs.

“All right,” Neil agrees, following her up the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Neil has an idea,” Allison announces.

Andrew slips his pinky into Neil’s for just a half-second.

“Is it a good one?” Renee asks.

Neil takes his seat at the table. “Okay. So. Thanksgiving lunch.”

“ _Lunch_ ,” Allison repeats. “Your idea is _lunch_?”

“Unorthodox, I know. But look. Everyone who has other family to see can see _everyone_. And Wymack would be able to come here, as well as visit Bee’s and Abby’s families, which he usually can’t. Which would mean that he and Dan would be sitting at the same table, same house, eating good food, with us all here to guilt them both into agreeing to _something_.”

“You have a lot of faith in the power of food,” Allison says.

Neil shrugs. She’s not entirely right, but Neil isn’t about to argue with that interpretation.

“I’m down,” Allison says.

“Agreed,” Renee says, smiling. “Should we stick it in the group chat?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, pulling out his phone.

“So anyway, this is so Aaron can come, isn’t it,” Allison says.

Renee’s smile gets a little more fixed.

“Maybe,” Andrew says. “Maybe.”

“It’s okay,” Allison says. “I don’t have siblings I can see on holidays. You may as well see yours.”

“Thanks,” Andrew says after a minute.

Is Neil really getting that bad at lying?

Maybe that’s not what he should be focused on right now. He glances up at Andrew.

Andrew looks all right.

He’s better at this. At being vulnerable. At admitting that he has feelings. Wants his brother to be around. It works for him, to admit that.

Neil suppresses a sigh as he suggests the move to the group chat. This is another thing to write in his journal. His first instinct isn’t to trust his friends—well, maybe that’s not quite right. It’s—

Neil sets it aside. He’ll figure it out tonight.

The group chat lights up immediately, with widespread approval.

 _we’ll be there in our pjs,_ Dan texts.

 _really tho u kno we’re not getting into the airport til 11?_ She says in a follow-up text. _we’re gonna sleep til 11:30._

 _I’ll wake you up,_ Kevin texts. _No worries. No need for an alarm._

 _Don’t fucking TRY it,_ Matt writes. _I sleep naked._

Neil, Andrew, Allison, and Renee await Kevin’s answer.

“So do you think he’s having a bi breakdown?” Allison asks the room at large. “Like, right now?”

“Guaranteed,” Andrew agrees.

Nicky sends several sets of eyeball emojis.

 _…anyway_ , Aaron texts.

The four of them sit up a little straighter.

 _If it’s lunch, Kate and Freddie and I can probably make it,_ Aaron texts.

Allison whoops.

 _If there’s space_.

Andrew’s fingers are already flying. _Was that a comment on the size of my home? There is space. Because I have a big house_.

 _Not the size that matters ;)_ Nicky texts. _It’s what you do with it ;)_

 _That’s your cousin,_ Allison texts. _Don’t be gross._

 _…ANYWAY,_ Aaron texts, _all I’m saying is that you don’t have an open plan house, it’s way harder to fit everyone into one room. But yeah we’ll come, then we don’t have to feed freddie pretty much at all all day._

 _You off all day?_ Kevin asks.

Neil gets a text from Paige—she and Natalie are off the bus.

Aaron messages in the group chat: _First year Kate and I are both off all day!!_

That gets cheers from the whole group chat, via both text and emoji. Neil glances up in time to intercept the look Allison and Renee are giving each other—it’s face-saving, too, for Aaron and Andrew. No need to address the reasons why Aaron has never attended Thanksgiving before—between work and Katelyn’s family, it never would have worked out. Nothing to do with the fact that Aaron and Andrew had only previously broken their once-a-month rule for Nicky’s sake.

All four of them look up when the front door opens, admitting Paige and Natalie.

Neil almost gets excited—they’re not furious, stomping around, emitting a tangible hatred. But—

But they’re also not looking at each other, or getting too close, or talking to each other. They’re closing ranks in the face of non-family members.

The house might be more peaceful.

On the other hand, doesn’t that just mean that they don’t feel safe enough at home to have feelings? Isn’t that general concept the reason why Natalie and Paige are in the situation they’re in?

What are Neil’s options, here?

Allison and Renee are leaving in an hour to go view some houses, and they’ve got viewings scheduled for most of tomorrow, too, so the kids should have some time today and after therapy tomorrow. That’s something.

“Hi-iiii,” Paige sings as she walks into the kitchen.

“Hi-iiii,” Allison sings back.

“How are you two?” Renee asks, serene, smiling.

“Good,” Paige says brightly. “How are you?”

“We’re doing well,” Renee says. “Neil told Al who told me that you’ve tried exy? Did you like it?”

Neil’s ears grow three sizes.

Paige perks up. “Yes! I kinda wanna practice more—I wanna try again, Andrew’s a good teacher.”

Andrew looks _immensely_ pleased.

“What did you like?”

Paige shrugs. “It was fun. Actually, that’s a lie, it _wasn’t_ fun, we didn’t really play anything, but I feel like it _could_ be fun. It’s like, right now it’s interesting, and I think once I’m good at it, it’ll be _really_ interesting, and I just think—maybe I could be good at it, you know?”

“I think you could be _great_ at it,” Allison says. “I mean, look at your genes, you’ve got exy on both sides of the family.”

Paige grins at Neil and Andrew. “Yeah, I do.”

“What about you, Natalie?” Renee asks. “Are you interested?”

Natalie shrugs. She’s trying, Neil can see how hard she’s trying, but she can’t keep it all off her face—she’s not good at this, not good at pretending. She’s used to scaring people off, not putting on a show. “Nah.”

“Natalie’s more of a runner,” Andrew says, looking at Natalie. “Like Neil.”

Natalie looks at him.

Neil sees it. _Chin up. You’re one of us, too._

And then Natalie lifts her chin. She saw it, too—she’s learning to read Andrew’s face. “Yeah,” she agrees.

“Were you into running before you moved in?” Renee asks.

Natalie nods. “Never, like, as part of a team,” she clarifies, “but yeah, I liked to run.”

“Do you want to join the running team?” Allison asks. “Or nah?”

Natalie shrugs. “Maybe.”

“I can personally recommend sports as a great way to meet people,” Renee says, smiling at both kids. “And even if you’re not in a bad situation anymore, it can beg a good way to find—purpose, at least temporarily. Well, maybe that’s not the right way to put it. It can give you something to focus on that _isn’t_ the life you escaped.”

“Hell yeah,” Allison says. “Become a jock. It’s pretty cool. You get jackets and everything.”

“Takes up a lot of time, though,” Natalie says.

“But, like, everything takes up time,” Paige counters.

“But if it’s not worth it, it’s not worth it.”

Neil leans back in his chair.

“So then that’s what they’re saying, right?” Paige argues. “If you think it’s worth it, it _is_ worth it.”

“Yes,” Natalie says slowly, like Paige is stupid, “and if it’s _not_ worth it, it’s _not_.”

“Cool,” Allison says. “So we’ve settled that. What’s it take to get some food around here?”

“You have to decide what you want,” Andrew says.

“Ostrich.”

“Wrong.”

“How is that wrong? It’s what I _want_.”

“Then it’s right.”

Allison flips her hands over— _yes_.

“We can have eggs,” Andrew decides.

“That’s not what I want,” Allison protests.

“I never said I’d give you what you wanted, did I,” Andrew says, standing.

“And how does _that_ work?”

“You tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what I’m giving you.”

“Then—what—what was the _point_? You’re worse than I am,” Allison accuses. “You’re _worse_ than I am.”

“You know, it’s odd,” Renee interrupts, “because I’d love, right now, to exchange a look with Neil, like _wow, look at the people we married, they’re idiots—_ ”

“We can do that,” Neil says.

“But the problem is that you’re just as bad as they are, so what am I doing here?”

“Keeping them for self-destructing,” Paige suggests.

“That’s true,” Allison says.

“Renee also keeps us from each-other-destructing,” Andrew adds.

Neil joins him at the counter, helping chop peppers. “Nat. Paige.”

“Mm?” Paige says.

“Would it be all right if we invited Bee to Thanksgiving? We’re probably going to invite Wymack and Abby, but we’ll all understand if you don’t want to eat lunch with your therapist.”

“That’s fine,” Paige says.

“I can just sit on the opposite side of the room,” Natalie agrees.

“Are you sure?” Andrew asks. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Natalie shrugs. “No, it’s fine, Bee is cool. As long as she isn’t trying to therapies me while I eat turkey.”

“All right,” Andrew agrees.

Neil washes his hands and texts Wymack, Abby, and Bee.

Scrambled eggs cook up fast, and Neil is happy to watch them while Paige fills Allison and Renee in on what’s happening at school, Natalie giving a couple noncommittal responses as prompted. Abby texts back an acceptance on behalf of all three of them, complete with several smily faces. Neil returns the sentiment, and then helps Andrew fill plates and pass them out.

“We’ll order dinner or dessert or something on the way back,” Renee promises as they eat. “I know this is a weird time to be eating, we’re just—plane-hungry.”

“Hi just plain hungry, I’m Andrew,” Andrew says, without missing a beat.

They all pause.

“Was that a dad joke?” Allison asks, tone neutral.

“Maybe,” Andrew answers, equally neutral.

Another pause.

Allison turns to Renee. “See, this is why we can’t have kids. Look what we’d turn into!”

“Hey,” Andrew says.

“No, I agree, but I don’t think that fostering dogs turns you into that,” Renee says earnestly.

“ _Hey_ ,” Andrew says.

“But my concern is—what if we become _dog people_? The kind of people who talk about _nothing but our dogs_?”

“Speaking of, where are the cats?” Renee asks.

Neil points his fork at them. “You’re here, so they’re probably hiding under our bed.”

“Mm. Dig them out for us. Later, though. Not now.” Allison points at her food. “I’m eating.”

“So are we,” Neil says. “We’ll dig them out later.”

“Deal,” Allison agrees.

“So where are you going? To see houses,” Neil clarifies.

“To see houses,” Allison says.

“There’s a couple in your neighborhood, a couple closer to Columbia, and then tomorrow we’ve got a couple showings closer to the stadium, a couple in Kevin’s neighborhood, and a couple by where Aaron lives,” Renee rattles off.

“Speedrunning it,” Neil sums up.

“Pretty much. Our agent is picking us up here, by the way,” Renee tells him. “We won’t need your car.”

“Nice.”

Natalie takes everyone’s plates, earning smiles and thanks all around as she starts stacking the dishwasher.

Allison’s phone rings—Neil glances out the front window, sees a car slowing, about to pull into the driveway. “Hello?” Allison says. She nods at Renee—its their agent.

Renee gets up—“we’ll be back in a bit,” she says. “Thank you for letting us use your house as a base.”

“No problem,” Andrew says. They wave Renee and Allison out the door.

The second the door shuts, Paige stands up and heads upstairs.

Andrew and Neil look to Natalie, who looks up at them and shrugs.

“ _I_ didn’t do anything,” she says defensively.

“Did anything happen?” Neil asks, doing his level best not to sound accusatory.

“No, I’m just not being happy enough about her girlfriend.”

“Are they dating?” Andrew asks.

“I don’t think so,” Natalie says. “I don’t know. I didn’t _say_ anything. I just wasn’t, like, insanely happy and jumping up and down about the fact that now they have this book to talk about.”

“Why not?” Andrew asks.

Natalie makes a face at him. “What, do I have to? Is it _required_? Do I have to—lie about what I give a fuck about?”

“You could,” Neil suggests. “That’s an option. Just say you’re glad she’s got a friend.”

“ _Or_ I could not.”

“Or you could not,” Neil agrees. “But it would make Paige happy if you did, I think. And I think you have to decide whether or not it’s worth it. Is your sister’s happiness worth a lie?”

“I’m not—in control of whether or not she’s _happy_ ,” Natalie says, half-scornfully. “And anyway, she doesn’t want to spend time with me, what does she care what I think?”

“I think she _does_ want to spend time with you,” Andrew suggests. “Just not _all_ her time.”

Natalie slouches farther down in her chair.

“All I’m saying,” Neil says gently, “is that maybe you need to find a way to be happy for Paige, even when _you_ are not happy.”

“Don’t I—doesn’t she—haven’t I—” Natalie makes a few more incoherent noises, and then throws her hands up. “I spend my whole fucking life taking care of Paige when no one is taking care of me, and now I just have to _keep_ —just—when do _I_ get taken care of, when does _she_ put _me_ —when does she put me first? When do I get—anything?”

Neil wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Maybe _you_ put yourself first.”

“That doesn’t work.”

“Says who? Start sitting with your friends at lunch, start texting them without texting Paige, start hanging out with them without Paige. You can stop putting her first, too, you know. You’re not the only one looking out for her anymore. Andrew and I can do that job. We can keep _both_ of you safe. We can look out for _both_ of you. And you can do the job of taking care of yourself, and doing your homework, and hanging out with your friends.”

Natalie puts her head on Neil’s shoulder and mopes.

Neil glances at Andrew over Natalie’s head.

Andrew loves him.

Neil loves Andrew, too, and tells him this, albeit with a facial expression rather than verbally.

“I don’t know,” Natalie says after a couple minutes.

“Don’t know what?” Neil asks.

She shrugs.

Cool.

Was Neil like this as a teenager? Well, no, because Mary wouldn’t have stood for it. Stomping around being angry doesn’t help anyone, and if they were in an apartment or a hotel the people below them might have taken notice, and if he was arguing with her then she couldn’t focus. And they never talked about anything like this—Neil’s issues, his trauma. To be fair, she’d never had anyone to talk to about her own issues, either, and to be fairer, even now Neil doesn’t entirely see the point—it’s not like he can solve his problems with therapy. Erika can’t kill Ichirou.

Neil tosses the whole question out as invalid. It doesn’t matter if Neil was like this as a teenager; Natalie is like this, now, and telling her that he never would’ve done this isn’t helpful. And anyway, Andrew did what Natalie is doing to such an extent that it destroyed his relationship with Aaron for years, so Neil-and-Andrew as a parenting package doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

“I think,” Natalie says, sniffling, “I was probably mean to her. The past couple days.”

And the response here is…? “I think that is an accurate assessment,” Neil says slowly. He can’t do much else. What is he going to do? Say that actually, Natalie’s behavior pleased Paige? Neil isn’t that good a liar. “But I don’t think you’ve done anything—unforgivable. I don’t think you’ve broken anything you can’t fix. I think if you go upstairs right now, you could probably talk to her about it.”

“I don’t think she _wants_ to talk to me,” Natalie says, voice small.

“I think she does,” Neil counters. “I think the reason this is so upsetting to her is because she _does_ want to talk to you, and she doesn’t know how, or where to start, and she doesn’t think that _you_ want to talk to _her_.”

Natalie waves a hand. “Sure, but like, what the fuck do I do? Walk up there and say _sorry I was an asshole, let’s be friends_?”

“No,” Andrew says. “I think you’re going to have to walk up there and tell her you fucked up, and I think you’re going to have to accept that she might not immediately be your friend again.”

“Then what’s the _point_? I’m not going to go—go— _humiliate_ myself just so she can—throw it back in my face,” Natalie says, edging on hysterical. “I may as well just— _sit_ here and just— _not_.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Andrew says, soft, gentle. “I think that, sometimes, when it’s someone you love, you _have_ to humiliate yourself a little. It gives them the chance to show you that you can trust them. I think, probably, love is being absolutely humiliated in front of someone else, and them not using it against you.”

“That’s true,” Neil agrees. Is it true? Probably not, but Neil doesn’t care, can’t care, not right now. “I think maybe it’s not humiliation, it’s—vulnerability. Admitting that you were wrong makes you vulnerable. And you just have to trust that it’ll be okay.” And something is poking at Neil’s brain, again, something else to write down in his journal. Neil will deal with that later.

“That won’t always _work_ ,” Natalie protests.

“No,” Andrew agrees. “Not always. But here’s the good thing: If it doesn’t work, you know _exactly_ where you stand with that person. And you can adjust your relationship with them accordingly. If you go apologize and Paige throws it back in your face, you’ve done what you can do, and the ball is in her court. You take a deep breath, learn from it, and move on. And at least you’re not still just sitting here.”

Natalie sighs.

She sits there for a few minutes.

And then she gets up and heads upstairs without a word.

Neil looks at Andrew.

“Did it work?” Andrew asks in Russian.

A meow informs them that the cats have emerged, now that the strangers are gone. King jumps up into Andrew’s lap and sniffs the table. He puts his front paws on the table, looking for scraps that may have been left behind.

“I know I should stop him,” Andrew says, “but he’s really cute.”

“He does have an adorable little face,” Neil agrees. “But he’s not allowed on the table.”

Andrew slides a hand under King’s chest and lifts him onto his shoulder. King informs them of his displeasure.

“I don’t know if it worked,” Neil says. “I guess we’ll find out in a minute.”

They wait.

Nothing happens.

“Do we eavesdrop?” Neil asks quietly.

“No, maybe we just—go upstairs. Happen to hang around their door. Happen to listen carefully.”

They wait.

King kneads Andrew’s shoulder and purrs.

They hear a door click shut.

“Whatever happens,” Andrew says, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Neil says.

The kids appear in the kitchen doorway. They’re both red-eyed, puffy-faced, but they look determined.

“We’re gonna get some sister therapy,” Paige announces.

“During our regular slot,” Natalie asks. “If Bee lets us.”

Neil keeps his victory dance on his inside. He keeps his cheering on the inside. He keeps his face straighter than he is. He nods sedately. “That’s a good idea.”

“Seconded,” Andrew agrees.

The kids heave a simultaneous sigh, and immediately glance at each other—back in sync, at least a little bit.

“Got homework?” Andrew asks. An invitation.

“Yeah,” Paige says, perking up a little, glancing at Natalie.

Natalie nods. An acquiescence. “I’ll grab our backpacks?”

“Thanks,” Paige says. A little stilted, but honest—she’s grateful. She sees the olive branch Natalie’s extending. She’s grabbing it with two hands.

Natalie heads upstairs, and Paige bounces over to the sink.

“She apologized,” she says, turning on the sink. She splashes her face. “She’s the one who brought up therapy.”

“That’s good,” Neil says. “I’m glad you guys talked.”

“I also apologized,” she says, glancing at them, like maybe she’s going to get told off otherwise. “For not—understanding.”

“I think that was very nice of you,” Neil says.

“I try,” she says, sitting down as Natalie comes in with both of their backpacks. Natalie looks like she, too, took a quick detour to the sink.

They do homework.

Neil feels a level of relief that he never thought could be brought on by doing homework with two teenagers.

They’ll be okay. They won’t go down the same road that Andrew and Aaron took. It won’t take until they’re 30 for them to begin to have a healthy relationship. They won’t have to be blackmailed into therapy. They’ll find a new way to be sisters, outside of the situations that built them.

Neil breathes again. Glances at Andrew. Andrew meets his gaze and holds it, just for a second, before he goes back to explaining the kids’ German homework.

Renee and Allison call to ask what they want to eat, settle on Italian, and take orders. They walk through the door an hour later, bearing food, looking reasonably unsatisfied.

“Met the delivery guy literally in the driveway,” Allison says. “Perfect timing, and the only good thing about _all_ of that.”

“It was bad?” Andrew asks, retrieving plates.

It feels a little like mid-season training, eating four meals in one day. But Neil is hungry. It was a tough therapy session, an emotional afternoon, a long day, and he’s hungry.

Allison and Renee make forceful noncommittal noises.

“Not great,” Allison says. “I mean, the houses were nice, but one of them had a shit-ass backyard—around the corner from here, but the backyard was just wildlife preserve, presumably fucking _full_ of ticks, which isn’t the end of the world, but if we’re going to have dogs it kind of sucks. One of them said it was in a _peaceful setting_ and it’s right next to a fucking train station, which explains why it’s so expensive, but— _not_ appreciated.”

“And I wasn’t a fan of the layout of one of them,” Renee adds, “it was just—the dining room was on the _opposite side of the house_ from the kitchen. Wanna know how we end up with a room we’ll never use? Make us carry food all the way across the house. And I know these are, just, the stupidest complaints, but—it’s our _house_. I want to _like_ it.”

“I don’t think that’s so much to ask,” Paige says.

“ _Thank_ you,” Renee says.

“We could just buy _several_ houses,” Allison suggests.

“That’s a waste,” Renee says. “Of housing and money.”

“But it would make life easier. We want to host a party? We switch to the house with the kitchen next to the dining room. We want to sleep well? Go to the house that _isn’t_ next to a train station.”

“What if you built your own?” Natalie suggests.

“It would take a long time,” Renee says. “And that’s a lot of wasted resources.”

“No, hang on,” Allison says. “Don’t forget, we’re in South Carolina. Even in the winter, the weather is good enough that construction isn’t likely to be stopped by snow. And I can pay to rush things, and pay for a bigger building crew, if that’s a thing, and we could use reclaimed materials, and sustainable shit, and build it to whatever green specs you want.”

Renee makes a face. “I mean, we’ve got a bunch more houses to see tomorrow. And some of them are in Kevin’s area, where there isn’t a forest, or a train station.”

“See if you can get the house right next to him,” Neil says. “He’s currently got basically a frat house as a neighbor, he and Thea tried to convince us to go slaughter everyone in there. If you buy that house it’ll be a win for everyone involved.”

Renee grimaces. “We’re moving _out_ of the city. I don’t want _noise_. I don’t even want the _risk_ of noise.”

“New house…” Allison says in a sing-song voice. “Just imagine… choose your location… buy a bunch of land… no neighbors… space for dogs to run around…”

“No one needs _that_ much space. Unless we’re starting a farm?”

“Use it as a space to bring back native plants and shit,” Allison says, shrugging. “Make it work for _you_. Plant flowers that attract bees. Restore the grasslands.”

Renee sticks her tongue out at Allison. “Making fun of me.”

“Not,” Allison says. “I’m serious. I know it would be better if massive tracts of land were publicly owned and protected—”

Renee nods.

“—but until then, we could get a massive tract of land that is owned and protected by _you_. Or, fuck, I don’t know what native tribes live around here, buy the land and give it to them. Ask what they want done with it.”

Renee is crumbling, and Allison must be able to sense it, because she leans forward. “Think about it, Riri, we could hire an architect, decide what kind of layout we want, pick a spot between Columbia and the stadium. No HOA to deal with, no one to tell you what you can and can’t plant in the yard, no one to tell us what color we can paint our house, _nothing_ , it would be great! Renee!”

“We have more houses to see tomorrow,” Renee says. “And then neighborhood shopping on Wednesday.”

Allison purses her lips, but drops it. She eats her shrimp in a manner that suggests it is tactical shrimp-eating.

They watch the Muppet movie.

It’s funny, which is all Neil takes away from it. He’s fairly certain that that’s _all_ he has to take away from it, though, and he hopes he’s right.

Regardless, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to have to have a lengthy conversation about it, because once the credits roll, Renee stands, stretches.

“I’m ready for bed,” she announces.

“Yup,” Allison agrees, standing, rolling her neck.

There’s a chorus of good nights, and then Renee and Allison head downstairs, Natalie and Paige head upstairs, and Neil and Andrew do their rounds, checking locks, looking for cameras or microphones or listening devices, and then they head upstairs.

Neil can’t tell where the girls are—if they’re in separate rooms or not—but Natalie isn’t asking for help moving all her stuff, so probably they’re in separate rooms.

Neil and Andrew get ready for bed, and the kids don’t come in.

Does that mean they’re in one room? Or does it just mean they’re comfortable sleep alone, suddenly?

Neil glances at Andrew, who shrugs at him. _I don’t know_. Well, that’s fair.

Neil pulls out his journal.

He still hasn’t filled his fancy pen. Andrew doesn’t seem bothered by it.

He doesn’t have a delay right at the beginning, tonight—he starts when Andrew does. Immediately upon opening the journal.

 _Everyone is accommodating me, and I didn’t realize it. Andrew, with the money thing. My friends, with the fact that I’m bad at being a friend. My kids, with the fact that I don’t know how to be a parent._ Maybe that’s why exy is still so appealing, still impossible to give up. Matt, Renee, Aaron—they’d all given it up. Matt with some grumbling, but it wasn’t the end of his world. Renee and Aaron had done it willingly—it had been bittersweet, but they hadn’t regretted it. If something happened right now that prevented Neil from getting back on the court, the only thing that would keep him from wasting away over the course of the next week would be Andrew. Maybe the kids. But—he doesn’t need to be accommodated, on the court. Doesn’t need to be accounted for. He can hold his own, there. Not _just_ hold his own—he can help other people. He can contribute, actively, in a way that he can’t anywhere else. No one needs to take care of him, on the court. Needs to help him. The people he has to rely on are equally reliant on him. There are rules dictating that, and a measurable way of figuring out whether or not he’s upholding his end of the bargain.

“Andrew?”

“Mm?” Andrew asks, scratching out another word or two before he looks up at Neil.

“Did you buy our wedding rings because you didn’t want to upset me by making me pay for them?”

Andrew’s face acquires a certain look that’s telling Neil a lot of things, none of which he wants to know. “Not entirely.”

Neil watches him and waits.

This isn’t fair. It’s an interrogation technique. And normally, it wouldn’t work on Andrew, but Neil is Neil, so it’ll work on Andrew, and that feels a little bit like taking advantage of his wedding vows.

“I mean, yes, partially,” Andrew says slowly, “but I didn’t—you didn’t spend money, very often, and I figured it was just because you didn’t exactly have a steady cash flow, at the time. And I assumed that spending money upset you because it wasn’t replaceable—it’s not like you had a job. None of us did, but Matt, Renee, Allison—they all had _some_ source of money, even if in Allison’s case it was largely illicit. But, yes, it was part of the reason why. I was also a little concerned that you would put it off. And maybe change your mind. Honestly, though, it was also that I really thought we weren’t telling anybody, and you didn’t have a car, so the only way to get the rings would be ordering them online—which is a weird way to get wedding rings—or to ask me to drive you, which, I mean, I guess, but it isn’t very romantic—”

“No, not like sitting on my desk and putting the rings on my homework.”

“Exactly,” Andrew says sincerely. “And, also, you were fucked up, and I didn’t feel like waiting.”

Neil kisses Andrew on the cheek, waves him back to his journal writing, and goes back to his own journal. He’d wanted to write about something else. About—

His first instinct being to lie to Al and Renee, about changing Thanksgiving so that Aaron could come.

 _First instinct is to lie._ What had bothered him about that? _Andrew wasn’t upset when Allison called him on it. Not that I’m sad he wasn’t upset, just that I’m sad that my first instinct is to lie to my friends rather than let them know I have feelings._ But that wasn’t it, either. Something there had struck him as off, too. _I asked them all for help with the engagement ring. I was the one who wanted them all to know we were getting married in the first place. I have no problem telling them I need help, or that I want something, when I know that that’s what’s going on._ Depressing that he needs to add that disclaimer. Depressing that he sometimes doesn’t know that he needs help or wants something. But there’s no real point in writing that down; he and Erika both already know about that problem, that’s why he’s journaling.

He’s getting off-track. He’s halfway through a drawing of a hand—Andrew’s hand, holding a pen.

Neil finishes the drawing. He’s going to be very good at drawing hands, if he keeps this up.

Something specific had bothered him. _It’s not my vulnerability that’s the issue. It’s Andrew’s. I trust them with me. I don’t trust them with him._

What would Erika say about that?

Neil doodles Andrew’s other hand, the way it’s wrapped around his notebook.

Maybe Erika would say that he doesn’t need to be so protective. Doesn’t need to make such a big deal out of it. Maybe she’d say that Neil needs to acknowledge that Andrew is an adult, who probably doesn’t need to be protected from his friends. Not from Allison and Renee, anyway.

 _I forgot the cardinal rule of our family. Allison is petty and dramatic, and she wouldn’t hurt Andrew._ Not, traditionally, that Andrew is the one in that relationship in need of protection, but still. _Andrew wouldn’t hurt her, these days, either. He knows better than to make a promise that could result in that._ Maybe that caveat needs examining, too. If that situation had happened today—Allison slapping Aaron while Aaron and Andrew were still entangled in their deal—would Andrew break his promise? Would he allow himself that leeway? Or would he do it anyway, making a mental note to consider future promises more carefully?

Neil doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that it matters, really, or that it needs to be in his journal. Andrew isn’t particularly prolific with his promises or deals, these days. Half of the promises he’s engaged in are symbolized neatly by the rings on his left hand, and the other half consists of the kids in their bedrooms. And his promise to Neil, at least, doesn’t involve anyone else. His promise to the kids—might involve fighting some people. But not their family, at least.

This isn’t relevant.

Neil has drawn half a face—Erika, he realizes, looking at it. Her profile.

Neil should just take up drawing again.

Does he have anything else to write?

No, Neil decides, capping his pen and sticking pen and journal in his bedside table.

Andrew is still writing. How does he have so much to _say_? Once Neil understands non-anger emotions, will he also have that much to say? He can’t imagine he will. He doesn’t often have _thoughts_. He turns off the lamp on his bedside table and rolls onto his stomach, unfocused gaze resting on Andrew. Comforting, to have him there, writing. In bed with Neil. Should Neil get his journal out again? He has to write down that he’s lucky, lucky to have Andrew, lucky to have him like this, lucky, lucky, lucky.

Andrew caps his pen. Puts pen and journal away. Turns the lamp off, and rolls to look at Neil. “Neil.”

“Andrew.”

“I have a confession.”

“You cheated on me.”

“The only thing I’ve cheated on you with is cake.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “You’ve fucked a cake?”

“It was emotional infidelity, not physical.”

“You were emotionally intimate with a cake?”

“I told it my deepest fears. My greatest hopes. It told me the same.”

“What does a cake hope for?”

“To be eaten. That’s its purpose.”

Hmm. “What does a cake fear?”

“Being eaten.”

“I thought that was its purpose?”

“It is. Don’t we all fear the concept of fulfilling our purpose? What are we good for, after that?”

Neil reaches out and finds Andrew’s hand. “Very philosophical tonight. You have a confession?”

“Earlier this month. When Katelyn and Aaron were over. You and Aaron were playing with Freddie, and I was in the kitchen with Katelyn.”

This can’t be going anywhere good. Did he stab her? Should Neil ask? No. “And?”

Andrew pauses. Swallows. “Ah. She told me that her family was going to be in Myrtle Beach for Thanksgiving, and said—repeatedly—that she and Aaron were off of work that day, were both going to be in South Carolina, and wouldn’t mind getting away from her family for a few hours.”

Neil considers this information.

He can devine no confession. “Oh?”

“Do you think she was trying to get me to invite them to Thanksgiving?”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Neil snorts.

And then he laughs. Buries his face in the pillow.

“Neil, I just said, _oh, cool, that’s nice, that’s good, mm, mmhmm, yup, that’s good_ , Neil, I basically ignored her, I ignored my sister-in-law while she tried desperately to get invited to a family party—Neil, I think I fucked up.”

Neil can’t stop laughing. He’s gasping into the pillow. She’d _tried_. She’d tried so hard, and Andrew hadn’t thought anything of it, had neglected to mention it to Neil, had worked himself into nothing short of a goddamn _tizzy_ over inviting Aaron, and—“Andrew, they _know_ we do dinner. They _know_ that. Aaron’s been in on every group chat invite since we had a place to go. They _knew_ we were hosting this year. We didn’t have to move the time. We didn’t have to do a _single fucking thing_ —”

“You don’t have to rub it in,” Andrew huffs. “Katelyn does nothing _but_ talk, how was I supposed to know what was important?”

“No, no, definitely,” Neil agrees, turning his face towards Andrew, grinning. “Definitely, I don’t know how you sere supposed to know, I have no idea.”

“And they’ve never come to Thanksgiving before, I thought that was just our family deal!”

“It was,” Neil agrees, grinning.

“I figured it was understood that me being willing to cook with her was a _huge_ compromise on my part, I didn’t think she’d try to get _invited_ for _Thanksgiving_!”

“No, I think that _was_ understood. At some point. I just don’t know that it’s true anymore.”

“Of course it’s true! She’s the most annoying person on this planet,” Andrew grumbles, falling over into his back.

“That’s fair,” Neil agrees.

“You think she’s annoying too,” Andrew accuses.

“Sure.”

“What was I supposed to do, _listen_ to her? _Think_ about what she was saying? _Read into it?_ I have better things to do!”

“That’s true,” Neil agrees.

“Stop agreeing with me!”

“You’re wrong, you had nothing better to do, Katelyn is a wonderful and interesting woman, and you should have listened to what she said, thought long and hard about it, read into it as far as you could go, and should’ve invited her to Thanksgiving on the spot.”

“I _know_!” Andrew moans. “But I’m not _used_ to giving a shit about her.”

Neil snickers. “What, she still doesn’t count as family?”

“She _does_ but I haven’t figure that out yet!”

“Unfortunate.”

“Why didn’t she just fucking _ask_?”

“Why didn’t she oh-so-rudely invite herself, thus insinuating herself into her husband’s weird not-fighting relationship with his brother?”

“Yes! Everything else she does is rude and loud and annoying, why couldn’t she have just done _that_?”

“Well, _now_ you’re just being mean. Realistically, _we_ are the rude, loud, annoying ones.”

“Who’s in this _we_?” Andrew asks, tilting his head to look at Neil.

“Us. You, me, Al, Kevin—not so much Dan and Matt and Renee, I guess. Nicky, for sure. Aaron, variable. We’re all that kind of people and she’s—not trying to beat down the door. She’s not trying to set us off. Not trying to get Aaron accused of going through her to get an invite.”

Andrew sits straight up. “Oh, _fuck_ , that’s it, isn’t it? He asked her to ask? Can I blame this on him? Neil?”

“No, because if he’d asked her to do something, she’d have gone through me. I’m not sure why she _didn’t_ , honestly, but maybe she wanted it to be a real invitation, not you talked into something you didn’t want to do. I don’t think she’d be a good go-between, Drew, she’s too—too—well, not straight-and-narrow—”

“No, she’s not _that_ good,” Andrew complains. “But she’s not—I mean, _spiraling_.”

“Spiraling?”

“The opposite of straight-and-narrow.”

“Crooked,” Neil tries. Now they’re just playing word games. “You think she’s crooked?”

“A little.”

“Well, she’s right in there with us, then. We’re all the crooked kind of people.”

“Not _too_ crooked,” Andrew specifies. “We’re _mostly_ straight. Just a little gay.”

Neil snorts. “I think _I’m_ a little gay. You are a _lot_ of gay.”

“Half. A little more than half.”

“You’re _half_ gay?” Neil asks incredulously.

“I think I might be demi-romantic,” Andrew says, casually, “so I think that puts me a little over half, right? Is that how that works?”

Neil gestures at him. “Explain?”

“Well, I’m _definitely_ homosexual. Got me there. That one’s correct. But _romantically_? That’s a different story, yes? So if each type of attraction is one-half of the whole…”

“I mean, I don’t know that that’s how it works,” Neil says, “I don’t know that it’s—50-50, but—what’s this different story you’re talking about?”

Andrew looks at Neil, and the look on Andrew’s face is one of vague confusion, which is intensely distressing, because _Neil_ really ought to be the confused one here. “I thought you’d have figured it out way before I did.”

“You’re the one who pointed out last week that I have no fucking clue what’s going on, ever, what are you talking about?”

Andrew heaves a sigh, like he’s got better things to do, and rolls towards Neil. “I thought that love was fake,” he says, slowly, staring at Neil. “I didn’t think it was a real thing. And then I fell in love with you, and figured out that I’d done that, and thought it was probably a fucking accident, but whatever, I’d take it, and then I assumed that as I went through more therapy it would—develop, or something, and I’d _get_ it, and understand how people could fall in love multiple times, and get crushes on strangers and shit, but I am improving at a fucking _shocking_ rate and yet there is _no_ development in the romantic attraction area. It’s just you, and it’s only ever been you, and there was nothing before you, and I have to say, all it’s really done is make me question whether or not you actually _are_ demi- or grey-asexual, because being demi doesn’t mean I’m just kind of down to make out, it means I _love_ you, and _only_ you, and if you don’t think I’m sexy, all I’m saying is, are you sure you’re not just entirely asexual?”

Neil takes a second.

There’s a lot happening, there.

But one thing is more important than the rest. “How did this get turned around on _me_?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“I mean exactly what I said, I asked you a question and now you’re questioning my sexuality!”

“Are you angry at me?”

“No!” Neil huffs. “I’m just—look, there’s some shit to process in there, you don’t get to make me question my sexuality at the same time. And, anyway, does it matter?”

Andrew shrugs. “Why does it matter to _you_ if I’m demiromantic?”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t know? Hang on, though, are you going to therapy and complaining that I don’t think you’re sexy?”

“Maybe. Sometimes.”

Neil leans over to kiss Andrew’s cheek. “It’s not like I think you’re _ugly_. I’m not _forcing_ myself to have sex with you. I’m not lying there bored out of my mind. I enjoy having sex with you, and would like to do it again sometime.”

“That’s good to know,” Andrew says, “but it’s also not the same thing, which is what I’m saying. I am not _less_ romantically attracted to you, for all that I am not romantically attracted to anyone else. I’m not sitting here like _I like living with you, I like being your best friend, I like holding hands and sharing a bed with you, I am simply not in love with you,_ I’m sitting here saying that I _do_ love you, _in addition_ to that whole list of things. You are not doing that.”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care. I have to be honest, right now I’m just—how the fuck did we manage to _get_ each other? How did we—jesus. _Everything_ had to fall into place. _Everything_ had to—” Neil spreads his fingers. It just feels like—a lot. Too much to believe. By all rights, they should both be alone right now. “Hang on, I have to journal again—I’m having an existential crisis.”

“An existential crisis?” Andrew asks.

“We should both be alone right now, how the fuck did we find each other? How did we make this work? What the fuck?”

Andrew smiles a little. “Luck.”

“Fucking—this is nearly enough to make me religious. _Someone_ had to have made this happen.”

“What, you think it would’ve been easier if I _wasn’t_ demi?”

“Probably, right?”

Andrew shrugs. “Who knows? Not me.”

Neil sighs, folds his arms, rests his cheek on his hands. He looks at Andrew. Examines his face. It’s a nice face. “So you’re demiromantic—”

“Or grey.”

“Or grey. And I’m asexual. And that’s our takeaway.”

“That’s our takeaway,” Andrew agrees, looking down at Neil. “And that I love you.”

“And I love you,” Neil says right back.

Andrew settles back down, face a couple inches away from Neil’s. “And that the kids haven’t come in yet.”

“So either they’re okay, or they’ve been standing at the door, waiting for us to stop talking about sexual orientation.”

Andrew puts a finger to his lips.

Neil shuts up.

They wait; nothing happens.

Neil rolls out of bed, silently, and pads across the floor. Puts his hand on the doorknob. In one move, he turns the knob and opens the door, and—nothing.

Neil closes the door and gets back in bed. “I think we’re good.” The kids better not prove him wrong. Not right away, anyway.

Andrew rolls away to turn off his bedside table lamp, and then rolls back towards Neil. “All right.”

Neil reaches over and slides his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “Good night, my love.”

“Good night, love.”

Neil pulls Andrew a little closer, closes his eyes, and falls asleep.

The kids don’t come in, and Neil sleeps straight through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: knew I forgot something—the genius behind demiromantic andrew is [fuzzballsheltiepants](https://fuzzballsheltiepants.tumblr.com/post/181612433013/more-and-more-im-realizing-that-while-neil-is) on tumblr


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House hunting!

The real estate agent calls Allison the next day while they’re eating breakfast.

Renee brings her and Allison’s plates to the sink, moving at top speed—she doesn’t want to keep the agent waiting.

“Neil,” Allison says, “are you going to therapy today?”

“No, I went yesterday.”

“Do you wanna come with?”

Neil waves them off. “Nah, I’m good.”

“No, seriously, you’re just gonna be here alone.”

“If I go with you, then _Andrew_ is here alone,” Neil points out.

“Sure, but that’s unavoidable. Or Andrew could follow us, and then head out when it’s therapy time.”

“I’m down,” Andrew agrees, shockingly.

Well, if Andrew’s willing, there’s no real reason why Neil isn’t. He shrugs. “Then we’ll follow you around. Do you have the first address?” He grabs a jacket. Andrew puts on his shoes. Allison gives them the address, following Renee out the door.

“Need GPS?” Neil asks, sliding into the Maserati.

“Nah,” Andrew says, shrugging. “I know where it is.”

Neil’s fairly certain he does, too—that street is in Kevin’s neighborhood, he thinks, or around there. He doesn’t remember exactly where, though. Is that his memory failing him? Is it his trauma fading, that now he doesn’t have a near-photographic memory of locations? Or is this normal? Is he misremembering how well he memorized the streets of Paris, Berlin? “You want to house hunt?”

“I didn’t get to the first time around,” Andrew explains. “May as well do it with them.”

“Ah.”

They drive.

Neil watches the houses pass. He squeezes Andrew’s hand.

“Why didn’t you want to come?” Andrew asks.

“I don’t mind.”

“Not what I asked.”

Neil shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Fair.”

“What’s exciting about house hunting? To you.”

Andrew makes a turn. “I want to know what all the fuss is about.”

“All the fuss?”

“Remember back in college, when Renee’s mom moved?”

What? Yes, Neil does, but what? “Yeah.”

“Everyone made such a big fuss over it. It was so _exciting_. Except for the two of us, because there’s nothing exciting about a new house.”

“New houses were all we did,” Neil agrees.

“But people make whole _shows_ about hunting for houses.”

Neil nods his agreement.

“So it’s not even just the _newness_ , it’s also _finding_ it.”

“Not just the destination but the journey,” Neil agrees.

“What the fuck is fun about _finding a house_?”

“I can’t imagine it’s fucking anything, to be honest,” Neil says. “We watch those shows. No one’s having fun. They’re stressed and arguing. Nothing is ever good enough. Nothing is ever just right. There are compromises.”

“Which means that I get to watch Allison try to convince Renee to build their own house, and _that_ will be fun, anyway.”

“That’s true,” Neil says, nodding.

“Also, house decor ideas.”

“You think other people decorate their house nicely?”

“We never got around to taking the kids shopping. To decorate our house.”

“Oh. Yeah. But—we’re not going to decorate our house the way other people do, right?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Neil shrugs. “Viscera.”

Andrew smiles. “Some intestines on the wall.”

“No, intestines smell if you pierce them. I was thinking—actually, it’s all going to rot, it’ll all smell. How about _fake_ viscera?”

“We can stop by a Halloween store at some point. This late in the year—actually, we might not be able to _find_ any. But if we _do_ it would probably be on sale.”

“You want to buy _cheap_ fake viscera?”

“You want to buy _expensive_ fake viscera?” Andrew asks right back.

“It depends on the purpose,” Neil argues. “For a one-night halloween decoration, cheap. To decorate our house, expensive.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Realism, presumably.”

Andrew smiles again. “ _Presumably_?”

“I’ve never looked into purchasing fake viscera.”

“Pseudo-viscera,” Andrew suggests.

“Viscera simulacra.”

“Having a visceral fake feels like something that shouldn’t exist.”

“Wrong,” Neil says with satisfaction. “Wax figures. Like in wax museums.”

Andrew squeezes Neil’s hand. “That’s true. That’s very true.”

“We should go to a wax museum.”

“I don’t need to remember that forever.”

Neil grins. “You don’t want to see their just-this-side-of-inhuman faces in your dreams for the rest of your life?”

“What you are describing is a horror movie.”

“What if they made a wax figure out of _me_? Would you go see it?”

“What you are describing is a horror movie that takes place in my nightmares.”

“Is that scarier than a normal horror movie? Or a normal nightmare? Isn’t it just—a normal nightmare?”

“It’s a horror movie that I can’t turn off unless I wake up, and then when I wake up, there’s a body next to me that _could_ be you but _could_ be wax and it’s possible that I’m still dreaming so even if I see you breathing, I’ll touch you, and you’ll be wax, and actually, this is really horrifying now.”

Neil runs it back in his head with Andrew as the wax figure. “Ah. Yes. It is. I promise I’m not wax.”

Andrew pulls up to a red light, leans over and kisses Neil’s cheek. “Thank you. I believe you.”

Neil lets that settle into his stomach, a warm weight, love and trust. It’s not that deep. Neil knows it’s not that deep. But it’s not illegal to think about things, so.

Three minutes later, they pull up in front of a house. It’s two streets away from Kevin’s house—in his neighborhood, so Neil was right about that.

They look at it.

“So what do we do now?” Andrew asks. “I’ve been led to believe that we should draw some conclusions about the house. Should we be excited? Are we thinking maybe not this one?”

“Looks like Kevin’s,” Neil says. “That’s my takeaway.”

Andrew nods sagely. “A fair and accurate conclusion to draw.”

They get out of the car and prepare to be introduced to the real estate agent.

“This is Martina,” Allison says. “Martina, these are our friends, Neil and Andrew. They’re here to help us decide what we want.”

“Nice to meet you,” Martina says, holding out her hand to shake.

Neil shakes it. “You don’t need much help having an opinion,” Neil says as Martina reaches towards Andrew. Andrew isn’t going to shake her hand, and at least this way it’s not too weird.

“And I’ve never known you to need help deciding what you want,” Andrew says drily, neatly diverting attention to Allison.

“That’s true. But it’s not going to stop me from asking,” Allison says decisively.

“Is there anything we need to know before we head in?” Renee asks Martina pleasantly. Back on track.

“It’s three bed, three bath. The backyard is fully landscaped—as is the front, as you can see. The basement is partially finished. Ready?”

“Ready,” Renee agrees, gesturing Martina forward.

They walk in the front door, and find the world’s ugliest tile on the floor. _Ooooh_. Neil glances up at top speed, just in time to watch Renee squeeze Allison’s hand— _shut up. Don’t say anything_.

Allison reacts fast enough to keep her mouth shut, albeit not fast enough to keep the revulsion off her face.

“I like this house’s bones,” Martina says diplomatically. “Built well, it’s been cared for properly—I think you can see that—and I think it would very easy to project your own personality onto this space, to see what _you_ could do with it, how you could make it reflect your taste. I also think this is a great location...”

They take the tour, but Allison’s heart isn’t in it. She’s done with this house already.

Renee isn’t, though. She knows full well Allison’s end goal is to build their own house, and she isn’t going down without a fight.

She asks questions. Every time Allison makes a face, Renee is asking a question about who Martina could recommend for tile work, for painting, how close the local dog park is.

Neil and Andrew trail along behind them.

“So not this one, right?” Allison says the second the door closes behind them.

“We can keep looking,” Renee agrees.

Andrew and Neil get back into their car. “I don’t remember you asking that many questions,” Andrew says.

“I didn’t. I didn’t have any. I didn’t care.”

“Does Allison know that it’s possible to redecorate a house?”

Neil glances at Andrew. “Yes.”

“Maybe she forgot.”

“She’s got a goal, and she will ignore all reason to get there.”

Andrew hums. “Reminds me of someone.”

“Yourself?”

“I was going to say you.”

Neil snickers. “We were made for each other.”

“We were,” Andrew agrees. “We’re both fucking stupid.”

“God made two idiots, and now we’re in love.”

“Ain’t that always how it seems to go?”

“I pledge to understand what I’ve got before you’re gone,” Neil promises.

“Same. Should’ve made that part of our wedding vows.”

“Which part? The part where I was romantic? Or the part where you said _same_?”

“With my track record?” Andrew says, one eyebrow raised. “Both.”

“Pikachu,” Neil agrees.

Andrew winces dramatically as they pull up to the second house. “Rude.”

“Learned it from the best.”

They enter the second house.

This house is tastefully decorated.

“Probably mold in the walls,” Allison mutters.

“I haven’t seen any evidence of that,” Martina says.

“Allie,” Renee says.

Allison looks at Neil, and her face says _if Martina wasn’t here, you KNOW I’d be on the warpath._

Neil nods sympathetically. He gives her a face that says: _Renee would shout you down_.

Allison makes a face that says: _I know_.

Allison goes silent, and lets Martina and Renee point out the house’s good points—which, to be fair, are all of them.

It would be so easy, for Allison to give up the idea of building their own house. But when has Allison ever done anything the easy way? She never gave up on exy, never gave up on Seth, never gave up on Renee, never gave up on herself, and she’s not going to give up on this, either.

The _real_ issue is Renee. Because Renee isn’t known for giving up, either.

They make it through the house, though, without further objection from Allison. Andrew nods along as Renee talks about how nice the house is. He starts pointing out things like the number of outlets in the living room, the amount of storage space in the garage, the neat placement of the sink two feet from the stove. Around halfway through, Allison picks up a glare that she’s not aiming in Andrew’s direction, but certainly it’s aimed _near_ him. Neil slips his pinky into Andrew’s for two seconds and refuses to meet anyone’s gaze.

“I have to go,” Andrew says as Martina locks the door behind them.

“Already?” Renee asks. There’s no one else in her corner.

Neil resolves to be at least a little bit in her corner.

“Sorry,” Andrew says.

“It’s all right. We’ll hang out tomorrow, while Neil and Allie drive around, do some neighborhood shopping,” Renee says.

“ _Me?_ ” Neil asks.

“Yeah, that way I can hang out with Andrew,” Renee says innocently, like she’s innocent.

Why is this happening to him?

Neil resolves to immediately stop being in her corner. First of all, as punishment for putting him in the car with Allison. Second of all, so that being in the car with Allison tomorrow isn’t a nightmare. He looks at Andrew— _wanna skip therapy today? Maybe? Maybe?_ But Andrew says _no_ , gives Neil a look that will have to take the place of a kiss since they’re in public, and heads for his car, leaving Neil with Renee and Allison. While they house hunt. With opposing ideas of what they want. Neil is living in House Hunters and he hates it. He should’ve insisted on staying home. He shouldn’t be here. Maybe he can just go to therapy _with_ Andrew. Sitting in the waiting room for a few hours would be better than this.

But. He said he’d do it. And he likes Renee and Allison. He has to remember that. Even if they’re fighting.

So he gets into the back seat of Martina’s car with Allison and buckles himself in. Martina starts up the GPS, Andrew pulls away, and they head in the opposite direction.

“Neil,” Renee says, once they’re on their way, “I have something for you to do.”

“Sure,” Neil agrees. “Well. Wait. Tell me what it is first,” he corrects.

“You’re not even in a relationship and she’s got you whipped,” Allison laughs.

“Pediatric burns unit,” Renee says, like that means something.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Neil asks. Is it an acronym? PBU? He doesn’t know what that means, either.

“Visit it. Pick a hospital and go.”

“Why?”

“Take a quick second and think about every single time you’ve ever seen a movie or anything where someone has a burn scar. Or _any_ facial scar.”

“Bad,” Neil summarizes.

“And that’s probably all these kids know. And now they _look_ like that. And a lot of them can’t afford skin grafts or plastic surgery.”

“So what am I going to do there?”

“Say hi. Smile at them. Talk to them. Tell them that things can be okay. That for some of them, makeup can cover it up, if they need it, but that they don’t have to, and it’ll be okay. That they’re not the villain in a Wonder Woman movie just because they’ve gotten burned.”

“I already did a commercial for that,” Neil objects.

“Oh, sure, because all kids are big on sports,” Renee says.

“That was the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Neil says.

“It was barely sarcastic.”

“I’m rubbing off on her,” Allison says gleefully.

“You’ve been married for years, that’s not impressive,” Neil says.

“At least we didn’t have to _humanize_ each other,” she snipes.

Neil flicks her on the arm.

“That’s not fair, I can’t do that,” she complains. “I don’t want to risk my nails.”

“Life’s not fair,” Neil says.

“Anyway,” Renee interrupts, “just go. They’re kids, Neil.”

“Why am I just my scars?” Neil asks. “Why are you just giving me stuff to do where I walk around and have my face and show it to people?”

Renee shrugs. “Because other people have their face and show it to people, and it goes real fucking poorly for them, and sometimes we can inspire people by having a face and showing it to people, and because you get to go home and go to work and not have your face matter all that much to those around you, while others don’t have that.”

Neil shuts his mouth before he can snark about what _she_ does. Renee isn’t asking him for any more than what she does herself—she talks to kids in gangs and kids just barely out of gangs and kids maybe on the verge of joining a gang, Neil knows, and she makes a point of working with and supporting causes that aim to feed kids, to improve schools, to give kids after-school options, to help feed the hungry, to pay people’s rent, and everything she can think of that could lead to a kid joining a gang. Renee is out to save the world, and all she’s asking is for Neil to go see some scared kids and make them feel better.

He sighs. “So you want a direct-to-consumer body positivity campaign.”

“Well, if you want to put it that way,” Renee agrees.

“I do,” Neil decides.

“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Allison says, leaning forward, apparently deciding that Renee and Neil’s conversation is over. “We should just build our _own_ house.”

Renee lets out a deep, world-weary sigh.

“Pick our own location,” Allison says, like she didn’t hear anything. “Design our own space.”

“If that’s what you have in mind,” Martina says, “I have a patch of land you could check out. There’s a house on it now, but it would just need to be bulldozed—it’s rotted out, there’s nothing even left in it.”

“That sounds interesting,” Allison says.

“Land that hasn’t sold yet?” Renee says skeptically. “Must be a reason for that.”

Doing exactly what Allison was doing. Neil smothers a grin.

“Not big enough to be a golf course,” Martina explains. “Or a hotel. Although I think Hilton is looking into the surrounding land—it’s a wildlife preserve, part of the one that your house backs up to, Neil, but if they can buy it they can build a hotel, it’s located two minutes from a highway and halfway between the Jaguars’ stadium and Columbia—they’d have to reroute the stream that runs through that property, but anyone buying real estate knows that location is the name of the game, and this chunk of land has got it.”

Neil watches Allison’s grin widen as Martina talks. Buying and clearing a protected wildlife preserve? Rerouting a stream? How big is that stream? It’s precisely the kind of thing Renee would work against.

“I bet that if _we_ buy that land,” Allison says slowly, like she’s thinking it through, “Hilton wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. If they’re looking to just _expand_ a little on the land that’s already there, they could talk some people into it, but they wouldn’t be able to buy it from us, and if they’re trying to carve out a whole entire chunk of space, I don’t think they could get it.”

“If you’d like, we could stop by today,” Martina offers as they pull up in front of another house. “No one lives there, and I’ve got the keys to the gate.”

“What happened, that there’s a gate for a rundown house?” Renee asks, unbuckling her seatbelt.

“They put up the gate to stop people squatting in there,” Martina explains, getting out of the car, entirely missing Renee rolling her eyes at Neil—Renee is firmly of the opinion that squatters should be allowed to live in abandoned homes, an opinion that Neil shares, given he _was_ a squatter.

Not to mention that people put a lot of misplaced stock in gates. Unless that gate comes with a barbed wire fence, it wouldn’t have kept Neil out. Signs saying _Private Property, Do Not Trespass_ were largely meaningless. People who visited their properties often didn’t generally bother putting up signs.

“The real issue,” Martina is saying, “is that the gate was attached to a wooden fence, and the fence has absolutely crumbled in the back. We’re in a car, so we’ll need to go through the gate regardless, but dirtbikers ride all around there—the fence needs to be fixed, but no one sees the point in fixing it. Hilton won’t care, they’d tear it up anyway.”

“Is the property close by?” Allison asks as Martina unlocks the door.

“It’s around twenty minutes away—we’ll basically pass it on the way to the house on Riverside Street.”

“Ah,” Allison says, not even pretending to look around the front hallway. “Any chance we could stop in and take a look?”

“Allie,” Renee says, “she’d probably prefer to sell it to Hilton. I’d assume it’s a bigger commission.”

“No, actually,” Martina says. Whether she’s blissfully unaware of the existing argument or just looking to make a sale at whatever cost, Neil can’t tell. “If they purchase the Wildlife Preserve, it’ll be direct from the committee that protects it, not me. I’ll get the same commission regardless.”

“Hilton probably wouldn’t like that, though,” Renee says.

“Doesn’t bother me any,” Martina says breezily. “I never work in commercial real estate. They just happen to have enough money to make it worth it to try to get that land re-zoned as commercial, rather than residential.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to go _look_ , right?” Allison asks Renee. “I mean, we’d just be glancing around at the land, it’s not like there’s a house to examine.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Renee agrees.

“We should hurry through this house, then,” Allison says, starting off on a circuit of the first floor, “and the next. We don’t want to be late to the other two showings.”

Renee looks at Neil.

Neil shrugs. “You want _me_ to stand up to her? I can’t stand up to either of you.”

Renee sighs and starts off after Allison.

“Small closet, not enough outlets in the kitchen,” Allison says.

“There’s six that I can see,” Renee objects.

“Hate this staircase,” Allison says, already halfway up it.

“I know an electrician who can handle the outlet issue,” Martina says, following her.

Neil follows them around the house, and back into the car, and around the next house, which Allison takes at twice the speed of their previous houses, and then back into the car.

“And it’s on the way?” Renee asks, buckling her seatbelt.

“Two minutes out of the way,” Martina promises.

Renee glances into the rearview mirror.

Neil looks over to find Allison giving her puppy eyes.

“All right,” Renee agrees.

Allison is one of the only people Renee isn’t unconditionally sunny with. It was an interesting development, when it happened—the realization that Renee’s behavior wasn’t inherent personality, but effectively a show. Which they’d all known—she’d killed a guy, once, after all—but it became clear that it took a certain level of work, a certain amount of willpower, for her to behave like that all the time.

With Allison, she—stopped needing to do that.

Maybe it was more that Allison is stubborn, and dramatic, and Renee’s brand of quiet care can’t always hold up against it. Maybe Renee found it freeing: that she could be less-than-perfect, even rude, and Allison would still love her straight through it. It’s why she’s friends with Andrew, friends with Dan—it gives her the chance, the option, to be a person, without risking her relationships.

Which isn’t to say that her usual behavior is a show. It’s a standard to which Renee holds herself, wherein sometimes, she enjoys the ability to fall short without hitting the ground. Allison will catch her, every time, without question, without comment.

Martina pulls off the highway. Makes a quick left, a right, and then turns onto a driveway edged by trees. She sticks the car in park—

“Do you want me to do it?” Renee asks. “That way you can just drive through.”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Martina agrees, handing her the keys.

Renee gets out of the car, and Neil in the two seconds between her opening the door and closing it, Neil hears nothing—it’s quiet. They’ve made it far enough away from the highway that the noise is barely drifting in their direction.

Renee unlocks the gate, Martina pulls to the top of the driveway, and they get out of the car to meet Renee, walking up the driveway, scrutinizing the space in front of them.

It’s sizable, from what Neil can see. It looks like there might space for more than one house, really—well more than one. Certainly more than one of the little house that sits at the top of the driveway.

“If you don’t mind walking in the grass?” Martina asks, gesturing them around the side of the house.

Renee follows her around.

“There were plans to put a whole cul-de-sac here at one point,” Martina explains as they round the corner, “but the construction company went out of business, and the bank sold the land for cheap. And then the people who used to live here moved temporarily to live with their kids, to help with a new grandchild, but that _temporarily_ stretched on, and on, and at one point they came back and moved out, but it was only four years later that they decided to sell—and in the meantime, there was that major storm two years back, and then those two weeks where it rained non-stop, and the house has fallen apart, as you see.”

Renee is nodding along, but she’s not listening. Neil knows full well she’s not. The clearing is big, and _empty_ —wheel tracks in the dirt tell Neil that dirtbikers come through regularly, and probably tear up the ground too much for grass to grow, because there isn’t any. What there _is_ is a stream, and Neil would guess that it’s only technically a stream—it seems big enough to him. He can see why the current property owners haven’t bothered fixing the fence, though; it must have been expensive to put up in the first place, given the size of the property.

“Should be more plants along that stream bank,” Renee murmurs. “How do the bikers get over it? Is there a bridge somewhere?”

“I don’t think it’s _over_ it so much as _around_ it,” Martina says thoughtfully. “The way it winds, what you’re seeing is really the curve of it—it comes out of the woods and goes straight back into them. So they’re probably just following it. I believe the property actually extends to the other side of the stream, though, so if you were willing to put in the money to fix and extend the fence, you could probably keep them out.”

“Ah,” Renee says.

Allison catches Neil’s eye and grins—she’s won this war. Renee wants this, now.

Neil keeps his mouth shut. Anything he says right now will be taken as a reason not to buy it.

Allison, clearly on the same page, links her arm with Neil’s and stays perfectly silent. She composes her face before Renee turns around.

“We’ll be late to our next showing,” is all Renee says.

Renee walks past them.

Allison takes her arm back, does a picture-perfect recreation of Salvador Dali’s _Scream_ , and then turns and follows Renee, leaving Martina and Neil behind.

“They’ll figure it out,” Neil tells Martina.

“This is fine,” Martina says calmly. “I’m more worried about when you get home.”

“Me too,” Neil agrees, following her to the car.

Neil gets in the back seat, and Martina backs out, passing Allison and Renee, who shut the gates behind her before getting into the car.

They view the next house.

Allison keeps quiet. She says nothing. She doesn’t rush it. She agrees when Renee points out something good. She holds Renee’s hand and follows her around.

The real issue is that, now, Renee doesn’t seem satisfied with it.

Neil is living in hell.

It’s not even necessarily his _own_ hell. It’s _their_ hell. He’s living in someone else’s hell, and he volunteered to come along.

They go to the last house. Rinse, repeat.

Martina drives them home. “Let me know if you want me to keep looking,” she says, pulling into the driveway. “And how long you’re here for. I’m away from Thursday to Monday, but I have a slot open on Tuesday and two on Wednesday if you want to schedule more viewings.”

“Thank you,” Renee says. “We’ll let you know.”

They say polite goodbyes, head for the door, and then stop, arrested by the sight of the maserati heading down the street, pulling into the driveway.

They wait.

Andrew gets out of the car and meets Neil’s eyes— _okay?_

 _NO_ , Neil says. _HELL._

Amusement flashes across Andrew’s face. Bastard. He’s laughing at Neil.

Neil turns and unlocks the door, leading the way in.

“How was house hunting?” Paige asks, much too brightly.

“It went well,” Renee says, matching her for cheer.

“Everyone’s a liar in this house,” Andrew says.

“No I’m not,” Renee says, offended.

“Yes, you are,” Andrew says.

“You weren’t even there,” Renee objects.

“Neil told me.”

“Neil didn’t pick up his phone once,” Allison says. “You’re lying.”

“No, he told me when I got home three seconds ago,” Andrew says.

“I’ve been standing next to him,” Allison says, pointing at Neil, like maybe they’d lost him.

“He used sign language,” Andrew says.

“You two don’t know sign language,” Renee says.

“I used body language,” Neil says.

“Gross,” Natalie says. “Can I go upstairs?”

“Sure. You can both go,” Neil says. “We’ll call you when dinner’s ready?”

“Okay,” Paige agrees, already halfway out of the kitchen.

Allison points a thumb after them and mouthes, _therapy feelings_?

Neil and Andrew shrug.

Allison leans out of the room, looking for eavesdroppers. “Could just be teenager feelings.”

“Teenagers have too many feelings,” Andrew agrees.

“Maybe adults just have too few feelings,” Renee suggests.

“I know _I_ don’t have feelings,” Andrew says.

“That’s a lie,” Renee says.

“So anyway, house hunting went poorly?” Andrew asks.

“Allison wants to buy land and build a house on it. Like some manifest destiny bullshit.”

“There’s _already_ a house on it,” Allison says.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Renee says.

“If we don’t buy it, Hilton hotels will buy up protected wildlife preserve.”

“Still not ours. Still weird to consider ourselves the protectors of the whole forest, when we could just organize to prevent the committee from selling off the preserve—assuming, of course, that they _would_ —”

“We’d be buying a house anyway,” Allison cajoles. “We’re not nomads. And we’re people, we’re going to be on _some_ land _somewhere_ until we learn how to float.”

“But at least we wouldn’t be wasting resources, space—there’s already plenty of houses, we don’t need to build a new one—the amount of wood it would take to build a house—”

“3D print it. Buy all the houses we were shown today and give them to the homeless.”

“3D printing uses too much plastic.”

“Bamboo! Fuck, brick! A whole brick house, like how they used to be done!”

“Waste of money.”

“You’re going to take up resources,” Andrew says, unexpectedly. “You can only do so much. Be buried without a coffin when you die so you can give it back, and stop being upset that you’re alive.”

“I’m not upset that I’m alive,” Renee shoots back, “I’m upset that I don’t have a way of—existing in this world without—causing harm.”

Andrew shrugs. “Me too. We do what we can, and we donate to people who can do what we can’t, and sometimes, we do things that make ourselves and our spouses happy, because the only way to stop doing bad shit is to die.”

Renee sticks her tongue out at him.

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees.

“And that’s not an excuse to do shit that we _know_ is wrong.”

“Buying a house feels like the last thing you need to worry about,” Allison says.

“But it’s the thing _I’m doing_.”

“Have you considered therapy?” Neil asks.

Renee looks at him. “You’ve only been in therapy for three weeks.”

“But I’ve been a proponent of therapy for way longer than that,” Neil says reasonably.

“He’s an enormous hypocrite,” Andrew says, “but he is correct.”

Renee grimaces. Neil makes the same face.

“I’ve _done_ therapy,” Renee protests.

“Checkup therapy. Therapy for a new issue.”

“Bee can’t possibly have time in her schedule.”

“Get a new therapist.”

“I have one, if you want to try her,” Neil offers. “She yells at me a lot.”

“You’re a freak,” Allison tells him.

“Al. Rude. Neil, no, thank you. Can we make dinner now?”

They all acquiesce. Renee is making a request. It will be fulfilled.

They make dinner.

The kids come downstairs when it’s done, in time to help set the table. Natalie visibly just woke up from a nap. Did she take that nap in her own bed, or in Paige’s bed? Will Neil and Andrew be moving her room any time soon?

“So house hunting was bad?” Natalie asks, picking up where she left off.

“We just have a lot of decisions to make,” Renee says, “and we’re disagreeing on all of them.”

“Sucks,” Natalie says sympathetically.

“How was school?” Renee asks.

“School,” Natalie says.

“Felt longer than usual,” Paige agrees.

“Honestly absolutely fucking interminable,” Natalie agrees.

“Long as hell,” Paige agrees.

“So it sucked ass,” Allison surmises. “How are you guys liking therapy?”

“What’s with therapists and making people _journal_?” Natalie asks. “What’s up with that? I think it’s a conspiracy to sell journals. Or to improve handwriting. Or something.”

“Probably,” Allison agrees. “The rich will do anything to sell you shit.”

“I don’t think Bee is rich,” Renee counters.

“Andrew should be _making_ her rich,” Allison says, pointing a finger at him.

“I’m doing my best,” Andrew says, pointing a fork at her. “I can only do so much, legally.”

“What about _illegally_?” Renee asks. “Have you considered off-shore bank accounts?”

“Mafia,” Andrew says, sitting back. “Don’t want to risk them thinking we’re hiding Neil’s money.”

“No, doing literally anything that could feasibly imply that I might be fucking with my taxes would get us killed,” Neil says.

“Buy her stocks,” Renee suggests. “Invest in her 401k.”

“Mostly, I just donate to this organization that pays therapists to give therapy to those who can’t afford it,” Andrew says. “Since she works with them a lot anyway.”

“Oh, that’s _good_ ,” Renee says, endlessly pleased, “but not illegal.”

“Neither is investing in her 401k or buying her stocks,” Andrew points out.

“True. I have to be honest, I don’t know much about money laundering—never had much to do with that, back in my days as a criminal.”

Everyone looks at Neil.

“What?” Neil asks. “I never laundered money.”

“Aren’t you technically doing it now?” Allison asks.

“No, I donate money to charities that happen to be owned by money launderers,” Neil defends himself. “That’s not my fault.”

“So, what, they own it and just take the money?” Allison asks.

“That’s not how non-profits work,” Renee says.

“Realistically, _you_ should be the one explaining money laundering,” Neil points out. “How would a person get money out of a charity?”

Renee takes a deep breath.

A few hours later, long after the leftovers have gone cold and food has dried on the plates, Paige stands up. “I feel like I’m done here,” she says, stacking plates.

Allison’s mouth quirks in half a smile. “Is that how the kids say they’re going to bed nowadays?”

“Yeah,” Paige says, carrying the plates to the sink.

“Fair enough,” Neil agrees, standing to help her.

Between the six of them, they make short work of cleaning the kitchen, and then the kids head upstairs and Allison and Renee head downstairs and Andrew and Neil are left to do their rounds in peace, which they do.

As they come back to the front door, Andrew puts a hand on Neil’s hip.

Neil raises an eyebrow at Andrew.

Carefully, gently, Andrew pushes at Neil until Neil is leaning against the door. He curves his hands around Neil’s hipbones, leans up, finds that Neil has melted a couple inches to put himself at Andrew’s height. Andrew doesn’t miss a beat—of course he doesn’t; isn’t this how it always goes?—just presses his lips against Neil’s.

Neil parts his lips, lets Andrew in. Lets Andrew push his knee between Neil’s legs. Kisses Andrew back. Threads his fingers through Andrew’s hair, and holds him close. Andrew’s thumbs are brushing his sides. The door is cold against his back.

Neil blinks his eyes open to see Andrew’s eyes closed, lashes dark against his cheeks. Neil kisses him again. Closes his eyes.

Andrew takes a deep breath. Exhales it, pressed up against Neil.

Neil wraps an arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “So what’s all this about?” he murmurs.

“I didn’t get to cuddle after therapy today,” Andrew says, voice considering a whine.

“Did you need to?” Neil asks. It’s been a while since Andrew has come home exhausted, in need of Neil, but given Natalie and Paige’s fight, it wouldn’t be surprising if Andrew had needed to work through some tougher stuff.

Andrew pauses.

Neil waits.

“Not really.”

Neil stifles a laugh. “The answer can be yes.”

“Mm. That might be a lie, though,” Andrew muses, eyes on Neil’s lips.

“A sin,” Neil agrees.

Andrew leans back in for another kiss. “Thus from my lips,” he whispers, “by thine, my sin is purged.”

“Okay, Romeo,” Neil says.

“Jackass, say the fucking line, don’t leave me hanging.”

“I don’t remember Romeo saying _that_ ,” Neil says, grinning.

“I don’t remember Juliet saying _okay, Romeo,_ ” Andrew argues back.

“It’s a modern rewrite.”

“What else is rewritten?”

“The part where they die in the end.”

Andrew waves a hand. “We already superseded that. We survived to adulthood.”

“I’d like to continue to supersede it. Why did we decide to quote _Romeo and Juliet_ , anyway? I don’t really want to emulate them.”

“Because they had some romantic quotes. So fucking say them, asshole.”

Neil gives his best annoyed sigh. Andrew’s face says he’s not buying it, possibly because Neil is still grinning. “Then have my lips the sin that they have took?”

“Yes,” Andrew says, foregoing Romeo’s response as he steps back. He slides an arm around Neil’s back as Neil laughs, and this time, Neil is ready, and not shocked to the core when Andrew puts his other arm behind Neil’s knees and lifts him up. Neil wraps his arm around Andrew’s shoulder and lets Andrew carry him up the stairs.

Andrew carries him to the door of their bedroom, makes Neil open the door and then close it behind them, and then carries Neil straight into the bathroom.

“Is this your way of telling me I smell?” Neil asks, watching Andrew turn the shower on.

“Maybe.”

“Wait, really?” Neil asks, alarmed. He sniffs one armpit. “I do _not_.”

“I said _maybe,_ not _yes._ You need to work on your auditory comprehension skills. Anyway, sin from thy lips, o trespass sweetly urged, give me my sin again,” Andrew says, sounding endlessly bored. He leans up and pulls Neil in for a kiss.

Ah.

Neil catches his breath when Andrew pulls away to check the water temperature. “Protest not of boredom. Thy kiss gives lie to your own words.”

Andrew flicks water at Neil. “That _definitely_ isn’t Shakespeare.”

“No, it’s Josten.”

“I can tell, that wasn’t even iambic pentameter.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t an English major.”

“Neither was I,” Andrew argues, tugging at the hem of Neil’s shirt until Neil pulls it off. “I still know what iambic pentameter is.”

“So do I. Do you know how to speak in it?”

“Do I or do I not have all of Shakespeare’s works memorized?”

“That’s true,” Neil agrees, tugging his pants off, watching Andrew strip. “It would be cheating if you did it. I’d never know if you were plagiarizing Shakespeare or not.”

“You’d know,” Andrew contradicts, stepping into the shower, pulling Neil after him. “It would be Shakespeare.”

“You could pull out some obscure line I don’t know,” Neil says, grabbing the shampoo bottle before Andrew can.

“You know what I know,” Andrew says. “You keep up with all my Shakespeare quotes. You don’t get to pull the _regular memory_ card on this one.”

Neil grabs Andrew’s hand and tugs until Andrew turns to face away from him, so Neil can tilt Andrew’s head back and start shampooing. “Sure, but I don’t have _all of Shakespeare’s work_ memorized, I just know which quotes you’re likely to pull out later, and I memorize _those_ so that I can keep up.”

“How do you know which quotes I’ll use?” Andrew asks.

There’s a note in his voice that makes Neil grin. “Are you offended?”

“I’m not _predictable_ ,” Andrew scoffs.

“You always reuse the romantic ones.”

Andrew is silent.

That’s probably enough shampooing. It’s not like Andrew’s hair is _dirty_. “Close your eyes,” Neil warns, before tilting Andrew’s head forward. He scrubs the shampoo out of Andrew’s hair, keeping one eye on Andrew’s ribs, making sure he’s breathing.

Actually, Neil can look at Andrew’s ass now. He’s had his fingers in there, he can probably look.

Neil glances down.

Andrew has a nice ass.

To be fair, Neil doesn’t have much to compare it to, but that shouldn’t preclude his ability to have an opinion, right?

Neil tilts Andrew’s head back.

He doesn’t want to take his hands off Andrew’s skin. That’ll make it a surprise when he puts his hands back _on_ Andrew’s skin, and it means Andrew doesn’t really know where he is. And that was something in the massage videos Neil has watched—to make sure that the massage therapist has skin-to-skin contact with their client, so that the client always knows where they are. And Neil is behind Andrew, which makes the issue more urgent.

He can totally uncap and pour the conditioner without losing skin contact. He can. He—

 _Elbows_. That was the trick. Use an elbow if both hands are needed.

Neil’s memory is _so_ good. He keeps his elbow against Andrew’s back while he pours the conditioner.

He can’t tell if Andrew cares.

Fuck it, though. Neil cares. And since when has Neil trusted Andrew to care about himself enough? Never.

Is Neil _supposed_ to tell Andrew he has a nice butt?

Neil works the conditioner through Andrew’s hair. Is that a thing that’s supposed to happen? Andrew wants Neil to think he’s sexy, right? So should Neil say it? Or not? Or? How is he even supposed to ask? He can’t ask without saying it directly.

Well, maybe he shouldn’t say it here, now. Maybe he waits until later. Until Andrew is in a place that’s more comfortable for him.

Problem solved, Neil presses Andrew’s head forward, rinses the conditioner out of his hair. He grabs the sponge, the soap, keeps his elbow on Andrew’s back. Soaps up Andrew’s back. Tugs on Andrew’s arm to turn him around.

Andrew looks at Neil.

Andrew loves him.

Neil ducks in to kiss his cheek. “I love you, too.”

Andrew says nothing, just lets Neil wash him.

Neil squeezes out the sponge, hangs it up, tangles his fingers in Andrew’s hair and pulls him in for a kiss.

Andrew runs his hand up Neil’s ribs, kisses him back, and then pulls Neil around until they’ve switched places.

Neil tips his head back and closes his eyes. Focuses on Andrew’s fingers in his hair. Tilts his head forward when pushed. Tilts his head back for conditioner—Andrew copies Neil’s elbow technique, and Neil decides that it’s nice. He trusts Andrew, back there, but—it’s still nice. Nice to know where Andrew is. It’s a small space. It’s not like Andrew could go far. Neil knows this, logically, but logic has never been his strong suit. He tilts his head forward to be rinsed. Feels Andrew’s lips on his shoulder blade, his shoulder, his spine, the back of his neck, his other shoulder, kisses just one of the ways Andrew says _I love you_ , and Neil reaches back and finds Andrew’s hand, squeezes it. _I love you, too_.

Andrew sponges him down, and then pushes him under the water to be rinsed.

They get out of the shower. Put on pajamas. Brush teeth.

Andrew presses Neil into the mattress. Kisses him. Settles in, weight comforting, and puts his head on Neil’s chest.

Neil’s eyes pop open. “Oh. By the way.”

“Hmm?”

“You have a nice butt.”

Silence.

Neil has fucked up, hasn’t he.

“Who told you to say that?”

Oh, that’s just _offensive_. “No one. I was looking at your butt in the shower and it looked nice.”

“Oh,” Andrew says.

Silence.

Neil’s eyes drift closed.

“Thank you,” Andrew says.

Neil brushes his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “Love you.”

Andrew fists a hand in Neil’s shirt for a second, and then relaxes. “Love you, too.”

The next morning finds Neil in a car with Allison. For neighborhood shopping. When Allison knows what she wants already.

Neil could spend the next few hours banging his head against a wall, and it would be more productive than this.

“Start driving,” Allison orders.

“Buckle your seatbelt.”

“Okay, _dad_.”

“Sorry I care about your life.”

“What happened to safely pulling out of the driveway?”

“Accidents can happen anywhere, at any time.”

“Paranoid,” Allison accuses. “Speaking of. How’s therapy going?”

“Why did _paranoia_ make you think about me going to therapy? Don’t answer that. It’s all right. It hasn’t yet knocked me out for a whole day, so that’s probably good.”

“Has she addressed your paranoia yet?”

“We haven’t gotten there. And she says she’s not sure how to deal with it yet.”

“Sounds like a bad therapist.”

“No, not like—where am I going?”

Allison rattles off directions. Neil points the car towards the highway.

“Anyway, the problem is more that—it’s not paranoid as in _paranoid_ , it’s paranoid as in someone tried to kill us literally two months ago and she’s researching ways to help me deal with that, given it possibly wasn’t a one-time deal.”

“Someone tried to _kill you_?”

“Did I not tell you?”

“No? Neil? What the _fuck_?”

“Anyway, someone tried to kill us—it’s fine now—but I mean, it’s very much a reminder that I’m technically a member of the mafia—”

“Should I bully you about this?”

“No?”

“Like, bully you into giving me details?”

Neil sighs. He gives her the fastest possible explanation, and moves on, ignoring her calls for more details. “ _Anyway_ , Erika says it’s kind of like wearing a seatbelt—no one calls you paranoid for wearing one, because the possibility of a car crash is always there, but you’re also not refusing to get into a car. I’m doing the paranoia equivalent of refusing to get into a car. Also, apparently I’ve got anxiety, but I’d assume that that’s related.”

“You’re like a chihuahua.”

“Thanks. I have no idea what that means.”

“Like the dog?”

“Yes, I know what a chihuahua is,” Neil says, injecting a note of scorn into his voice, “I just don’t understand the comparison you’re making.”

“Yappy. Terrified of everything, and still screaming at it.”

“Accurate enough.”

“Also, my sister texted me this morning.”

Neil reorients. “Oh?” That’s not really reorienting. “In a good way?”

“She said that she doesn’t want to ruin my Thanksgiving by texting me on it, but she wants to wish me a happy one, so she’s doing it a day early.”

“Seems like a weird holiday to reopen a line of communication on,” Neil says. That’s a neutral thing to comment on, right? Allison hasn’t spoken to her sister since before Neil met her. “Did you text her back?”

“Not yet.”

“Yet?” Neil prompts.

“I haven’t told Renee yet.”

Neil keeps his eyebrows down. He is _not_ surprised by this. He is _not_.

Okay, he can’t lie to himself, and he doesn’t see the point in lying to Allison. “You _haven’t_? That’s surprising.”

“ _No_ and I don’t know _why_ I just don’t want to—she’s already dealing with a lot, and—like, she’s leaving her job, and she’s important there, so it’s going to be a problem for them, and now she’s hung up on the concept of buying a house and I don’t really know why because it’s not like we _weren’t_ living in an apartment, but maybe that’s just an extension of the fact that we’re moving and that’s scary and she’s leaving her job and that’s scary, and, can I say, I feel kind of guilty for making her leave her job? Like, doing that thing we’re I’m like, _hey, wife, my job is moving, so you are too_ —”

“I think that’s only a thing when men do it,” Neil objects.

“Sure, but like, still, it’s stressing her out, and I don’t want to _bring_ this to her until I know what I’m doing, and I _don’t_ yet, so I’m telling _you_ and _you’re_ going to help me with it.”

Oh, no. Neil is not known for providing help. Or aid. Or much of anything, really. “I am?”

“Yes. How do I feel about this, Neil?”

“Is this a quiz?”

“Pop.”

“That’s what Natalie and Paige call me, I didn’t know you were getting into it too.”

“Shut the fuck up and tell me how I feel.”

“I don’t want to do that thing where I go _hey, woman, here’s how you feel_ —”

“Shut _uppppppppp._ ”

“Okay. Um. Confused? You feel confused. Hey, do you know I have a whole journal dedicated to writing down my feelings, because I’m bad with feelings? Al, look, you know I’ll help you whenever I can, but _feelings_ is so far from my area of expertise that understanding the concept of emotions is my permanent therapy homework.”

“Well, shit, I’d be better off talking to Andrew.”

“Probably, he’s really connected with that stuff.”

“Turn right.”

Neil turns right.

“Left,” Allison orders.

Neil turns left. Pulls to a stop at a red light. Starts up again.

“And make this right—this one—here—”

“At the Starbucks?”

“Yes. Now go to the drive-thru.”

“I feel used.”

“You are.”

“What’s your order?”

Allison rattles off her order, and Neil recites it and orders himself a coffee. Allison passes him a $10, which, actually, just barely covers her own order, terrifyingly enough. This is why Neil never goes to Starbucks.

“Keep the change,” Allison says as Neil tries to hand it to her.

Is that—normal? To spend $10 on a coffee and a croissant? It can’t possibly be. People have other things to spend that money on.

“Park,” Allison orders. “And turn off the car, we’re both in jackets, we can sit for a little while. Renee would murder me if she knew we were just—sitting in the car while it ran.”

“Are we not going to drive around?”

Allison snorts and waves that off. “Of course not.”

Neil can’t reorient himself fast enough. He feels like a GPS without a signal. “Wasn’t this your idea?”

“Yeah, but then I found the _perfect_ location and I just want to build a little fucking flat there with a big-ass backyard for Renee’s foster dogs. And maybe a cat? Although then there would be cat hair all over my clothes. I could probably blame the cat on Renee, though.”

“Do you want to just—go inside?” Neil asks, pointing at the building right behind them. The heated building. With tables, so there won’t be croissant crumbs in his car. 

Allison contemplates this for ten seconds.

“Yeah, may as well,” she decides, getting out of the car, leading the way inside.

They find a corner table and slide into it.

“So, like, yeah, it’s weird that she’d contact me _today_ about _Thanksgiving_. Like, why not any other day? And of _course_ she had to be a fucking passive aggressive bitch about it, she couldn’t be like _hey, I was just thinking about you, I hope you’re doing okay_ , she was like—hang on, let me read you the—the exact—here it is: _Hi Lissie_ —she hasn’t called me that since I was five fucking years old, and she’s pulling it out now, I call bullshit— _it’s Millie_ —I haven’t called her that since she stopped calling me Lissie— _I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving. I know I’m a day early, but I know that if I text you tomorrow, it’ll just ruin your day_.

“Like, I have to call bullshit on that, right?” Allison says, passing Neil the phone, so that he can see that she’s reciting the text correctly. She is. Neil passes it back to her.

“Maybe she means it,” Neil suggests. Is he allowed to suggest that? Maybe, maybe not.

Allison snorts. She’s going to hurt her throat if she keeps that up. “Absolutely not. Abso _lute_ ly not. The only part of it she means is the part where she’s fishing for me to say that she hasn’t ruined my day. So, I mean, what does she _want_? What is the _point_? Am I supposed to answer? Am I—like, what— _why_?”

Not Neil’s strong suit, not his strong suit, not his strong suit. Neil is a fish out of water. This makes no sense to him. Can he tell Allison to just block her sister’s number? Just—block it and be done with it? “I—do you want to interact?”

“I don’t _know_ , Neil, that’s the _problem_.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t know if—like—does she want something? I have no idea how she’s doing—I know my parents are doing fine, I have _no_ idea about her, though, and I just—why! What’s the point! What does she get out of this!”

“Who cares?” Neil asks.

“ _Me._ ”

“Well, stop caring.”

“I hate you.”

“No, just—like—step back. It doesn’t matter what she wants, and it doesn’t matter what she’s going to do. It matters what _you_ want, and what _you_ do, right?” Neil asks. “I mean—maybe you start talking again, and she turns out to be the world’s biggest asshole. Block her number, and go back to living your life the way you do. If you don’t change anything for her, then she can’t hurt you. If all you give her is 20 minutes of your time, then she can’t take anything else from you. Right?”

What did this sister even _do_ to Allison? Neil honestly doesn’t know. Allison doesn’t speak much about her family. All Neil knows is that when Allison insisted on exy over the family business, refused to follow her family’s rules, her parents disowned her and her sister stopped talking to her. What was Allison’s relationship with her sister before that? Was Allison sad to lose her? Neil has no idea.

“Easier said than done,” Allison mutters, ripping of a piece of her croissant.

“I know,” Neil agrees. “But maybe, with some therapy…”

Allison swats at him. “You and your fucking therapy. Get out of here with that shit.”

“You _went_ to therapy!”

“And I graduated. Because I’m a healthy person.”

“Maybe you need to go back,” Neil suggests.

“Maybe I fucking do. But that doesn’t answer any of my questions. What do I say?”

“Do you want to say anything, at all?”

Allison stares at him. “She’s my sister.”

“So what?”

Allison opens her mouth, and then she laughs. “I was going to say that, to some people, family means something, but then I remembered who we _are_. I don’t know. Just, like, if I have a chance to have a sister, why shouldn’t I take it?”

“That’s fair. But you already have Dan, don’t you?”

Allison nods slowly.

“So why do you need another one? I’m not saying don’t answer her,” Neil clarifies. “I’m saying that you shouldn’t answer her just because you feel like you should.”

“I’ve never done _anything_ because I felt like I should,” Allison grumbles.

“I know. Which is why it’s weird that I have to say it now.”

“You’re just trying to convince me to feel confident again.”

“Yup.”

Allison flips her phone around. Turns it on, turns it off again. “So, what, I’m just supposed to text her back?”

“I mean, I think the first thing you need to decide is whether or not you want to talk to her at all, isn’t it? I mean, if you don’t, you can just block her.”

Allison sips her coffee. Eats her croissant.

Neil waits.

“Maybe I _want_ to talk to her.”

“Okay.”

“Unless she wants me to talk to my parents, which, I don’t care if they come crawling to me sobbing and begging my forgiveness, they can get fucked.”

“That’s a good boundary to set,” Neil agrees. What is her sister’s _name_? What is _Millie_ short for? Allison has literally never talked about this woman. Neil knows nothing about her. She used to call Allison _Lissie_? That feels so remarkably, absolutely, utterly out of character with Allison as Neil knows her.

“What other boundaries should I set? Come on, boundary man, you may be shit at feelings but boundaries are your _specialty_.”

“They are?”

“You never ran over Andrew’s, or even really any of our’s. Maybe Aaron’s, but you knew _exactly_ what you were doing. So let’s go, boundary boy.”

“Why did I get demoted from _man_ to _boy_?”

Allison glares at Neil.

Okay. Jesus. “No in-person meetings, not for a little while at least,” Neil suggests.

“Why not?”

“Bad.”

“Fair enough,” Allison agrees. “What about in public?”

“Too easy to convince you to meet in private, or to bring your parents and make it awkward. Um. I don’t know. You have the right to end all conversations at will?”

“I’m not sending this list to her.”

“No, I don’t think that’s necessary. Only if she brings it up.”

“Okay. So what do I say? Should I ask Renee? I can probably ask Renee now.”

“I mean, she’s hanging out with Andrew, maybe we save that for later.”

“Oh. Right.” Allison flips her phone around. “I guess we can’t go home yet, then, either. What do you want to do?”

Neil shrugs. “Movie? Museum?”

“Nixing the movie, I’m gonna need to pee. Since I just drank coffee.”

“Museum? Wander around? Shopping?”

Allison taps the table. “Andrew and I have to take the girls clothes shopping.”

“You do?” Neil asks, suddenly desperately concerned about something he previously hadn’t been at all concerned about. “Do they—not have enough?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay.”

“But I guess if Riri and Andrew are hanging out we can’t exactly steal Andrew away.”

“The kids are in school.”

“That too. We’ll take them shopping over the weekend. Maybe Sunday.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, let’s go. Where are we going?”

Neil shrugs. “We didn’t decide anything.”

“Why didn’t we decide anything? We should draft a text. To Amelia.”

Amelia?

Oh! Her sister. Amelia. Amelia and Allison. That’s cute. “Should we? I thought you wanted to talk to Renee.”

“Well, I can decide what _tactic_ I want to take with Renee. But with _you_ I can draft a bunch of shitty passive aggressive texts and get it out of my system.”

“I’m being _used,_ ” Neil complains, but what is he going to do, say no?

They draft some texts.

Many of them are shitty and passive aggressive.

_Well, you ruined my day anyway, so thanks :)_

_I thought you were never going to talk to me again, hmm? What happened to blocking my number forever, hmm????_

_Thanks, and happy thanksgiving! I’m going to block your number now (:_

There’s a very long one that Allison won’t let Neil read that seems to by and large be a rehashing of every grievance Allison has ever had—she mutters something at one point about a fist fight when she was four—but by and large they stay short, until Allison sighs, finishes her coffee, and gets up. “Let’s go to Columbia.”

They go to Columbia.

They don’t do much—wander, mostly. They’re just killing time.

“Do you think Renee and Andrew are done hanging out now?” Allison asks.

“What, you tired of me?”

“No, I miss Renee.”

“That’s fair,” Neil agrees. “I miss Andrew.”

“That’s because you’re a sap.”

“You said it first!”

“But Renee is very— _miss-able_. Andrew is an asshole.”

“Andrew isn’t an asshole. He’s just—he just doesn’t place much stock in politeness.”

Allison laughs. “That’s fair. Are we going home now?”

“Yeah,” Neil agrees.

They go back to the car.

“So how long is it appropriate to wait before I text Amelia back?”

One day, someone will ask Neil a question he can answer. God, he wants to go back to exy. “Maybe that’s a question for Renee,” he tries.

“Yeah, I guess,” Allison agrees, much to Neil’s relief. “She’s better at etiquette and shit than you are.”

“Renee is better at a lot of things than I am.”

“That’s also true.”

“Wanna stop at the chocolate shop?” Neil asks as they approach it.

“Oh, _hell_ yes.”

They buy desserts.

And then they go home.

The kids are walking through the door when Neil and Allison pull into the driveway, and they loiter on the porch until Neil and Allison join them.

“Oooooh, what’d you get?” Paige asks, glancing at their bag.

“Dessert,” Allison says. “Chocolate. The good shit.”

“For everyone,” Neil clarifies, “not just us.”

Natalie whoops as Neil locks the door behind them.

“Allllllllllieeeeeeeeee,” Renee calls from the living room.

“Riiiiiiiiiriiiiiiiiiiii,” Allison calls back, as their little group migrates to the living room, where they find Renee and Andrew standing up, the end screen of a meditation video on the TV.

“I called Martina and had her buy that plot of land,” Renee says. “We’re—”

Allison cuts her off with a shriek, throwing herself bodily at Renee, who catches her without any apparent struggle.

“That’s one problem solved,” Andrew says with satisfaction.

“I have another,” Allison announces, unwrapping her legs from around Renee’s waist and dropping to the floor. “My sister texted me.”

Renee opens her mouth, and says nothing.

"On the other hand, chocolates," Allison says, pointing at the bag she's dropped on the couch.

Renee nods.

"Maybe we start by finding an architect," Allison suggests.

"That works," Renee says. "That's actionable. Sort of. Can't imagine how many will be working today, though."

"We can look at reviews," Allison says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

Renee wraps an arm around Allison's waist. "Okay."

They make their way towards the kitchen, like they're in a three-legged race.

"Can we help?" Paige is asking, trailing Allison and Renee.

"Sure, kid," Allison agrees.

Neil glances at Andrew.

Andrew glances at Neil.

They shrug at each other. Things'll work out. They usually do.

Neil wraps an arm around Andrew's shoulders. Andrew wraps an arm around Neil's waist. They three-legged-race it into the kitchen to join the hunt for an architect.


	49. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving... part 1??? maybe!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can't believe i hit 500k last week and didn't notice until i was making dinner like... hmmm.. approaching chapter 50... probs gonna hit 500k soon... unless... uNLESS... anyway. happy belated 500k

Neil picks Dan and Matt up at the airport at 11:30 at night, and by the time he hits the highway they’re both already asleep.

Waking them up when they get home isn't hard, fortunately. They walk through the door, Dan and Matt half-carrying each other, to find Andrew on his way down the stairs.

“Problem,” Andrew says, quietly, trying not to wake anyone up, “we did _not_ think to make Natalie and Paige sleep in the same room, we’ll have to wake them up and—”

“We can sleep in the living room,” Matt suggests. “Right now, I could sleep in the fucking hallway.”

“We’re going to be up early to cook,” Andrew says, “so I don’t want—”

The basement door opens, shutting Andrew up.

The four of them wait.

Renee and Allison, both in pajamas, Allison looking much less happy about it than Renee, join them in the hallway. “I realized you’d probably be sleeping in the basement,” Renee says, smiling. “Thought we’d help with your bags.”

“We can probably move the kids,” Andrew says.

“We’re not moving the kids,” Dan says, waving him off.

“Absolutely not,” Matt agrees.

Allison snickers. “Everyone here has such a goddamn soft spot for kids.”

“I just don’t want to bother them,” Dan says. “Can’t I spoil my nieces a little bit?”

“Yeah, yeah, gone soft in your old age,” Allison says, heading for the stairs. “I’ll get sheets.”

“I just—they shouldn’t get kicked out of their room just because their parents’ friends are coming over,” Dan says, ignoring the fact that Allison is already upstairs. “That feels mean.”

“We’ll talk to them tomorrow, see if we can get you your own room,” Neil says.

“We can also get a hotel room,” Matt says. “If Al snores too loudly.”

“Get some ear plugs,” Allison suggests, carrying sheets and pillows down.

“I blew up the air mattress already,” Renee says, picking up a bag.

“Oh, _that’s_ what you were doing?” Andrew asks. “I thought I heard something weird.”

“What’d you think we were doing?” Renee asks.

Andrew shrugs as they head for the stairs. “I had no idea and didn’t want to guess.”

Sure enough, the air mattress is blown up, and Allison starts putting sheets on it.

“You guys are so nice,” Matt says, looking on the verge of tears.

“The faster you go to sleep, the faster we go to sleep,” Allison says.

“Sorry for keeping you up,” Dan says, tossing a blanket over the sheets.

“I _can’t_ sleep,” Allison says. “Too quiet. I need more _noise_.”

“You just insisted that we get that chunk of land in the middle of nowhere,” Renee says indignantly.

“I’ll get _used_ to it,” Allison insists, “I’m just not used to it _yet_. Anyway, you two had better snore. I need that.”

“We’ll do our best,” Matt promises as Dan heads for the bathroom. “I’m known for being a good snorer.”

“We’re gonna go upstairs now,” Andrew says, “unless there’s anything else you need?”

Andrew and Neil get three hand waves.

“Good night,” Matt says. “We’ll fend off the wilderness ourselves.”

“If there’s any wilderness in here, let us know,” Neil says. “That’s a problem.”

“Allison’s hair in the morning,” Matt says.

“I’ve got a machete,” Renee says, patting his arm, “so we’re prepared.”

Allison flicks her nails at them. “You guys are all fucking _rude_.”

Matt flicks his own, much shorter, nails at her. “Learned it from the worst.”

“Andrew?”

“No, I’m the _best_ at being rude,” Andrew says. Without a word, he turns and heads for the stairs.

Matt howls with laughter. “Exhibit A.”

Dan walks out of the bathroom in pajamas, already rolling her eyes.

“Good night,” Neil says, making his escape.

He finds Andrew waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

“So do you think Matt woke the kids up?” Andrew asks quietly as they head up to their room.

“We’re assuming they’re already asleep, of course.”

“It’s late.”

“They’re teenagers.”

They pause in the hallway, listening, for three seconds, before it occurs to Neil—and, apparently, to Andrew—that that’s a little creepy, and they head into their bedroom.

Five minutes later, they make it into bed, and Andrew curls up around Neil.

“Excited?” Neil asks. He should just shut up. He’s tired. He wants to go to bed. It is _way_ past their bedtime.

“For?”

“Hosting Thanksgiving for our family?”

“When you put it like that, we sound so—so—”

Neil waits.

Maybe Andrew fell asleep mid-sentence.

Neil closes his eyes.

“ _Boring_.”

Neil snickers. “We are. We’re old and boring. Go to sleep.”

“Hey. Hey. Come here,” Andrew says, tugging at his shoulder. “Come here.”

“I’m tired.”

“Yeah. I know. Come here.”

Neil gives up. Is he supposed to ignore his husband? No. He rolls over to face Andrew, and barely makes it to the other side before Andrew takes his face in both hands and kisses him, soft, gentle, thorough, clearly only encouraged by Neil’s surprised gasp, pulling Neil in until his whole brain has vanished.

When Neil wakes up, he doesn’t remember falling asleep.

His face is buried in Andrew’s neck, and he doesn’t remember putting it there, either.

Andrew is still asleep; Neil is fine with this. Andrew is breathing in his ear, a comforting rhythm Neil doesn’t ever want to live without, and Andrew’s arm is thrown across Neil’s waist, and Neil’s arm is asleep because Andrew is lying on it, and half Neil’s family is in their basement still asleep, and Neil and Andrew’s kids are still asleep, and the other half of their family is coming over for lunch, and it’s warm under the blankets thanks to their shared body heat, and all of this is adding up to something that Neil very much wants to journal about. He doesn’t know what it is. He feels loved. He feels over-full of love.

Andrew makes a noise as he wakes up, shifting against Neil, and that, too, is something—Neil not reaching for a gun when he wakes up, Andrew not attacking on instinct, there’s something there and Neil doesn’t know what except that he likes it, he likes it very much, and would stand in front of a moving train to keep it.

Instead, Neil kisses wherever he can reach, and wraps his functioning arm around Andrew a little bit tighter. He presses his lips to Andrew’s neck and feels Andrew’s heartbeat jump through his skin. Neil smiles.

“Rude,” Andrew says, voice deep, gravelly.

Oh, Neil _likes_ that. He nips at Andrew’s neck.

“What time is it?” Andrew asks, rolling away and off of Neil’s arm. “We have to get up, that turkey’s gonna take time to cook.”

“But what if I want to have sex?” Neil whines.

“Why aren’t you moving your arm?”

“It’s asleep. You’re changing the subject.”

“I am. You can’t do this to me right now. Try me again tonight.”

“ _I_ can’t do this to _you_? That’s not fair, you’re the one who woke up with that _voice_. Looking like _that_. Smelling like _that_.”

“Like what, morning breath?”

“I wasn’t _by_ your mouth,” Neil objects. “You just smell nice.”

“Thanks, but get up, I can’t cook everything by myself,” Andrew says, poking Neil’s static arm.

Neil hisses. “You’re the _worst_ and I _hate_ you.”

Andrew ghosts his fingers over Neil’s forehead, an apology. “I’m sorry. Get up, I can’t cook everything by myself.”

Neil gets up. He can be stoic through the pain. He’s been shot before, he can handle this. “I can see the headlines now. _World Famous Exy Player Tries to Seduce Husband, Gets Tortured Instead._ ”

“You’ve actually _been_ tortured, and you’re going to try to pull this now?”

“I _have_ been tortured and I _am_ pulling this.”

“Who’s writing these headlines? Where are the news outlets getting this story?”

“An unnamed source.”

“You?”

“Maybe me,” Neil agrees, passing Andrew his toothbrush.

They make it downstairs in good time, make short work of some cereal, and then look at the fridge.

There’s a lot of food to be cooked.

Where’s Lorna when they need her?

“So how are we doing this?” Neil asks, rolling up his sleeves.

“You peel and cut potatoes, I’ll deal with the turkey?”

“Sounds good to me,” Neil agrees.

Andrew puts in his headphones and starts chopping whatever he plans on putting in the turkey. Neil sets up at the table with a cutting board, a bowl, and a good few pounds of potatoes.

Natalie and Paige make an appearance a couple minutes in, Paige yawning and rubbing her eyes.

“How do you two get up at the same time?” Neil asks. “If you’re not sleeping in the same room? Do you have an alarm?”

“We’re twins,” Paige mumbles, pulling out a box of cereal. “We’re basically the same person.”

“We have a twin sense,” Natalie agrees, getting the milk. “It’s where a twin senses their twin.”

“Dad gets it,” Paige says, grabbing bowls as Natalie grabs spoons.

“I do?” Andrew asks, pausing his music.

“You must have twin sense,” Natalie says.

“What’s Aaron doing right now?” Paige asks.

“Oh, you call that twin sense?” Andrew asks. “He’s trying to feed Freddie.”

“What do _you_ call it?” Paige asks.

“Spy cam.”

Neil catches Andrew’s eye. _What the fuck_?

Andrew twitches. _If they’re bullshitting, I can too_.

Fair enough.

“That makes it sound more like something external that you have access to,” Paige says, “rather than an inner sense.”

“Well, we were separated for so long,” Andrew explains, “that our interior sense never fully developed.”

Paige stops and stares at him, looking honestly upset. “Oh, that’s sad.”

“It’s okay. We’ve developed a system of bugging each other’s houses to simulate twin sense.”

Natalie waves her spoon in understanding. “Like an accessibility device.”

“ _Exactly_ like an accessibility device,” Andrew confirms.

“What’s an accessibility device?” Renee asks, appearing in the kitchen doorway.

“The cameras I’ve put in Aaron’s house to simulate twin sense,” Andrew explains.

“Ah,” Renee says wisely. “Makes sense. Does he have cameras in here?”

“No, he just hacks into Ichirou’s.”

Allison wanders into the kitchen, looking vastly less put together than Renee, in an odd turn of events.

“That’s a joke, right?” Paige asks. “Like, the whole thing?”

“Neil and I check for bugs every night,” Andrew says.

“Oh. Cool.”

Renee says nothing.

“Why didn’t we ever do that in college?” Allison wonders out loud, parking herself next to Renee to steal a strawberry. “Like, what was _wrong_ with us?”

“Stupid,” Andrew suggests.

“Did it just—not occur to us that people could be spying on us?”

“Probably not,” Neil says. “I’ll be honest, I was way more worried about being outright murdered than I was about being spied on.”

“Which is weird, given that one time your dad put pig’s blood in your locker.”

Neil nods. “But even then, it was in the locker room, where they just had to bribe a couple security guards, not a dorm where all the athletes knew each other. And where we were living four to a room.”

“Pig’s blood?” Paige asks, voice a little higher than usual.

“Ruined my whole uniform,” Neil says.

“Are you _still_ pissed about that?” Andrew asks, turning to glance at him.

“A little.”

“He fucking dove into it headfirst,” Andrew says. “His first reaction wasn’t _oh, no, I should get out of this blood spray,_ it was, _oh, no, I need to save my blood-drenched uniform,_ and I should have immediately chosen that moment to fall out of love with him.”

Neil grins. “He had to haul me bodily out of the locker.”

“It was _highly_ unsanitary.”

“Anyway,” Allison says, “have you ever found a bug? In the house?”

Neil shakes his head. “Which is good, because I’d have no idea what to do if we did. I mean, first of all, is it from Ichirou or the FBI? I don’t know. If it’s from the FBI, I could probably tell Ichirou and he’d figure something out—he doesn’t want them listening to me anymore than we do. Of course, that would mean contacting the Moriyamas, which we’d really rather not do. If it’s from the Moriyamas, on the other hand, we can’t exactly contact the FBI.”

“Are the Moriyamas really that much more powerful than the FBI?” Natalie asks.

“Yes,” Neil says.

“See, but—to be fair,” Renee says slowly, “I don’t know that that’s the case.”

“It is,” Neil says shortly. “Ichirou suggested shutting down the whole investigation into Nathan. The whole thing. Didn’t matter that I’d already told the FBI everything. He could’ve made it all disappear, if I was going to make trouble.”

“But you _could_ have made trouble,” Renee says, hands flat on the table. “There would have been something to shut down—”

“Does anyone have their phones on?” Neil interrupts.

Renee pauses.

They all turn their phones off.

“If Ichirou is more powerful than the FBI, there _isn’t_ anything to shut down,” Renee continues. “There’s nothing you could say or do that would bother him, because none of it would ever matter. You could get on TV and say outright that Ichirou Moriyama is the head of the yakuza in the United States and it would make no difference. There _is_ something with more power than Ichirou, because if there wasn’t, none of this would matter.”

“Sure,” Neil agrees, shrugging. “But on my path to alerting whatever higher power there might be, we would all die, and so would every single person who could do anything about anything.”

“But that’s _because_ Ichirou doesn’t have endless power.”

“Which wouldn’t bring any of us back to life,” Neil says. “Even if he doesn’t have absolute power, he’s got enough.”

Renee puts her hands up. “That’s true.”

“So the reason why you’ve never found a bug in your house is probably because they’re just listening to your phones, right?” Allison says.

Natalie goes white. “What?”

“Hey, we can—here. Here. Turn your phones back on,” Renee says. “There are encrypted apps, so that you can text, and search, and make calls—here, Lockdown will stop apps from tracking you—”

Neil grabs Andrew’s phone, turns it on, and passes his and Andrew’s phones to Allison. “Do what Renee says.”

“What, you can’t?”

“I’ll do it, if you cut the potatoes.”

“Oh. Fuck that. I’ll mess with your phones, I guess.”

Andrew points his knife at Allison. “If I find a single thing altered in a way that is not Renee-approved, I will gut you like a fish.”

“Like tilapia, right? I like tilapia.”

“Like salmon.”

“I fucking hate salmon, bitch.”

“Don’t fuck up my phone.”

Neil chops potatoes.

Renee walks Allison and the kids through setting up their phones.

And then the four of them get to work, dealing with vegetables, finding tables and chairs, making the space work. Andrew sticks the turkey in the oven. Neil watches the potatoes boil. Paige turns on some music, and they get an impromptu dance party going—Allison, five minutes in, pulls Neil bodily away from the potato mashing and aims him at Andrew, taking over the stirring for a few minutes so Andrew can waltz Neil around the kitchen. It doesn’t work—the song is not a waltz—but they do their best, and then they grab Natalie and spin her around, and twirl Paige, and there’s just—Andrew kisses Neil’s cheek, and maybe emotions _aren’t_ complicated. There’s anger and there’s love, and maybe that’s just all there is. Neil can stop journaling. He’s figured it out.

Matt and Dan join them, Matt jumping directly up to high energy as soon as he realizes there’s a dance party going on, joining in, taking Renee’s hand and spinning around with her, Renee laughing. Neil kisses Andrew’s hand and then swaps with Allison—she deserves a chance to dance, too.

They make mashed potatoes. And stuffing. And applesauce. Andrew takes the turkey out of the oven as the doorbell rings—Matt answers it, admitting Kevin and Thea, bearing John and a covered plate that Neil assumes is dessert, and then Matt stands there, door wide open, for three minutes, until Wymack, Bee, and Abby come into view, bearing an apple pie, green bean casserole, and bread.

“Aaron’s right behind us,” Bee tells Matt, “keep holding the door—”

“Oh, they’ll have Freddie, I’ll go help them,” Dan says, sliding her shoes on.

“How are you all doing up North?” Abby asks.

“All right,” Matt says, peaking out the door. Apparently satisfied with whatever he sees, he closes the door slightly. “Honestly going to be a little depressed when Renee and Al move, but what are you going to do,” he says, slowly, sliding his eyes over to Wymack.

Wymack ignores them all, setting food down on the counter and reaching a finger towards the mashed potatoes.

Abby smacks him. “No.”

Wymack takes his finger back, looking injured. “You’re not even cooking!”

“No one wants to eat food your fingers have been in,” Abby says.

Neil turns off the flame and sticks the lid on it. “I think it’s done, anyway.”

“Just gonna leave it there?” Kevin asks.

“I don’t want it to get cold.” Is there something else Neil is supposed to do with it? The turkey won’t be out for another half hour, the stuffing is just coming to a boil now, Abby is sticking her casserole in the warming drawer, Renee is microwaving bags of corn—when it’s all done he’ll put it in a bowl, but it doesn’t make sense to do that yet.

“That’s a good idea,” Abby says. “Leave him be,” she tells Kevin.

“Okay, mom,” Kevin says.

Abby pats his shoulder. “Thanks, son.”

Neil grins at Kevin. Kevin flips him off. Dan walks through the door holding Freddie and a toy, Katelyn following with cookies and a bag of oranges.

“Who’s got a mom?” Neil sings quietly, trying not to catch Abby’s attention as she grabs Freddie from Dan. He watches Andrew zero in on the oranges, and then look at Neil— _no_ , Neil tells him, _I didn’t tell Aaron you like oranges._

“Fuck off, we can’t _all_ be family-less.”

“Imagine having a mom,” Neil says.

“She’s not even my mom.”

“Imagine having your mom come visit at Thanksgiving.”

“My mom’s dead, jackass.”

“You’ve got two in this very house.”

“Bee isn’t my mom.”

“Oh, but Abby is?”

“Fuck off, she’s just as much your mom as she is mine.”

“I’d argue otherwise, since she’s not dating my dad.”

“Well, no, that would be fucked up, especially since you don’t even know where he’s buried.”

“That’s not what I—”

John slams into Neil’s legs, neatly interrupting him, and Neil swings him into the air, partially as the only defense mechanism he’s got and partially as the only reaction he’s got.

“Hello,” Neil says. “You are a menace.”

“Mense,” John says.

“That’s your name,” Neil agrees.

“Don’t tell him that, he might believe you,” Kevin says, only partially sounding like he’s joking.

“Nah, he’s smart. You’re smart, right?”

“Nah,” John says.

Neil maintains a straight face. “That’s unfortunate.”

John nods, using his whole body to make that happen.

“Your name is John,” Neil says. What if he’s managed to make John think his name is _menace_?

John nods again. And then he looks around, spots Freddie, and decides that the best way to get down is just to lean forward. Kevin jumps, reaching out to grab him, and between Kevin and Neil, they manage to safely lower John to the ground, where he goes sprinting after Freddie, who immediately turns and runs away.

“Your child nearly knocked me out of next exy season,” Neil says.

“Oh, calm down, he didn’t hit you _that_ hard.”

“He nearly took me out at the kneecaps.”

“Don’t fucking let him,” Allison says, “I’m not coming all the way down here to play on your team next year just for you to get knocked out of the running.”

“I’m doing my best,” Neil promises.

“Don’t get hit by a car,” Dan says.

“Don’t get kidnapped,” Wymack adds.

“Don’t get tortured,” Bee says.

“Don’t get tortured, but by the Ravens,” Allison suggests.

“Don’t get—”

“I get it,” Neil says, “I get it, I understand. Katelyn, how’s your family?”

“They’re doing great,” Katelyn says. “At the beach right now, actually.”

“You’d think it would be too cold,” Aaron says. “But apparently they just want to walk around.”

“No one’s there,” Katelyn says, shrugging. “If they’re happy with it, it’s a good time to go. They wanted to bring Freddie, actually, but I figured this is one of the few chances he gets to hang out with John—”

“John likes Freddie,” Thea agrees.

Katelyn nods. “And Freddie likes John, but how often do they get to spend time together? Barely. And I get it—my family doesn’t get to see much of Freddie, either—but I actually think they see him more often than he sees John, or really any playmates right now. He just goes from parents to babysitter to me, and I can’t ask my parents to watch him _and_ his friends, and I don’t want to pay a babysitter to watch a bunch of kids, and we just aren’t home often enough, and when we _are_ we’re tired—it’s just a lot.”

“We figured it was a better idea to have a kid early,” Aaron says, “you know, we’re both exhausted just out of residency, _and_ we’ve got a kid, we may as well do it all at once and then things will get easier as time goes on—it made sense at the time.”

“To be fair,” Renee says, “at the time, you were both in residency.”

“And fucking stupid,” Aaron agrees.

“I’d say sleep-deprived, but stupid works too,” Katelyn says, grinning. “But anyway, all that’s happened is that we’re two doctors with a kid, and it’s harder to raise him than we expected.”

Thea and Kevin are nodding along.

“It’s hard for us, and we just need to find someone to watch him until he can go to school,” Thea says. “I can’t imagine trying to find someone to take care of him all the time.”

Neil catches Renee exchanging a look with Allison, but they stay quiet, so he doesn’t ask.

“We could probably help out,” Abby offers. “If we’ve got John anyway, we may as well take Freddie too, they can entertain each other.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you—I’m not looking for babysitters,” Katelyn says, flushing.

“No, but we found you,” Abby says. “I’m not offering to take him all the time, but there’s definitely times when it wouldn’t be any trouble at all—during exy season it would be harder, but in the summer, when we usually take Freddie anyway, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Oh—I—thank you,” Katelyn says, visibly flustered, “but I really—”

“We’ll think about it,” Aaron says. “Thank you.”

“You’ve got a good few months,” Abby warns. “We’re still in the thick of exy season. But we’ve still got some weekends. And during the school day, when they’re not practicing, I’ve got time. So let me know, okay?”

“Will do,” Aaron agrees.

“I—thank you,” Katelyn says, a little more sincerely. “It would be—it would be a big help.”

“Of course,” Abby says, gently.

“How’s house hunting going?” Katelyn asks, turning to Renee.

“We’ve actually purchased this plot of land,” Renee says. “It’s gorgeous—backs up to a stream—and it was originally cleared and intended to be a cul-de-sac, so it’s huge.”

“Oh, wow, really?” Katelyn says, grinning, hands clasped. “That’s incredible, you moved so fast!”

“It’s Allie’s fault,” Renee says. Allison takes a bow. “She pushed _hard_ for that land. Tomorrow we’re going to start—”

There’s a _pop_ , and they all turn towards the oven.

“Turkey’s done,” Andrew says. “The thing popped.”

“Oh, nice,” Matt says. “Here, we’ll get stuff in bowls—”

Everyone jumps into action. Andrew gets the turkey from the oven, and then passes Neil a carving knife. Natalie scoops the mashed potatoes into a serving dish. Paige sticks all the corn in a bowl.

They get the food to the table, get everyone seated, and then the chaos begins.

Food makes its way around the table in a haphazard fashion. People reach across each other and across plates. Allison flicks a chunk of mashed potato at Aaron, who clicks it right back, and a food fight is narrowly averted by Wymack reaching between both of them for the applesauce, giving them a glare that says that if the potato lands on his arm, there’ll be hell to pay. Natalie and Thea have formed a coalition, getting food for each other and John; in revenge, Paige forms her own coalition with Renee.

It would go so much faster if they’d just pass dishes in a circle.

Neil knows this. They all know this. He can’t imagine that this is how dinner works with Thea’s or Katelyn’s families.

But it would be so much less _fun_.

Eventually, though, they get it all sorted out, and there’s food on everyone’s plates.

“Who wants to say grace?” Wymack asks, to general laughter.

“Eat your food, old man,” Andrew says.

“Fuck off,” Wymack says.

They eat, and things are silent for a few minutes—no one’s pausing to talk.

As they finish their first servings, though, things slow down.

“You were talking about your new house?” Aaron asks Renee.

“Oh!” Renee wipes her mouth. “Yeah, it’s sort of—it’s between Columbia and the stadium. Tomorrow we’re going to start searching for architects, and construction companies—a rush job. But probably doable, as long as we’re not getting too creative. Which, really, the biggest issue is that I’d want it to be as environmentally friendly as possible—or, maybe that’s the second-biggest issue, actually, because—we were thinking—”

They wait, collectively, in silence.

“Okay,” Renee says, laying her hands flat on the table. “Here’s what we were thinking. One big house, for all of us.”

If anyone other than Renee had suggested it, Neil would have laughed and moved on, but—

But it’s Renee.

“It’ll make visitation easier,” Wymack says.

“A whole house full of my graduates?” Bee asks. “Not a bad idea.”

“I mean, think about it,” Renee says, voice unbearably sincere. “I can’t speak for Dan or Matt, but I can say that I’d be willing to watch John—and, albeit to a lesser extent, Natalie and Paige—during exy season, when you’re all busy. Aaron, Katelyn, when Freddie starts going to school, there’ll be people at home so you won’t have to worry about getting him off the bus. We’ll probably need two or three fridges and stoves—especially feeding five pro exy players—but we can just have a big kitchen—”

“How do we design a house with that many bedrooms? That many _spaces_?” Katelyn asks. Aaron glances at her, and she shrugs. “We were just talking about how hard it is to find ways of taking care of Freddie. This would help—spread out that burden a little more. It’s a possible solution.”

“You—you want this?” Aaron asks, voice a little higher than normal.

“I’m considering it,” Katelyn says slowly.

“You are?” Aaron and Andrew ask her simultaneously.

“I think I am,” she decides.

“Wait, are we taking this seriously?” Kevin asks. “I mean, right off the bat? Just—no questions asked? I don’t—I mean, there’s a _variety_ of problems with this idea. If anyone has another baby, or a first baby, or a foster baby, we’ll all have to live with that decision, and we’d still probably have to design the house around families—I’m not expecting anyone else to get up if John gets up at two in the morning, but everyone else will still _hear_ him if we’re in the same house. And—I mean, jesus, what Katelyn said, how many _bedrooms_ is that? And—”

“Well, wait, because location and size would be the biggest issue,” Renee says, “and we’ve got that. We’d just need a good architect.” She’s really serious about this. She’s really—she’s _serious_ about this.

Neil doesn’t _want_ to leave his house. He likes his peace and quiet, likes his neighborhood. He flicks a look at Andrew, and Andrew leans forward.

“Hang on,” Andrew says, and Renee pauses. Looks at him. “We haven’t discussed this, at all.”

“Well, we’re discussing it now,” Renee says sensibly. “But we’ve got the space, and the place, and a few days until we have to find an architect—we’re _really_ going to have to rush this—actually, one big house might be an issue, because we _do_ need to move in there in a few months.”

“I’d like to point out that it’ll be located farther away from North Carolina than Thea would probably like,” Kevin says. “So we might be out.”

“We could be a longer distance from North Carolina,” Thea contradicts him. “I’ve got two more years on my contract, and if I can’t sign to the Jaguars I might just retire.”

That ticks a box in Neil’s brain—he’s been waiting, waiting for Thea or for Riley to suggest retirement. Thea is—36, if Neil remembers correctly, which he’s fairly certain he does. In two years she’ll be 38. That’s—that’s about right. For retirement from a sport this violent, that’s about right. Honestly, that’s _old_. It gives Neil eight years, give or take. Assuming he doesn’t get injured. Assuming he doesn’t get murdered. Assuming a lot of things.

His stomach churns. Eight years is a yawning chasm of time, and no time at all—he won’t even be 40. If he intends to die of old age he won’t even be halfway through his life, and he’ll already be retired from the sport that’s given him purpose, _meaning_ , for over a _decade_ —and he wasted so much _time_ not playing it, so much time avoiding it, and—what the fuck is he going to do afterwards? He doesn’t _have_ other hobbies. He doesn’t have other skills, anything that could be a job, nothing, nothing at all.

He’s not supposed to think about dying of old age.

If he intends to live until he’s old, 38 won’t even be halfway through his life.

That’s better. Erika would be proud.

He’s missing things. People are talking.

“And actually,” Dan is saying, “you really _can’t_ speak for Matt and I on the babysitting thing, because we still live in New York, and god knows how long we’ll be there—”

“Oh, but if we’re building a whole house like this, you’d come down, right?” Renee asks. Allison _is_ rubbing off on her. That’s edging on _manipulative_.

“I—we’ve made no plans, we don’t—I’m not—now, hang on,” Dan sputters, “Wymack hasn’t—he isn’t—”

“But we’re building a whole house,” Renee repeats. It feels like Neil’s ribs are constricting. Breaking. He wants this conversation to stop, wants someone else to shoot this idea down. “So you’d come down, right? I mean, regardless of Wymack.”

“Yeah,” Wymack says. Abby and Bee raise their eyebrows at him. “You gonna break first, Dan?”

“This isn’t about you,” Renee tells Wymack, drawing a laugh out of Abby. “Dan, it’s about _you_ , and Matt, and us, your _friends_. Wymack can fuck off, right?”

Matt gasps. “Re _nee_!”

Renee holds her hands out. “I mean, this just doesn’t feel like a problem. You can both get jobs down here just fine. You don’t need Wymack—”

“Now, hang on,” Wymack says sharply, sitting up straight, “I don’t want someone snatching my assistant coach right out from under me.”

“That sounds like your problem,” Renee says. “Not ours. Not Dan and Matt’s. The problem we’re addressing right now is whether or not Dan and Matt are willing to drop all this in favor of moving in with us.”

“No, the _real_ problem would be keeping Aaron and Andrew five miles apart at all times,” Allison says, like they didn’t just have this conversation a couple days ago.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Andrew says casually, like they didn’t just have this conversation a couple days ago.

“Well, we’ll want to make sure you don’t see each other more often than once a month and on holidays,” Allison says, like they didn’t just have this conversation a couple days ago.

“That won’t be necessary,” Aaron says, less casually. He doesn’t know they just had this conversation a couple days ago.

“What, are you two _friends_ now?” Allison asks. Probes. Aaron’s here, now, she can ask it and get his side of the question, find out how much of this was Aaron _wanting_ to be here versus Aaron not caring enough to say no.

Neil can see Renee arguing with herself: Shut Allison up and never know the answer? Or listen and risk a fight?

“Yeah,” Andrew says, and, oh, that surprises Aaron, nearly as much as it surprises Neil.

“Yeah,” Aaron agrees. He hadn’t expected a yes. He’s hiding it well, but Neil knows better, and Neil glances at Katelyn to find her _glowing_. Blatantly refusing to look at anyone, but—

“Neil, you’re glowing like you’re eight months pregnant,” Allison says.

“Fuck off.” Can’t he have five minutes in which to bask in the light of being _right_? Can he _brag_ about this? Does he have the right to stick his finger in Andrew’s face and remind him that if Neil hadn’t badgered him and Aaron into therapy, Aaron would’ve left? Oh, no, no, he _cannot_ say that.

But, well, shit, he can _think_ it, and he can think about how Andrew has what he’d wanted. Has _everything_ he’d wanted. His brother, his friends, his work, his husband, everything.

Neil likes this.

He gets over it, though, because Renee is standing up—“Do you guys have paper?” she asks. “A notebook?”

“I’ll grab one,” Natalie volunteers, dodging out of the kitchen.

Neil’s chest constricts again. He’d forgotten, for a second, what they’re discussing. And, sure, it’s not like they’ll drag him out of his house at gunpoint, but—but he doesn’t want—

He takes a deep breath and finds that Natalie has returned. Renee has a notebook in front of her and she’s sketching a house. It’s a big one, with multiple wings—she has names stacked along the side of the paper, grouped by family, to help her keep track.

“One floor each?” Renee asks.

“Fuck, one _wing_ each,” Kevin says. “If I’m getting out of my current loud hellhole, I’m not moving into a second. Speaking of which, how soon can we move in here? I’d like it to be before I lose my sanity.”

Thea grins at him—Kevin is on board now, apparently.

“That’s—I’ll need to redraw,” Renee says dubiously.

“Sure, but we can’t do one floor each,” Dan reasons. “It’ll be uneven. There’s only five groups. Unless we get a sixth? Wymack, Abby, Bee—”

“No thanks,” the three of them say in unison.

“Riley?” Matt suggests absently.

He’s met with a wave of noncommittal noises—Riley and Maria don’t know about the mafia, so Neil doesn’t want them living with him. Or near him. Above him? Regardless. And they’re not Foxes.

“Maybe we could leave a floor open for Nicky,” Aaron suggests. “Although it better _not_ be in my fucking wing.”

“Seconded,” Andrew says.

“I thought you liked Nicky?” Paige asks.

“Well, sure,” Andrew agrees. “But not enough that I’d want him vacationing below me.”

“Well, not _below_ you,” Renee says. “Anyone with kids is on the bottom floor. At least that way no one has to hear babies running around. It’s the best way I can think of to minimize the noise.”

“We’re barely kids,” Natalie objects. “We’re not _babies_.”

“ _You’re_ not,” Allison says, “but that doesn’t mean Neil and Andrew will never end up fostering a baby, and I do _not_ want to hear it.”

“In that case, we need to vary the layout of the floors,” Aaron says. He’s really getting into it. He’s really getting _into_ it. Neil looks to Kevin, but Kevin is well and truly lost—although maybe this is just an adult, healthy version of the Nest, and maybe Kevin would like that. It took Kevin a long time to get used to being alone; maybe he’d prefer something more communal. “I don’t want Dan and Matt’s bedroom above ours. Or above Freddie’s.”

“Hey,” Dan says, glaring at him, “we’re not the _only_ ones here who can get a bit—”

“Our kids are right here,” Neil interrupts.

“But you _are_ the worst,” Aaron says to Dan, moving right along.

“We are _not_.”

“No, but I am _not_ thinking about my _brother_ , who, anyway, would be in a totally different _wing_ —”

“We’re going—away,” Paige says, standing. Natalie’s already halfway out of the room.

“Let us know if you have any input,” Renee calls after them.

“Call us when it’s dessert time,” Paige calls back.

“Will do,” Renee calls absently, looking back at her drawing. “Now, the _real_ problem is—well, I guess there’ll just be, sort of, thin hallways between the center space and the wings. So that we can get some light in.”

“So we’re just—moving on from the noise complaints?” Neil asks.

“Well—” And then Renee looks at him, focused, pinning him to the chair. “Why? What’s up?”

“I mean, maybe you don’t want me living with all of you,” Neil says casually, hope blooming in his chest with shocking speed. How did he forget this? “A few weeks ago I killed a guy and accidentally helped Ichirou find a leak connected to the Italian mafia, and he made me promise to stay in this general area and kill anyone who tries to encroach on his territory. Living with me could make you all targets.”

Wymack rolls his eyes. Dan rubs her temples.

Allison flicks her finger nails at him. “Oh, so you think it’s safe enough for your kids to live with you, but not eight consenting adults? I’m not buying it.”

“I’m actually not lying,” Neil protests.

“No, I believe you, because Andrew doesn’t look shocked by this at all,” Dan says. “I’m just not buying your _reasoning_. Like Al said, you wouldn’t keep your kids unless you were reasonably convinced you were safe—”

“Natalie and Paige wouldn’t let us kick them out,” Neil says. “Trust me, I tried.”

“They’re kids. You don’t need their permission,” Allison says, pointing at him. “Just take yourself out of the foster care system. It would probably be better for you to leave, anyway, if living with you is so dangerous.”

“Can’t do that,” Andrew says.

“Sure, sure, but you wouldn’t keep them if you thought it would _kill_ them,” Allison says. “Not _anymore_. You’ve assessed the risks and decided that two teenagers—out and about on their own—aren’t in enough danger to be a concern—”

“No, we can’t do that,” Andrew repeats. “They know too much. If we kick them out, they become liabilities, and they die. And we can’t take ourselves out of the foster system until we’ve adopted them—we don’t want them going to a different house in the meantime.”

Allison falls silent.

“Which isn’t to say that we _don’t_ want them. It’s just that, while living with us is dangerous, it’s still less risky than if we kicked them out. That said,” Andrew says, switching to Russian, looking at Neil, “they would _absolutely_ be safer in a house with 10 adults, several of whom have killed before and would do so again if necessary, and several of whom are pro exy players—or ex-pro exy players—fully capable of giving out a beating. _And_ everyone—with the exception of—the obvious,” Andrew says, avoiding names, “know what it’s like to live with the reality of the mafia. And even _then_ , the—fuck it. Thea was outright a Raven, she’s lived with the mafia even if she didn’t know. So only one person really has no idea what this means, and I’d think her husband told her, because you said you killed someone and she didn’t blink an eye.”

“You—you _want_ this?” Neil asks. His safety argument is not only going up in smoke, but being actively turned against him. How is that possible?

And, interestingly, Katelyn _didn’t_ blink an eye when Neil said he’d killed someone. What does she know? When did Aaron tell her about it?

Somehow, that extra thought feels overwhelming, too much to consider. Neil puts it away for further consideration. Later.

“Why aren’t you?” Andrew asks.

“Not to interrupt,” Matt says, “but probably, if you had this conversation in English—”

“Instead of talking about me behind my back,” Thea says.

“Then maybe we could actually help. You know, Neil, that thing we do sometimes.”

“Neil, if you tell us the issue, we can address it,” Renee says.

“If I—I mean, I’d like to point out that this affects Natalie and Paige, too, neither of whom are here to say if—”

“Neither of whom gave a shit,” Wymack says. “Their only problem was that they, like most of us, don’t want to know about your sex life. Spit it out, Neil.”

“You could’ve put that more nicely,” Abby says, giving Wymack a look. And then she turns that look on Neil. “Neil. Let’s go.”

Bee laughs. Takes Abby’s hand.

“Maybe I don’t want to be in on this,” Neil says.

He should’ve come up with something else. He’s getting nothing but stares.

“Why not?” Kevin asks. “This should be your wet dream—”

“Disgusting,” Aaron comments.

“All of us right there, all the time, people to check on Natalie and Paige when we’re on overnights, me available daily to help them with history, not one but _two_ doctors on hand. Literally surrounded by people you know full well aren’t hitmen. Backup. This is _it,_ Neil, it's _safety_. Also family,” he adds hurriedly, intercepting Dan’s glare. “But there’s honestly no downside.”

But—

His _house_. His and Andrew’s house, all their own, and the _silence._ No way to get that, if his house is literally connected to other people’s houses, if there are people living upstairs, even if he knows those people, even if they get the one with the empty upstairs. And, honestly, he doesn’t want that, doesn’t like the idea of that much space just sitting empty, available, easily co-opted by the mafia, but even that isn’t it, because it’s not like he cares about their attic at home, that’s not a concern, but—

He doesn’t want to _move._ Realistically, if everyone just moved into the surrounding houses, he wouldn’t care. If they built hallways or secret tunnels or whatever connecting their houses he wouldn’t care. But, jesus, hasn’t he moved enough in his life? And, fuck, did they put all that work into their house just to leave it? Haven’t they _lived_ here too long to leave? How is everyone _else_ so fine with moving? _Excited_ about it? Allison and Renee have been living in an apartment, which might make it easier, but it’s not like the apartment Neil had lived in, a temporary shell containing a bed and a kitchen. Didn’t he and Andrew move into their house intending to stay? Haven’t they lived there, loved there, spent enough time there?

Neil sighs. Andrew will be in the next house, too. Everything that made this house his home will be in the next one, and Neil can get used to that, can drag himself through it until he’s put Andrew in every room of the house, until it feels like a place where they could live together.

But that doesn’t fix his other issue. It doesn’t change the fact that Neil would never get silence again. “There’s no goddamn way in a million years to get any peace with people living above us. In our house, we don’t have to listen to other people’s TV, we have no idea when our neighbors are vacuuming, _anything_ , let _alone_ when they’re fucking. You find a way to get us that, you can talk me into it. And _don’t_ say you’ll give us the wing with no one above it. First off, what’s _in_ this wing? Is it just bedrooms? Do I still have to share a kitchen with all of you all the time? If _not being in my bedroom_ means _being surrounded by people_ , I don’t want it. Second, I’m not sure why the concept of multiple bedrooms above my head with no one to ever check them for signs of—of— _infiltration_ is supposed to be comforting to me, but it’s not.”

“ _You_ could check them,” Aaron points out. “And you have an attic, don’t you?”

“We don’t check our attic often enough,” Neil agrees.

They _never_ check their attic.

Why is this only just striking him as a problem _now_? He looks at Andrew. _Why have we never checked our attic!_

Andrew gives Neil a look that says: _Later, love_.

Renee taps her pencil against the paper. Neil puts his panic away—he can’t check the attic now. And he can’t imagine a microphone powerful enough to pick up conversations on the first floor all the way from the attic. Renee flips the page and starts again. “Okay. What if—instead of three wings, top and bottom, we just do—basically five houses, in a circle, with a communal space in the middle? A little kitchen, a big dining room, a TV?”

“What if it was _outdoor_ space?” Katelyn asks. “We could fence it in, and then Freddie and John could have a place to play where they physically can’t run into the road?”

“What about both?” Thea suggests. “Look—you have the houses. Running along the backs of the houses, you have a ring, like in an exy court—kitchen, dining room, TV room. And then inside the ring is outdoor space. The houses would be farther away from each other, which would keep things quieter.”

“Are we talking about five houses now?” Aaron asks. “This is going from a way to save space and money to our own _neighborhood_.”

“Well, yeah,” Allison says. “Don’t we deserve that?”

“I mean, no,” Aaron says. “Not to mention, how are we going to pay for this? Some of us have student loans we’re still paying off. Some of us went to med school.”

Allison stretches her arms out behind Renee and Dan’s shoulders, encompassing the whole room. “Sorry, is there not enough money in this room to pay for a few houses? _Especially_ once you homeowners in here sell yours, this should be a non-issue. You’re a doctor married to a neurosurgeon—”

“Twice the med school bills,” Aaron reminds her.

“Fuck, fine, I’ll pay. Or your brother will, since you’re friends now. Or Kevin will, to repay you for the years you spent putting up with his shit. Dan and Matt have nothing to pay for, they were always nice to you, so I’m not asking them for help with yours, but it’s not like there’s a goddamn shortage, here.”

“And you’re moving down here in, what, three months?” Aaron asks. “Four?”

“Four,” Allison confirms. “Probably.”

“And how the fuck are we going to get five houses built in _four months_?” Aaron asks.

“Where was all this skepticism back when I needed it?” Neil asks.

“Fuck off,” Aaron says automatically.

Neil tosses him a middle finger, automatically.

“Pay five or six different construction crews,” Allison says. “Rush an architect.”

“You are _so_ used to being rich,” Aaron says.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“And anyway, we don’t need to have all five built in four months,” Renee says. “ _Ours_ needs to be built in four months. Dan and Matt are going to be in New York through to the end of the school year, and could stay until the beginning of the next, really, given Dan wouldn’t be starting her new job until then.”

“Unless she ends up working for the Foxes,” Abby says.

“What, am I old?” Wymack asks.

“Yes,” Bee says.

“Unless she ends up working for the Foxes,” Renee says, pulling them back on track.

“Unless she ends up working for the Foxes,” Wymack sighs.

“Meanwhile,” Renee continues, undeterred, “I don’t imagine the rest of you are in any particular hurry to move, so if your houses take a little while, I don’t think any of you will mind.”

“Arguable,” Kevin says. “It’s either move soon or commit multiple murders.”

“Hang on,” Dan says, “What was that about me working for the Foxes?”

Everyone looks at Wymack.

Wymack shrugs. “I don’t want you getting picked up by someone else. Although, actually, if you work for a high school, you might end up training some of the kids who come to me, which would make _my_ job easier, but—if you’re coming down anyway, I may as well get you on the payroll. I can’t imagine Palmetto would fight me on that.”

“They’d probably be thrilled,” Bee says. “The Captain of the first exy team that ever made it anywhere, training under the Coach that made it happen, with the intent of taking over when he retires? They’d be goddamn _thrilled_ about that. And the team’s been growing. They’ll understand that you can’t form an individual connection with every player, the way you did with this group.” She waves a hand at the assembled Foxes. “Having some help can only make the team better.”

“A good opportunity for news, too,” Abby agrees, nodding along. “Get a nice article quoting Dan—something about giving back, something about wanting to get in early to give you a long time to work with David.”

“Something about coming home,” Dan adds, grinning. “So is this an official job offer?”

“A family matter, a job offered over lunch?” Matt asks.

“Don’t make this sound dirtier than it is,” Wymack says, aiming a glare in Matt’s direction. “Making this feel like nepotism.”

“It’s a long-standing arrangement,” Renee says, smiling, calm, content, maybe just a little bit smug.

“That sounds weird, too,” Aaron says.

“Shut up,” Dan says. “Don’t ruin my moment.”

“Don’t harsh her vibe,” Matt says.

“Don’t fuck it up,” Kevin says.

“All of you can eat me,” Dan says, waving her middle fingers in the air.

“Speaking of eating,” Thea says, “thoughts on dessert?”

“Better call the kids,” Matt says.

Dan leans back in her seat, twisting towards the doorway. “ _Natalie_!” she yells. “ _Paige_! Dessert!”

A door opens, closes, and then there’s silence.

And then the kids are there. “Dessert?” Paige asks.

“You two are fucking _silent_ ,” Kevin says.

“Yup,” Natalie agrees. “Dessert?”

“Gremlins.”

“So, anyway, what did we decide?” Natalie asks. “Are we gonna be in one big house?”

“I think we’re looking at five houses,” Renee says, tapping her drawing, “all in a circle.”

“Hmm. Connected?” Natalie asks, leaning over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

“Inner ring.”

“Of, like, an exy court?” Paige asks, perking up, peeking over Renee’s other shoulder. “Are we gonna live in a house with an exy court?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Kevin gasps, “you two are tiny geniuses—”

“We’re not tiny,” Natalie says. “But we are geniuses, yes.”

“No court,” Renee explains. “Just—communal space, if we want, and an enclosed way of getting to each other’s houses if we want. And the space inside that ring will be empty—we could probably plant fruit trees, we could grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers—there would still be space for John and Freddie to play—maybe we could have some chickens—”

“Chickens _and_ dogs?” Allison asks skeptically. “Do we want to risk the dogs eating the chickens?”

“Not all dogs eat chickens,” Renee says.

“Sure, I mean, I don’t think a collie would, or a herding dog,” Katelyn says, “but a hunting dog might. What are you looking at getting?”

“Renee wants to foster.”

“Oh, then maybe no chickens,” Katelyn says. “Not if you don’t know what kind of dog you’ll be getting. And you’d have to train every single dog not to eat the chickens, which could be hard.”

Renee makes a face.

“Anyway, the point I was trying to make,” Natalie says, leveling her gaze at Kevin, “is that in a few months, we _will_ know where you sleep and we _will_ be able to get there and we _can_ make your life hell.”

“I’ll be there, too,” Thea objects.

“Tell us which side of the bed is yours and we’ll avoid it,” Paige suggests.

“Deal,” Thea agrees.

Kevin holds his hands out. “Hey! What the fuck!”

Thea shrugs. “If you piss off two teenagers, that’s neither my fault nor my problem.”

“We got Thea!” Paige chants, Natalie joining in. “We got Thea! We got Thea!”

“Put food in your mouths, gremlins,” Kevin orders, “and stop talking.”

“Do you kiss your son with that mouth?” Natalie asks.

“I didn’t curse!”

“Thea, what did you make?” Neil asks, standing to set up desserts.

“Klepon.”

“What’s that?” Paige asks, staring at it as Neil uncovers the plate. “Is that coconut?”

“Yeah. It’s sweet, try it.”

Paige picks a ball out. Eats it.

Considers.

“So when we’re neighbors, you’re going to teach me how to make this, right?”

Thea laughs. “Yes. I will.”

“You never asked _me_ to teach you how to cook,” Andrew says, offended.

Paige shrugs. “I mean, we live together, you’ll do it eventually whether you like it or not.”

Andrew hums. “Good enough.”

Neil sets the desserts on the table, snatching an orange before anyone else can get at them, passes it to Andrew, and watches the chaos unfold. Andrew peels the orange.

Neil watches Aaron.

Aaron says nothing.

Does Aaron know?

Does it matter?

Does any of that matter? Is Aaron not allowed to know that Andrew likes oranges? What are the rules, now? Are they gone? Dissolved?

How much of this is Neil’s problem? He can’t exactly set up their relationship for them. Can’t make those decisions for them. Can’t decide how much a bag of oranges is supposed to mean to them.

“Who wants to call Nicky?” Renee asks.

“Do _what_?” Aaron asks.

“Call Nicky. Tell him the news. He’ll want to know.”

“He’s probably eating dinner,” Andrew protests. “On Thanksgiving. We don’t want to interrupt him.”

“I mean, correct me if I’m wrong,” Allison says sarcastically, “I don’t think they celebrate Thanksgiving in Germany.”

“Nicky’s American,” Aaron says, staunchly on Andrew’s side. “He might.”

“You don’t even _know_?” Natalie asks. “He’s your cousin, and you don’t even know?”

“He lives on a different continent,” Aaron protests. “A couple hundred years ago, he would be basically dead to us.”

“People could _travel_ back then,” Paige scoffs.

“But it took so _long_ ,” Aaron explains.

“Travel between the United States and America—” Kevin sputters as Aaron sticks a finger in his face.

“I’m not looking for historical accuracy, here, Kev, I’m bullshitting. Anyway, it took _so_ long that it probably _never_ happened, and since long-distance communication was impossible, he’d effectively have been dead to us.”

They’re interrupted by Natalie putting her phone in the middle of the table. It’s on speaker, and already ringing.

Nicky picks up almost immediately. “Natalie? My niece? Calling me? Unprompted? How can I help you? Can I lay down my life for you?”

“There’s some news,” Natalie says. “Also, you’re on speaker.”

“News—speaker? Who’s there?”

“Everyone,” Wymack says. “Everyone who matters.”

“Well, since I’m not there, that’s a little rude, David,” Nicky says primly.

“If you’re not my girlfriend you don’t get to call me David,” Wymack says.

“Oh, so all I have to do is date you?”

“Renee and Allison are building a big-ass house,” Aaron says, moving right along, “or, to be specific, five of them, so we’ll have our own little neighborhood. Just thought you ought to know.”

“ _What_!” Nicky shrieks. “That’s so _nice_ I _love_ that—that’s so _sweet_ —oh my _god_ visiting you all is going to be so _easy_ , Erik and Angela and I will just switch guest rooms every night. When are you moving in?”

“Probably gonna stagger the move-ins,” Allison says. “Renee and I are the most urgent, we’ll need to be there in February. Wymack is going to hire Dan as Assistant Coach next year, so they’ll be moving in probably sometime in June—sometime after the school year ends, hopefully before summer training really gets going. Kevin insists he’s going to commit homicide if he has to live next to his neighbors much longer, so we’ll see.”

“We might end up moving in last,” Katelyn says.

“We will?” Aaron asks.

“We can wait,” she explains, “and if the house is already built and done and ready, we can take our time packing, pick a day and use that whole day to move, do what we want there, and then put the house up for sale—”

“Need that money to build the house,” Aaron argues.

“Nah, we’ll front it,” Allison says. “In five years if I’ve forgotten about it, we’ll call that debt forgiven.”

Katelyn flashes her a smile. “Thank you, Allison, we’ll pay it back fast. But if we move in before we put the house up for sale, we don’t have to worry about cleaning up every time someone comes to see the house. We don’t have to worry about being out of the house when people go to see it. So we can absolutely be last—we’re not in any kind of hurry, one way or the other. Neil and Andrew can get in before we do.”

“So that,” Allison says. “But honestly, I’m gonna hire half the construction workers in this state and see what I can do. I don’t feel like living there while construction is going on ten feet away from my house. I’d rather just have it all done before we move in.”

“That makes sense,” Nicky agrees.

“It _does_?” Dan asks.

“Yes, Allison is rich,” Nicky explains. “So this all makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m _imaginative_ ,” Allison says, “which is more than any of _you_ can say.”

“I have a grasp on what humans can and should be required to achieve in the name of getting some money,” Aaron counters, “which is more than _you_ can say.”

“I pay well.”

“We pay _well_ ,” Renee emphasizes.

“I make a lot of money,” Allison adds.

“We know that. What’s up with your perfume line?” Nicky asks. “When’s it coming to Germany?”

“It’s not even out in the U.S. for another month yet. I’ll see what I can do about Germany.”

“Send some to me.”

“I’ll just send it with Neil and Andrew. You two have pre-ordered yours, right?”

Neil and Andrew stare at her. “What?”

“You’ve pre-ordered yours? Listen, it comes out a week before Christmas, pre-orders are going to be the _only_ people getting it in time. It’ll be selling out in stores within _hours_.”

“You know this?” Neil asks.

“I know how many pre-orders I’ve got,” Allison says smugly.

“I’ll pre-order,” Aaron says.

“ _Thank_ you. This is why I’m paying for your house.”

“I know.”

Allison decides to ignore that.

“How’s Erik?” Andrew asks. “Angela?”

“They’re good, Angela has thrown a tantrum because we requested that she consider eating her vegetables.”

“That’s my niece,” Andrew says approvingly. “Fuck vegetables. Ice cream supremacy.”

“I’m noticing a problem,” Katelyn says. “Freddie’s going to go to pre-school and curse out his teachers.”

“You mean you’re going to have the world’s coolest kid?” Kevin corrects.

Thea covers her eyes. “I’ve already given in. I can only expect John to know every coursework in the book. I’m going to tape his mouth shut whenever he’s around my parents and just pretend he doesn’t know how to talk.”

“Us, too,” Andrew agrees.

“What?” Natalie asks.

“We’re going to tape your mouths shut around our parents.”

“Oh, cool, going to a graveyard with tape on our mouths will probably seem like a weird social statement,” Paige says, choosing a cookie as the table _ooooooo_ ’s and stares at Andrew, waiting for his next move.

“What do you think it says?” Andrew asks.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? They’ll ask us and we won’t be able to say anything. We’ll have tape on our mouths.”

That gets a laugh from Kevin and Thea, and Neil steals an orange slice from Andrew. Andrew watches it go without any animosity.

It’s a good orange.

Andrew says something that makes everyone laugh, and Neil takes another slice of his orange.

This could be every night.

Isn’t that what Neil wanted, back in college? What helped him sleep at night?

Yes. Yes, it was.

Andrew passes Neil the last slice, and starts peeling another orange.


	50. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thanksgiving part 2!
> 
> also i am truly sorry for the percentage of this chapter that is porn or porn-adjacent. i did not mean for it to be that way but it is that way and if you don't like reading porn it's the whole second half of the chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellooooooo all a quick heads up: at the end of March I'm taking a couple days off work (covid-safe, I'm not going anywhere, just not working) and I'll probably take a break from this too so i can laze about, so there won't be a chapter up on March 28. I'll remind you the week before, I just don't wanna spring it on you guys.

“So what do we want these houses to look like?” Renee asks, flipping to another page of the notebook. “Are we going open-plan? Are we going closed? What are we doing?”

“Open,” Katelyn says.

“Closed,” Neil says.

“Do we need to all have the same?” Dan asks. “If we’re all in different houses, does it matter?”

Renee considers this. “I mean, my thought would be that if they were all the same layout, they’d be much easier to design and build at top speed.”

“But top speed isn’t really necessary, right?” Dan points out.

“That’s true. All right. Aaron and Katelyn want open, Neil wants walls. Neil, you’re the least happy about this, what do you want your house to look like?”

“This one,” Neil says promptly.

“You just want this house?” Allison asks.

“If you guys just want to buy up my neighbor’s houses and move in that would be ideal,” Neil says. “I like my house.”

“You spent years of your life house-hopping, and now you get the chance to build your dream house and you just want the one you’ve been living in for the past few years?” Allison asks.

“Hmm, I wonder what one thing could have to do with the other?” Neil asks sardonically. “I wonder if maybe not having a permanent home for years of my life, and giving up where I lived whether I liked it or not on pain of death for several years—maybe that has something to do with the fact that, now I have a house I like, I don’t want to leave it?”

“Have you tried therapy?” Matt asks.

“Erika has nothing to say about this issue,” Neil responds primly.

“Have you brought it up?” Allison asks.

“No.”

Allison raises both eyebrows.

“So Neil wants this house,” Renee says, making a note. “Andrew, Natalie, Paige, you’re good with that?”

“I mean, maybe we should have another bedroom?” Natalie suggests. “I feel a little bad that everyone slept in the basement. We didn’t think about that,” she tells Dan. “We’ll share a room for the rest of the week, you can have my room.”

“It’s fine,” Dan says, waving a hand. “The basement is big enough for all of us.”

“No, really, I—”

“So an extra bedroom?” Renee interrupts.

“Honestly, if we’re all living next door to each other, the only people we’d ever host would be Nicky and Erik, and they can sleep in the basement,” Neil points out. “We don’t need an extra bedroom.”

“Unless we decide to foster other kids,” Andrew says. “In which case, we might want another bedroom. Give us a fourth.”

“Where would we even put it?”

Andrew shrugs. “Make the kitchen bigger, put it over the kitchen.”

“Leave it to the architect,” Allison says grandly.

“Kevin? Thea? Dream house?” Renee asks.

Kevin shrugs. “No preference.”

“Open,” Thea says, “but not—creative. I want the option of building walls later.”

“You want a convertible house?” Allison asks.

“I want an open-plan house right now so that I can see John,” Thea explains. “When he gets older, I’m running under the assumption that I won’t need to be able to see him anymore, and then we can close rooms off, get some privacy.”

“I’ll take what she’s having,” Katelyn says, pointing at Thea.

“Two convertible houses,” Renee says, jotting that down. “Bedrooms? Bathrooms?”

“Four?” Thea says. “That way we can host my parents.”

“And, what, sleep in separate rooms?” Kevin asks. “That still leaves us with an extra room. Not that I’m complaining, I’m just curious about the math there.”

Thea laughs. “It’s for when you snore so loud I have to leave.”

“That’s valid,” Andrew says.

“ _Completely_ fair,” Aaron agrees.

“I’ll be honest,” Neil tells Thea, “I’m fucking shocked you’ll share a room with him at all. The best part about him graduating was that I’d never have to do that again.”

“I—it’s not that bad,” Kevin protests.

“Yes, it is,” Nicky chips in. “Kevin, you know I’m down if you’re down, but we shared a room for four years and every time you went to bed sober I had to wear ear plugs.”

“What does you being horny have to do with anything?” Matt asks.

“Well, if I thought flattery would get me anywhere, I’d try it,” Nicky says reasonably. “I’m just pointing out here that it was so bad I can’t even lie about it, not even for the sake of—wait. How many kids are listening in right now?”

“Literally all of us,” Paige says, voice smothered—she’s got her hands on her face. “Literally all of us.”

“Matt, you’re an adult, you can fill in the blanks,” Nicky orders. “And let me know if you’ve got any questions, I can answer them in private.”

“You’re disgusting,” Aaron says.

“You’re homophobic,” Nicky accuses.

“I’m sitting in my gay brother’s gay kitchen at his gay table right across from his gay husband—”

“I’m not gay,” Neil interrupts.

Whatever Aaron was about to say next gets stuck for a second, and then comes out as a burst of laughter that Neil doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. “ _What_?”

“I’m not,” Neil says. “I’m—”

“No, sure,” Aaron says, waving a hand, “but you didn’t take issue with the gay kitchen and the gay table?”

Oh.

Oh, that _is_ funny, and Neil joins Aaron in laughing.

“Well, the kitchen _is_ gay,” Andrew says, straight-faced. “Its name is Evan and it is proudly in love with the kitchen down the street—”

“Is it gay because it and the other kitchen are both men?” Paige asks over the sounds of Neil and Aaron gasping for breath. “Or because they’re both kitchens?”

“Both,” Andrew says, without missing a beat. “Objects have a much more complicated sexuality. And gender.”

“Half the perk of English is that nothing has a gender,” Nicky complains. “Don’t go gendering kitchens.”

“Don’t go breakin’ my heart,” Abby sings.

“I couldn’t if I tried,” Bee responds.

The kitchen turns expectantly towards Wymack.

Wymack stares right back at them.

They wait.

“Everyone’s staring at Wymack now, right?” Nicky asks.

“Shut up, you’re breaking the tension,” Aaron says, snapping his fingers at the phone.

Abby begins tapping her foot.

Wymack, looking endlessly put upon, sighs. Takes a deep breath. “Oh honey, if I get restless—”

“Baby, you’re not that kind,” Abby and Bee sing at him.

“I’ll have everyone know I’m very nice to them both,” Wymack announces.

“No he’s not, he leaves piles of shit everywhere,” Bee says.

“I leave my shit in the toilet, as adults do,” Wymack says.

“We’re eating,” Abby says.

“Dan?” Renee asks, ignoring them. “Matt? House thoughts?”

“I’m thinking a bachelor’s flat—”

“Not unless you plan on becoming a bachelor again,” Dan warns, poking Matt, who snickers and kisses her cheek. “Two stories, please and thanks, and two bedrooms.”

“Three, then I have a home office,” Matt adds.

“You need a home office?”

“Yup.”

“You don’t work from home.”

“ _Now_.”

“Are you expecting that to change?”

“Yes,” Matt says staunchly. “Yes I am.”

“You haven’t even started job hunting.”

“Nope.”

“So what’s led you to this conclusion?”

“I’m going to ask if I can work from home.”

“Why?”

“What, you don’t want to see me?”

“I mean, honestly, I’m going to end up spending a shitting ton of time at work,” Dan points out.

“Which is mostly after _my_ work hours, yes?”

“And before. You _know_ this. You _did_ it.”

“So if I spend my work hours at home, we’ll get to hang out,” Matt concludes.

“You’ll have to work.”

“Sure, but I can take breaks.”

“So three bedrooms,” Renee says. “Downstairs considerations?”

“Nothing special,” Dan says, waving a hand.

“Open? Closed?”

“We can have walls.”

“Oh, baby, there can never be walls between the two of us—” Matt cuts off with a shriek as Dan pokes him in the ribs.

“Great,” Renee says, writing. She looks up at Allison. “Babe?”

“Ready to write?” Allison asks.

Renee prepares.

“Movie theater, gym, indoor pool—why aren’t you writing?”

“Waiting for you to say things that you’re serious about,” Renee says, tapping her pen against the paper as the group _oooooooo_ ’s.

“I am _extremely_ serious.”

“We have _months_ , and not many of them, to get this built. A house, Allie.”

“And a movie theater,” Allison says staunchly. “For the group.”

That one is met with a chorus of _no-no-no_ ’s, Dan wagging her finger at Allison, Aaron holding both hands up, and Wymack and Abby laughing so hard that Wymack starts coughing and Abby turns red.

“Don’t pretend this is for us,” Dan says.

“No,” Renee says. “And anyway, there’s no reason for us to spend that much money, or use up that much land, or that many resources—we can _exist_ in public, that’s allowed, we can go to movie theaters and gyms that employ members of the community in which we _live_ —”

“Do you _know_ how often they clean movie theaters?” Allison asks. “ _Never_.”

“That’s true,” Nicky says. “One of my friends worked at a movie theater. He said that _at most_ he’d sweep up the popcorn.”

“Start a petition,” Renee says unsympathetically. “Anyway, being exposed to a couple germs won’t kill us. And that’s _not_ why you want a private movie theater.”

“What about the indoor pool?” Allison asks, puppy eyes in full force. “Plenty of people have pools! So many people have pools! And _indoor_ pools, too, and we’re _not_ going to a community pool, _absolutely_ not, people _poop_ in there—”

“You don’t swim!”

“We’ve never had a pool before! If we had one, I might swim!”

“You grew up in a house with a pool, and _told me_ you never used it!”

“I’m trying to get my childhood back,” Allison says.

“No. Take a bath.”

“Are you—are you telling me to lose a lot of money?” Allison asks, trying her best not to laugh.

“I’m being literal,” Renee says. “We’ll get a _really_ big bathtub. Just, _huge_. Okay?”

Andrew looks at Neil. _We have the world’s biggest tub and we’ve never used it and now we’re LEAVING THIS HOUSE._

Neil pats his thigh under the table. _We’ll use it. We’ve already decided that._

“I would also like a big bathtub,” Kevin says.

“We’re both over six feet tall,” Thea says. “A _big_ bathtub.”

“Oh, if they’re getting a big bathtub, I want one too,” Katelyn says.

“No need, Aaron’s small enough to use the sink,” Kevin says. And then Kevin jumps halfway into Thea’s lap. “I’ll pay off your loans! I’ll pay off your loans! God, you know how cat claws _hurt_ because they’re small but sharp? That’s what Aaron’s kicks are like—”

Thea pushes back from the table as Aaron scoots into Kevin’s chair to get better aim, Kevin shoving himself all the way across Thea’s lap and out of the chair altogether, catching himself on reflexes alone as he spins away from the table and out of reach.

Thea sticks a finger in Aaron’s direction. “Don’t even try me.”

Aaron settles himself on both his and Kevin’s chairs. “My chairs.”

Kevin looks at Neil.

“I’m not here to help,” Neil says.

“Do you have another chair?”

“We’ve already got every spare chair in the house in here,” Neil says. “I didn’t realize we were going to have a two-for-one.”

Kevin looks at Renee and points at Aaron. “Make him move.”

“This is not my problem.”

“You don’t like arguments!”

“I’m fairly certain you started this one,” Renee says gently, smiling.

“Why don’t you ask dad?” Natalie asks, pointing at Andrew.

Kevin waves that off. “Asking Andrew to choose between me and Aaron is a mistake. He’ll just choose Aaron, and then I’m fucked, because Andrew will _actively prevent me_ from sitting down for the rest of the day.”

“And you guys are sitting here wondering if dad and Aaron can exist in the same building?” Natalie asks skeptically. “What the fuck?”

“We all put up with it,” Allison says. “Apparently no one ever asked them to make sense, so they’ve never bothered. So is it a yes to the pool?”

“No. Andrew, Neil, do you guys want a big bathtub too?”

“We do,” Natalie says.

“Put in an order for two big bathtubs,” Andrew says.

“A jacuzzi,” Paige suggests. “Not, like, a hot tub outside, but like a jacuzzi. No one will ever see me again. Also, I want a mermaid tail.”

“We can get the mermaid tail,” Andrew agrees.

“But that would be _so much cooler_ in a pool, right?” Allison says, pointing at Paige.

“Maybe,” Paige agrees.

Allison turns big eyes on Renee.

Renee sighs and takes a second look at her drawing of their neighborhood.

“Foxhole complex?” Neil says.

The table looks at him.

He shrugs. “Just thinking about what we’re going to call this.”

“And you say _I_ was in a cult,” Thea says.

“Well, I don’t have scars from—what’s the Fox equivalent of Riko?” Kevin asks.

“You,” Aaron says.

“You literally won’t let me sit back down,” Kevin points out. “You sure about that?”

“It’s about the insanity,” Nicky says. “The crazy eyes.”

“The _what_?”

“The way you look when you’re training?” Nicky says. “Terrifying?”

“I don’t look terrifying,” Kevin protests.

“No, he looks like a lost boy,” Neil suggests.

“That’s also not what I look like.”

“A small child,” Andrew suggests.

“Very small,” Aaron adds.

“I know it’s been a few years,” Nicky says drily, “but somehow, I get the feeling that you’re lying to me.”

“I am _not_ lying,” Aaron says staunchly.

“I don’t lie,” Andrew says at the same time.

“Well, you’re both bullshitting me, Kevin is taller than I am.”

“It’s not about size, it’s what you do with it,” Aaron quips. “And what Kevin does with it is be a big baby.”

“I thought we were talking about bathtubs?” Kevin asks. “Why are we talking about _me_? Also, can I have my seat back yet?”

“We’re talking about pools,” Allison corrects doggedly. “And whether or not we can get one.”

“I think that’s going to need to be separate,” Renee says. “Not attached to any of our houses. Our own private public pool.”

“Indoor?” Allison asks. “I don’t want to clean out the pollen, the leaves, the dead squirrels—”

“I have a pool,” Bee says, “and I have never once found a dead squirrel in there.”

“That’s just luck,” Allison insists.

“If you don’t want to clean the pool, maybe we don’t need a pool,” Renee says.

“We _do_ need a pool.”

“You don’t want to clean it, you probably won’t use it—is there anyone else here who _wants_ a pool?” Renee asks, examining everyone at the table. “Not just thinks it might be nice for showing off a mermaid tail, but _wants_ one?”

There’s silence.

“Can we revisit this later?” Katelyn asks after a minute. “Right now, even an indoor pool is—I mean, kids can drown. And I know they often _don’t_ , but—they can. And if they go to the bathroom in the pool, that’s a problem—”

“Do you know how many diseases can be in kids’ stool?” Aaron asks. “ _So many_. Kids make pools a germ fest.”

Katelyn nods at him. “But when they’re older, they might enjoy it.”

“And when I retire, I’d like a pool,” Thea says. “I just don’t have time for it right now. And I spend half the day working out, I’m not coming home and going swimming.”

“So we’ll leave space for it,” Renee says, “and revisit in a couple years. Good?”

Allison sighs and slumps back in her chair, defeated. “It could be the Fox Watering Hole.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Neil gasps, “I _want it_ now.”

“See!” Allison says, waving at him. “We could’ve had it all!”

“It was taken away from us,” Neil agrees. “Stolen, by Big Environment.”

“More like Big Lazy,” Renee says. “I’m not cleaning that pool.”

“We can hire people!” Allison says. “We’re rich! And it would support the local economy!”

“No,” Renee says.

“You just don’t want to do _anything_ I want to do,” Allison whines.

Renee pats her hand. “I know.”

“Maybe just a _leeeeettle_ movie theater?”

“We can get a very big TV and very good speakers.”

Allison considers this, and then she holds out her hand. Renee shakes it, and then goes back to writing.

“I also want a big TV,” Wymack says.

“We’ll get you a big TV,” Renee agrees.

“I have to ask for a movie theater and then pare down to a big TV, Wymack just _gets_ _one_?” Allison asks.

Renee waves a hand at the surrounding room. “He’s fathered half the people here.”

“He has?” Abby asks.

“This is news to me,” Bee agrees. She looks at Abby. “Also news to you?”

Abby frowns dramatically. “If _I’m_ surprised… and _you’re_ surprised—”

“Then who’s driving the car?” Nicky asks, before pushing away from the speaker so he can laugh. Most of the table joins in; even Andrew looks amused.

Is _driving the car_ a euphemism?

Neil won’t ask. He smiles and tries to look amused. If he doesn’t, they’ll explain it to him, which is fine, but he doesn’t really care. He’s fairly certain it’s _not_ a euphemism, because Natalie and Paige are laughing instead of pretending to sink into the floor, so it must not be _that_ gross.

“So are we good here?” Renee asks, gesturing at the notebook. “Anything else anyone wants?”

“I mean, I have a list,” Allison says, “but you’ll probably shoot it all down.”

“Almost _certainly_ ,” Renee says, beaming at her.

“Exy court?” Kevin asks.

“You’re asking for an exy court but you can’t even ask for your chair back?” Dan asks.

Kevin glares at her.

Aaron looks at Kevin and waits.

“Can I get my chair back?” Kevin asks. There’s a certain level of grump in his tone that he doesn’t seem to be able to control.

Aaron holds out a fist.

Kevin sighs and holds out his own fist. Rock, paper, scissors, says, shoot—Aaron’s rock crushes Kevin’s scissors, and Aaron whoops. “Suck my dick!”

“Two out of three,” Kevin says, fist out.

“I don’t have three dicks, I only have the one,” Aaron says gleefully, “and I would like to _politely_ request that you suck it.”

Katelyn puts her face in her hands.

“There’s _children_ at the table,” Nicky gasps.

“Aaron, give him his goddamn seat back,” Wymack says.

“He lost!” Aaron protests.

“Fair and square,” Wymack agrees. “Give him his fucking seat.”

Aaron scoots over onto his chair, a certain level of grump in his movements that he doesn’t seem to be able to control. Kevin takes his seat, but he doesn’t look particularly proud of himself.

“Thanks for intervening, dad,” Dan snarks at Wymack.

Aaron whips his head around. “Hey. Kevin.”

“Fuck you,” Kevin says.

“Your dad had to come save you.”

“But Dan had to point it out before you noticed.”

“Well, yeah,” Aaron says. “He’s halfway to being my dad, too. But he _is_ your dad.”

“Why does everyone here make fun of me for having a family?” Kevin asks. “Jesus. Most people do.”

Silence.

“Not _here_ ,” Kevin says. “But most people do.”

“I have a mom,” Renee agrees.

“Thea and I have parents,” Katelyn says, Thea nodding.

“I have a mom,” Matt says. “And, I guess, a dad, but I’m not proud of that.”

“And I just kind of lend my dad out for use as such, so you’re welcome,” Kevin says.

“Hey!” Wymack says.

“And my mom.”

“Hey!” Abby says.

“And my therapist.”

“That’s fair,” Bee agrees, “but at this point I’m much more the Minyard therapist than your therapist.”

“Well, that’s fine, you’re dating my dad, it would be weird,” Kevin says.

“Very true,” Bee allows.

“Speaking of,” Kevin says, looking at Neil, “how’s therapy going?”

“I have anxiety,” Neil says.

“Yeah,” Kevin agrees.

“Also paranoia.”

“Mmhmm,” the table agrees.

“Sometimes Erika tells me I’m stupid.”

Aaron snorts.

“And it’s working for you?” Bee asks.

“Yup.”

“Very good,” she says. “I see now I was never meant to be your therapist.”

“Probably not,” Neil agrees.

“I don’t have the habit of calling my patients stupid.”

“I walked in and she told me she was harsh and some people hate her, and I said _same_ and stuck around,” Neil says.

“I’m glad it works for you,” Bee says, smiling.

“Aren’t we all,” Wymack says.

“I’m still waiting to see some results,” Allison says.

“Keep waiting,” Neil says. “Renee, how’s work?”

Renee sighs. “One of our major donors dropped out, so we’re scrambling to find a replacement—if anyone’s got money to spare, by the way, we could use it, or else we’ll have to reduce our services, and we really can’t afford to do that, we were honestly hoping to expand, but—”

Andrew gets up, waves at her to keep talking, and starts making coffee.

Within five minutes, Kevin is on his phone making a sizable donation, Aaron collapsing dramatically against Katelyn—“you promised to pay off my loans!”—and being entirely ignored by both Kevin and Renee.

The coffee gets passed around the table, followed shortly by sugar and creamer, and then by Katelyn checking the clock, Thea checking the clock, Abby checking the clock—they’ve got other families to see.

“Wait,” Allison says, bouncing out of her chair and around to the head of the table.

“Want me to take the picture?” Dan asks. “I’m already here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Allison says, retaking her seat. “Yes. Thank you.”

Dan scoots away from the table a little bit, turning, holding her phone above her head, adjusting as needed. “Lean in, everyone in the back, so I can get you. Andrew, lean out a little. Abby, lean in. Good. Thank you. Say _cheese_!”

They say _cheese_ and smile, Dan takes three pictures, and then she turns back to face all of them and sends them out to the group.

“I like the second one,” Allison says. “My eyes are closed in the first.”

“In the second one I look constipated,” Abby says.

“There’s a bathroom around the corner if you need it,” Allison says.

“I don’t think you know what _constipated_ means,” Dan says.

“I don’t think you know what jokes are.”

Matt gasps. “Dan _does_ know what jokes are and she’s _very_ good at them.”

“Thank you,” Dan says.

“No problem. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“We do have to go, though,” Abby says. “Pretty much everything we need to cook is already prepped, but—” she gestures at the clock.

“Same here,” Katelyn says.

Thea nods in agreement.

“Yup,” Neil says. “No worries. Thank you for coming!”

“Thank you for inviting us,” Katelyn says, beaming.

Food gets put away, dishes get cleared up, and half their guests leave. And then Renee and Allison split off into the living room to call Stephanie Walker while she eats dinner with her family, Dan and Matt make themselves at home in the kitchen with more coffee and set up their phone to call Matt’s mom, and Natalie and Paige head upstairs to call their grandparents. Neil and Andrew float between conversations, saying hi, complimenting food spreads, joining in for a couple jokes here and there.

Dinner is leftovers, eaten while watching _A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving_ , and then _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ , and then clips of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade that they’d missed, and then _Frosty the Snowman_ , and then Dan and Natalie argue about whether or not Dan and Matt will sleep in the basement, an argument which ends when Dan grabs Matt’s hand and, singing “ _LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LALALALALA”_ jogs down to the basement, Natalie yelling “ _JUST SLEEP IN MY ROOM THERE’S SPACE_ —”

Paige whirls on Renee and Allison. “You guys take the bedroom, then. We’re going to share room whether you do or not.”

Renee pats Paige’s shoulder. “We all had shitty childhoods. All of us know what it’s like to get kicked out of a space we thought was ours, just because an adult decided it should happen. Dan has decided that she’s not going to do that, even if you’re offering, and I’m honestly more scared of her than I am of you, so I’m going to join her.”

“But—” Natalie sputters. “We—”

Renee holds up a hand. “Not another word. Good night, girls.”

“We—good night,” Paige says, “but—”

Renee and Allison run downstairs, shutting the door behind them.

Paige looks at Neil. “They rejected us.”

Neil wraps his arm around her shoulders. “They’re doing their best to be considerate. They don’t want you to feel beholden to my and Andrew’s choices. They think they’re giving you a gift.”

Paige sighs. “Adults.”

“I agree,” Neil says.

“Are we actually gonna share a room tonight?” Natalie asks on their way up the stairs.

“Nah,” Paige says. “They’ll never know. Tomorrow we’ll _tell_ them we did, just to make them feel bad.”

“Okay,” Natalie agrees, splitting off into her room. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Paige, Andrew, and Neil say, splitting off into their various rooms.

Neil closes the door behind them, and when he turns around, Andrew tugs at his shirt—a request to remove it. Neil obliges.

Andrew stares at him, greedy, hungry.

Neil stares right back, smug. Andrew had rejected him, this morning, and now it’s Neil’s turn to be the one being asked for things. “Been thinking about me all day, huh.”

“Yes,” Andrew says, voice a little deeper than usual, fingers sliding up Neil’s torso.

“Oh,” Neil says. He has? Neil was joking. Andrew’s nails skim up Neil’s sides. Neil takes a deep breath, trying to prevent his brain from short-circuiting, but Andrew flattens one hand on Neil’s stomach, presses him back against the door, waits.

Neil brain clicks in a little later than the rest of him, and he slides down a couple inches to put his face at Andrew’s height.

Andrew steps forward, pressing his hips against Neil’s, pulling a quiet gasp out of him—Neil grinds his hips into Andrew’s involuntarily, and, equally involuntarily, Andrew moans, shoving his face into Neil’s neck to muffle it. A moment later, Neil feels the scrape of Andrew’s teeth and closes his eyes, trying, trying, trying to be quiet, because they’re right against the door, the kids might still be up, and then Andrew’s fingertips brush the top of Neil’s ass, and Neil wants—

Neil pushes Andrew.

Andrew steps back, looking absolutely blank, awaiting an explanation, an order, something. “I can go—”

Neil shakes his head, just as much to clear his mind as to tell Andrew he doesn’t need to go. “I want something, and I want to be—I don’t want either of us to be too horny to think about it right.”

Andrew waits.

How the fuck is Neil supposed to ask for this? The problem is that so many of the terms associated with it are terms he and Andrew use to describe everything else— _fuck me, have sex with me_. He can’t even say he wants anal; Andrew will just break in their new pack of latex gloves. “I’d like to state that the only reason I’m saying it this way is for the sake of clarity.”

Andrew waves a hand—his hands are still outstretched, drawn to Neil like a magnet, and Neil looks away. He can’t think about that. They both need to be clear-headed.

“I want you to put your dick in my ass.”

Silence.

Neil looks at Andrew.

“Oh,” Andrew says, sounding lightly strangled.

“You can say no,” Neil says. “Or put it off. I just wanted to—put it out there. While I was thinking about it.”

“Does that mean that _you_ want to put it off?” Andrew asks carefully.

“I told you what I want. Don’t use it as an excuse. You can say no. Or yes. Or later. But I’m down for now.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes,” Neil confirms.

“I—it can hurt, Neil, it can be painful and bad—”

Neil shrugs. “I’ve already had your fingers up there, and I like that, so what’s the difference?”

“What’s the—Neil, there’s a difference between two fingers and a whole entire penis.”

“Sure, but they’re both attached to you, aren’t they?”

Andrew stares at Neil like what Neil just said _isn’t_ perfectly reasonable. “What does that mean?”

“It means I trust you. It _can_ be painful and bad, but you won’t let it be.” Neil gives in. He reaches out and takes Andrew’s hands. They just look so—empty, floating there. “If it feels bad, I’ll tell you, and we’ll figure out how to do it right.”

“I don’t like that neither of us know what we’re doing here,” Andrew says slowly.

“When have we ever?” Neil asks. “We didn’t know how to be nice. Or how to be in love. Or how to have kids. We didn’t know shit, but we did fine anyway. And this doesn’t have anything to do with anyone else. It’s just us. And we’ve always done just fine together.”

“You’re doing a good job of convincing me,” Andrew says.

“I don’t want to convince you. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just saying that—I think it’ll be fine. You can still say no.”

“I can, can’t I,” Andrew agrees, tugging Neil in.

Neil goes, taking his hands back so he can put them on Andrew’s face, safe in the knowledge that Andrew’s hands won’t be empty for long—and, sure enough, Andrew hooks fingers into Neil’s belt loops, tugging him closer. Slides his thumbs under the waistband of Neil’s pants, warm against Neil’s skin, and Neil licks into Andrew’s mouth, slides one hand down Andrew’s neck, feels his pulse jumping, and Neil smiles. He can’t help it. He still likes this, still likes knowing how much of an effect he has on Andrew, how much power he has over Andrew, how easy it is for him to make Andrew fall apart.

Neil doesn’t push.

One day, he’ll be able to tell Andrew how hard it is, in this moment, not to push. How _much_ he just wants to get down to it—how the build-up is almost scary. Like the day before a vacation. What if something goes wrong, now? What if something goes wrong, during? What if it’s not as good as it could be? And, in with all that, the _desire_ , because Neil _wants_ , he _wants_ this, which is itself a surprise, because he wouldn’t have thought he’d want it so badly, wouldn’t have thought he’d be standing here, pants still on, not even in bed, and so desperate, because if Andrew is using his dick then _both_ of Andrew’s hands will be free _and_ Neil will be able to kiss him _and_ have something in his ass all at once, and—and it’s _Andrew_. So it’ll be good.

Neil keeps this to himself. He can journal about it later. If he says it, he risks swaying Andrew one way or the other, and he doesn’t want that—this shouldn’t be anyone’s decision but his. Neil doesn’t want to accidentally talk him into it. Doesn’t want to accidentally talk him _out_ of it.

Andrew pulls Neil toward the bed.

“What’s the verdict?” Neil asks. He doesn’t sound breathless. Doesn’t sound like the mess he is. Definitely doesn’t.

The way Andrew stops breathing for a second tells Neil he’s absolutely wrong. “Yeah. We can try. How?”

“How?” Neil repeats. They should’ve done this back before Andrew set his skin on fire. Neil can’t think. How what?

“Do you want to be on top? It’ll give you more control.”

Neil shakes his head. “I don’t need it. You do.”

“No, you do. Trust me, you do.”

“No, I don’t, because if I tell you to stop, or wait, or whatever, you will, and—for me,” Neil says, trying to clear everything out, trying to phrase it right, “the worst is that there might be some pain. But—it won’t be bad, because you won’t be trying to hurt me, and it’ll stop if I want it to, like—stubbing a toe at Disney. There’s no real risk here, for me. There is a risk for you.”

“Pain isn’t _good_ ,” Andrew says.

“No, but it’s not going to traumatize me, or re-traumatize me. There and gone. Maybe I sit weird tomorrow. We hope and pray no one notices. Anyway, you stay on top, you need that. Can I take off my pants now? I’m fucking dying.”

“I forgot about everyone else,” Andrew muses, unbuttoning Neil’s pants.

This isn’t _fair_. If Neil was unbuttoning Andrew’s pants, his brain would be mush. Andrew shouldn’t be able to _talk_ while he’s taking off Neil’s pants.

“Do you feel kind of guilty?” Andrew asks, pushing Neil’s jeans down to his thighs, sliding a thumb up Neil’s dick, still in his underwear. “We’ve got guests who _can’t_ have sex. We’ve got them four to a room. Meanwhile, I’ve got my hand on your cock, and I’m about to put a couple fingers up your ass.”

“I don’t feel guilty at all,” Neil says. He can’t. He can’t care. Can he touch Andrew? Is that allowed right now? It hasn’t escaped his notice that Andrew is still fully clothed. “Is that all you’re feeling right now?”

“No,” Andrew says thoughtfully, tugging Neil’s underwear down. “No, it’s not.”

Neil glances down and discovers that no, guilt is _not_ all Andrew’s feeling, which is reassuring.

Andrew pushes at Neil, gently, and Neil clambers up onto the bed and goes hunting.

The towel is not behind any of the pillows.

“I moved it,” Andrew says. “In case the kids came in.”

Neil glances at him.

Hm.

Neil has been crawling naked around their bed, and this fact does not seem to be lost on Andrew, who hasn’t moved so much as an inch.

What can Neil do with this information?

Maybe he should crawl around some more.

That can’t _possibly_ be the right thing to do with this information.

He and Andrew are still staring at each other.

“Where’d you put it?” Neil asks.

“Between the bed and the bedside table.”

Neil and Andrew stare at each other.

Andrew isn’t budging.

Neil’s going to have to bend over to grab the towel.

Sure, okay, fine, _that’s_ what he’s supposed to do with this information, but maybe he doesn’t _want_ to be told what to do. That can’t _possibly_ be sexy. Neil is no expert, but he’d have to draw the line there, right?

Andrew _knows_ Neil knows why Andrew isn’t moving.

Neil doesn’t have time to play these mind games. He’s got stuff to do. Dicks to touch. He turns around and bends down and finds, sure enough, a towel and a pillow, and straightens back up and turns around to catch half a glimpse of Andrew’s flushed face before Andrew pulls his shirt over his head.

Okay, maybe Neil knows nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been stupid. He lays out the pillow and the towel and crawls back over to Andrew’s bedside table to grab lube, condoms, gloves, everything—they’ve still gotta start with fingers, right? It’s been a little while. Do they need condoms? STD or no, Neil doesn’t particularly want to find out what happens when semen goes up his ass. Unless Andrew pulls out? He should’ve saved this for some other time. Should’ve insisted on talking it out first. Should, actually, call it off now, definitely, except that he _wants_ it, and doesn’t feel like waiting, and then he feels Andrew’s fingers on his back and it becomes a moot point, because no way in _hell_ is he stopping this, not when Andrew’s lips are on the back of his neck, not when he feels Andrew’s nose tracing down his spine, Andrew’s fingers continuing down where his lips can’t reach.

“What are you thinking about?” Andrew murmurs.

Neil tips his head to one side, giving Andrew more space on the other. “Condom or no?”

“You know, we are _rapidly_ approaching a point where we’ll need to buy new condoms,” Andrew muses, fingers tiptoeing back up Neil’s spine. Neil shivers. It’s so much, so _much_ , and not _nearly_ enough—he needs _more_ , but he can feel Andrew’s breath, Andrew’s fingertips, and each almost-touch is enough to drive Neil crazy, and there’s so _much_. “Took us years to bother getting around to the one box. Maybe next time we leave the house we should just buy more. Ours aren’t particularly stretchy anymore.”

Is that something? Is that saying something? Neil can’t tell if he’s supposed to understand something about that. He can _feel_ Andrew’s body heat. Is he supposed to think about things, too? “So no?”

“Not what I said,” Andrew says. “It’s a yes, it’s definitely a yes, but we do need to buy more.”

“Very practical,” Neil says, like he doesn’t feel Andrew’s fingers creeping around his ribs, like he can’t feel Andrew’s knee against his ass, like all his skin isn’t on fire, waiting to find out where Andrew’s fingers will go next.

“That’s what I’m known for,” Andrew agrees.

Oh, Andrew is _just_ as fucked up as Neil is.

Neil grins. He puts a hand on Andrew’s hair. “That it is.”

Andrew wraps his arms around Neil’s waist.

Neil breathes. He can be calm. They don’t need to rush. Can’t, honestly, physically speaking, because Neil’s going to need to be stretched open a bit, but also for Andrew. If Neil had thought about this at all ahead of time, he’d have been prepared for this.

“I’ve got a nice view from here,” Andrew mumbles.

Neil glances over. Andrew’s looking down Neil’s stomach at his dick.

Ah.

“What’s that LMFAO song?” Neil asks. “Wiggle wiggle wiggle?”

Andrew closes his eyes. “I hate you.”

“I don’t think that’s what it was called. What was it again?”

“It was called I just wanted to look at your dick, you didn’t have to make it weird,” Andrew says, fingers tracing Neil’s scars from memory, and _that’s_ not fair—the light, gentle touch is rapidly becoming the only thing Neil can think about.

“You were just staring at the top-down view of my dick, it was already weird.”

Andrew cracks one curious eye open—he can hear how breathless Neil is. “Was it?”

“Yes,” Neil says, trying to drag himself back under control. Andrew isn’t _doing_ anything. Just touching Neil’s stomach isn’t _anything_. Andrew traces Neil’s scars all the _time_. This is _nothing_.

Except that it’s _not_ , anymore. It’s becoming more intentional, purposeful, the light drag of Andrew’s calloused thumbs becoming _calculated_. Neil keeps his eyes open. If he closes them he’s going to lose it. But Andrew is just _sitting_ there. Doing nothing to further this. And the fact that he likes to torture Neil doesn’t mean much about what he wants to _do_. “Still interested?” Neil asks. “Because we can put this off.”

“No, I want to have sex,” Andrew says decidedly.

“We can have a different kind of sex.”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“No, I am not, it’s just that I could cut diamond with my dick right now, and I just want to know if I should put it away or what.”

“Only if you’re putting it away in my mouth.”

“That’s the worst dirty talk I’ve ever heard,” Neil says, trying desperately to ignore Andrew’s hand snaking lower, lower, lower.

“How much dirty talk have you _heard_?”

“I went to high school, I heard people talk.”

“Are you saying that my dirty talk is worse than high schoolers trying to show off non-existent sexual prowess?”

“Maybe.”

Andrew’s nails trail across Neil’s thigh and then vanish, Andrew pulling away—and then Andrew tugs at Neil’s arm, pulling him around, and he and Neil maneuver Neil up onto the towel, on top of the pillow, and before Neil lets himself fall backwards, Andrew grabs his chin and kisses him, harder than Neil expected, softer than Neil expected, and then watches Neil lean backward with a look on his face that tells Neil that Andrew likes what he’s seeing.

Andrew doesn’t waste any time. He gets a glove on, lubes it up, and Neil spends a second being comfortable with this—with lying here, like this, Andrew between his legs.

Neil really hadn’t wasted any time, huh. Hadn’t bothered spending a single second feeling weird or ashamed, not once over the course of their entire relationship. Is that normal? Is it a sign of the strength of his and Andrew’s connection? A sign of the trust he has in Andrew—had, even the first time Andrew ever kissed him? Is it a product of the fact that at the beginning of their relationship, Neil had been looking two feet away at his impending doom, and shame and awkwardness and potentially unmet expectations hadn’t been worth his time? Maybe it’s a sign that he’s just very fucked up.

Is he supposed to talk to _Erika_ about this?

And then Andrew runs a finger up the underside of Neil’s dick and the shock of it has Neil arching his back, and then he feels Andrew’s finger on his ass, Andrew’s tongue on the tip of his dick, and Neil clenches the sheets in his fists—this isn’t _fair_ , they haven’t even _done_ anything, Andrew just took advantage of Neil’s distraction to _surprise_ him and—Andrew slides a finger inside him and Neil closes his eyes, focuses on relaxing, focuses on not climaxing right here and now, this isn’t _fair_ , Andrew doesn’t get to spend _ten minutes_ touching everywhere _but_ Neil’s dick and then just—put his _mouth_ there—Neil gives up and threads his fingers in Andrew’s hair, tries not to push, not to pull, even when Andrew presses a second finger inside him, even when Andrew’s lips close around his dick, Neil doesn’t push, doesn’t pull. Keeps the noise down. He’s sure Andrew hears it, though, Neil’s harsh breath, the fact that Neil can’t stop himself murmuring Andrew’s name—

Andrew starts moving his fingers in a way he’s never bothered before, and Neil breathes. It feels like he’s—making scissor motions.

Actually, that’s probably what he’s doing. To stretch Neil out a little.

And then Andrew stops. “Neil? You ok?”

Neil nods. “Yeah, just—wasn’t expecting that. It’s ok. Keep going. It’s good.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah—it’ll be good in a second, anyway,” Neil says, squeezing around Andrew’s fingers, glancing down in time to see Andrew’s eyes pop before Andrew presses his face against the inside of Neil’s thigh.

Neil laughs. _Power_.

Andrew rubs his thumb in a semi-circle and Neil hisses in a breath.

If they get into a competition to see which one of them can tease the other the hardest, Neil is going to come before Andrew ever gets his dick out. He stops and lets Andrew get on with it. Andrew kisses his hipbone.

After three fingers, Andrew stops, which is good, because Neil’s self-control is slipping, and also because he wants to kiss Andrew.

He feels empty without Andrew’s fingers inside him.

That’s the weirdest thought he’s ever had.

Andrew straightens up. Pulls off the glove, tosses it in the trash. Considers. He’s still fully clothed. He doesn’t know where to go. What to do.

“Drew,” Neil says, beckoning.

Andrew obeys, pulling himself over Neil, letting Neil pull him in for a kiss.

Neil goes slowly, cautiously, but Andrew doesn’t object when Neil kisses him a little harder, a little deeper. Neil runs a hand down Andrew’s neck, onto his shoulders, his biceps, and then pulls back half an inch. “Where can I touch? What’s okay?”

Andrew considers. “Where do you want to touch?”

Everywhere. “Your back. Your ribs. Your chest. Your stomach. Wherever I can reach.”

Andrew hums.

“Over shirt? Under shirt?”

“Either or,” Andrew decides. “You can touch wherever you can reach.”

Neil has time to mutter “Drama queen” before Andrew is kissing him again, and Andrew doesn’t bother stopping for a comeback, so Neil doesn’t wait for one—just drags his hands down Andrew’s sides until he gets to the hem of Andrew’s shirt, and then he slides his fingers under it, finding warm skin that jumps under his fingertips and fingernails until Andrew curses, shoves off of Neil, pulls his shirt off, and then finds his way back to Neil’s mouth, kissing Neil in spite of the fact that Neil can’t stop grinning—the undressing process has begun. Neil starts work on Andrew’s pants next, running his fingers around the waistband, pushing a finger down Andrew’s pants, keeping half his attention on Andrew’s reaction as he moves around to the button—pulls back, because he has to ask—“Can I unbutton—”

“Yeah, yeah—”

It’s harder than it should be, because Neil’s hands are right by his own dick, and every time his hands or Andrew’s hips accidentally brush him it shoots a bolt of electricity straight up his spine, but—but he gets the job done, and pushes Andrew’s pants down as far as he can reach.

Andrew, clearly overcoming whatever block he’d had five minutes ago, pushes away from Neil, rolls off the bed, stumbles, and nearly falls over—his pants around his thighs are ruining his mobility. Neil laughs, taking the opportunity to straighten his legs, stretch—holding his legs spread like that is bound to make him cramp sooner or later, and Neil would much rather it be later. He looks over at Andrew to find Andrew frozen, staring at him, and grins a little wider. “So the two ways to make your brain shut down are stretching and proposing to you?”

“You sure you don’t just want me to suck you off?” Andrew asks. “I absolutely could.”

“I’m sure you could,” Neil agrees, bending one knee out a little, watching Andrew’s eyes follow it. “But I think I’d rather do this, actually.”

“Mmhmm,” Andrew says, pushing his pants off. “Mmhmm.”

Has it always been this easy? All Neil ever needed to do was spread his legs a little? Incredible.

Well, maybe not. Maybe this is new. Maybe it’s a recent thing.

Neil can ask later. He _is_ curious. Not curious enough to stop everything and ask, though.

Should he ask if he can put the condom on Andrew?

No. Andrew looks like he needs a second to himself. That’s fine. Maybe in the future, Neil can.

Andrew gets the condom on. Lubes it up, not looking at Neil. Stands there for a second. Still not looking at Neil. That’s the problem. He gets caught up in his own head, instead of in Neil. When he’s looking at Neil, he’s fine.

“Drew,” Neil says.

Andrew looks up at Neil. “You’re sure.”

“Getting more desperate for it by the minute,” Neil says cheerfully.

“You’ll say no if it’s no.”

“And pause if I need you to pause, and go slower if I need that,” Neil agrees. “And if you say no, it’s no.”

“That’s not what I—”

“And if you need to go slower, you go slower. And if you need to pause, pause.”

Andrew studies him for a minute, and then nods.

He doesn’t move.

Neil waits.

Andrew waves a hand. “It just—feels weird. To just climb on top of you.”

Neil suppresses the instinct to laugh at him for that. Neil will not. Will not. Neil was raised better than that. Well, actually, that’s not true, but Neil was never raised for any of this, so at the very least he wasn’t raised _worse_ than this.

The fact that there is a pillow under his hips is suddenly a pain in the ass, but Neil manages to shove himself up into a seated position. He holds a hand out to Andrew, and Andrew climbs onto the bed and sits in front of him.

Neil takes a second to appreciate Andrew’s arms. His stomach. His chest.

It’s all very good.

Neil leans forward and kisses Andrew, and finds a new appreciation for the pillow—it lets him be taller than Andrew, even seated, which is as it should be. Lets him lean down and tilt Andrew’s face up for a kiss.

Neil keeps control. Andrew doesn’t need the pressure of knowing Neil is brainless, not when they’re about to do something new, not when Andrew is worried about him.

Neil puts one hand on Andrew’s neck, on his pulse. Feels Andrew’s immediate reaction. A few seconds later, Neil feels Andrew calm down a little—good—and then he feels Andrew’s hands on his hips, which is even better, Andrew interacting, getting engaged. “Hey. Drew.”

“Neil.”

“I love you.”

Andrew relaxes. “I love you, too.”

Neil runs it back in his head—when was the last time he said it? Was it before they started this process? Was Andrew _waiting_? Was he nervous that this was something different? Oh jesus. Neil shelves it. Something to ask about later. “I love you,” he says again, running his fingers through Andrew’s hair. “I love you.” Kisses Andrew’s cheek. “No matter what, I love you.”

Andrew hums, kisses Neil’s jaw, applies pressure to Neil’s hips.

If Andrew’s ready, Neil’s ready—fuck, he’s _been_ ready. Neil lets himself fall backwards, a reasonably controlled fall, grabbing Andrew’s hand as he goes, pulling Andrew with him. Andrew catches himself—“Wait—I need—”

Neil lets go. Waits.

But Andrew isn’t stopping. He just needed a minute to line himself up.

Neil feels Andrew’s dick. Takes a deep breath. Nods reassuringly when Andrew glances at him, relaxing, settling into the stretch as Andrew presses inside him.

Andrew glances at Neil again.

“Go slow,” Neil says, “but keep going.”

Andrew studies Neil for a second, looking for some indication of strain, which is fine, because Neil is doing the exact same to Andrew. Neil knows what to look for. They’ve done a variety of new things in their time together, and Neil knows about the wild look Andrew gets when he’s overwhelmed, the dead look he gets when he’s gone somewhere else, the way tension settles in his body when the answer’s no. And, somehow, this feels much easier for Neil, emotionally, then when he was about to give Andrew a blowjob, and he’s present. He’s here. He’s not going to get caught up in—

Andrew pushes in a little farther, and, okay, maybe Neil will get a little big caught up in this. Just a little bit, though. He reaches forward and puts his hand over Andrew’s, where it’s resting on Neil’s thigh, wraps his hand around Andrew’s wrist. “It’s good,” Neil says. “I’m good.”

Andrew keeps pushing in. Slowly. Giving Neil time to adjust. And that’s fine, because Andrew’s dick is wider than his three fingers and longer than his fingers, and Neil doesn’t expect how _deeply_ he can feel Andrew—how far it goes—or, well, he _did_ expect it, logically, but it’s still—unexpected.

After a few minutes, though, he feels Andrew bottom out, and refocuses his gaze on Andrew. Andrew’s eyes are closed, which is good; the tension in his body is minimal; his hand is gripping Neil’s thigh, firmly but not painfully. Good. Andrew’s eyes flutter open and find Neil’s.

Neil looks at him.

Andrew stares right back.

Neil can’t get used to this feeling. Not in a bad way, in a good way, but—but. “Hey. Drew.”

“Hey. Neil.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’m good if you are,” Neil says.

Andrew nods. Waits another second. Pulls back an inch or two, a slow drag Neil _feels_ , and then pushes back in, making Neil’s toes curl, making Neil grab at Andrew’s wrist, which makes Andrew stop—

“No, it’s good, Drew, it’s good—”

Andrew sucks in a breath, bottoms out, pulls out again, almost all the way, and sits there, considering for a second, while Neil ignores the urge to wrap his legs around Andrew’s hips and pull him back in, ignores the urge to move his own hips, just sits there and waits, because Andrew looks deep in thought, and interrupting will either be bad for Andrew or could disrupt something that Andrew is trying to do that maybe Neil very much _wants_ him to do, but in the meantime, Andrew’s dick is a grand total of half an inch inside Neil’s ass, and it’s enough to make Neil desperate and not enough to make him happy, and maybe _that’s_ the point, maybe Andrew just likes torturing Neil and—

Andrew adjusts a little and pushes back in and his dick hits Neil’s prostate and keeps going and Neil presses his hand against his mouth, back arching, ankles locking around Andrew’s hips, dropping all pretense of control, because _jesus_ , fuck, okay, Andrew slides out again and then repeats, and Neil grabs at Andrew and tugs on him until Andrew leans over and puts his face within reach so Neil can kiss him, because if Neil tries to talk right now all that’ll come out is gibberish and kissing is a _vastly_ superior way of saying the same thing, _and_ he gets to kiss Andrew, which he wants _desperately_. And, sure, maybe Andrew can’t hit the same angle leaning over Neil like this, but that’s fine, it feels good anyway, and Andrew’s stomach is against Neil’s dick, which at least gives him _something_ to rub up against, which Neil _needs_ , especially since his hands are preoccupied with Andrew, he’s got a hand on Andrew’s pulse and he _knows_ Andrew is good, he _knows_ Andrew is doing all right, he squeezes around Andrew’s dick and it feels _good_ and Andrew _moans_ and Neil likes that, Neil likes it very much, Neil has a thought but it’s escaping him right now, dragged away by the constant slide of Andrew’s dick, bringing him closer and closer to the edge—Neil takes a second to focus on the ceiling, trying to pull himself back, and then zeroes in on Andrew, kisses his nose, his cheek, his jaw.

“Neil,” Andrew whispers, “Neil, I’m—”

“Yup,” Neil says, reaching a hand down between them to jerk himself off, “Drew—”

Andrew comes half a second before Neil does, and when Neil’s eyes find focus again, Andrew is still on top of Neil, frozen, and Neil honestly can’t tell if it’s good or bad.

“Drew?” Neil asks, running his free hand through Andrew’s hair.

Andrew looks at him. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yup.”

“It might hurt when I pull out.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing half this time, and it hasn’t hurt me once.”

“But you’re oversensitive now.”

Neil shrugs. “It has to get done.”

“The alternative would probably be worse, yes,” Andrew agrees. Was that humor? If Andrew’s making jokes, that’s the best sign Neil could ask for that things are going all right. “You might also have to let go of me.”

Have to—oh. Neil’s legs are wrapped around Andrew so tight he probably couldn’t move even if he wanted to. Well, maybe that’ll give Andrew some reassurance that Neil has very much enjoyed himself. He unlocks his ankles, and Andrew slowly pulls back—it feels _weird_ , now that Neil has orgasmed, but in much the same way as Andrew’s fingers have in the past. Neil wouldn’t call it _painful_. He pulls himself off the pillow. Sits up.

Andrew is watching him like a hawk.

“It’s fine, Drew. I’m fine. A little weird, but fine. Thoughts on a shower?”

Andrew nods.

“Need help with the condom?”

Andrew shakes his head, turning away from Neil to remove it. Neil leaves him to it, in case he needs a second to himself, and starts the shower. Andrew joins him a couple seconds later, though, apparently preferring Neil’s company over being alone.

Neil leans over and rests his head against Andrew’s. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Andrew decides after a minute.

Andrew washes Neil off first. Neil’s the one who’s covered in his own come, so it makes sense.

What was that thought Neil had? Somewhere in the middle, there?

Neil shampoos Andrew’s hair.

Oh. Right. Theoretically, if they experiment with position, it would leave all of their hands free _and_ their mouths free.

Neil shelves that for the time being. Andrew is still being quiet. Neil isn’t going to bring it up.

They brush their teeth. They get into pajamas. They get in bed. Andrew snuggles up against Neil’s side.

“So anyway,” Andrew says, like he’s picking up a previous conversation, “thoughts on moving?”

“Where?” Neil asks. He’ll go anywhere Andrew wants.

“To a whole new neighborhood? A whole new house?”

“What about it?”

“We can still take it back. Can still say no.”

“Oh.” Right. The house.

“Did you forget?” Andrew asks.

“A little.”

“Was my dick so good it gave you amnesia?”

Neil grins. “Yes.”

But the question remains.

Hmm.

Neil considers this.

They _could_ back out. Could say no.

He thinks about their home—his perfect, ideal house.

He loves it, here. Loves the quiet. Loves the architecture. Loves the time he’s spent here.

Doesn’t really want to leave.

But.

He plays with Andrew’s fingers.

The first thing he’d done when he saw this house was call Andrew. The thing he did when looking for houses was try to figure out if he could see Andrew in them. The thing he wanted, the thing he’d wanted _most_ , was to be in this house, with Andrew.

So is it the house he loves? Or Andrew?

Both, really.

But he loves Andrew more.

And, if he’s being honest with himself, the perks vastly outweigh the drawbacks. There’ll be another bedroom, if they decide to foster other kids at any point before Natalie and Paige inevitably move out, and Nicky can use it when he visits instead of being relegated to the basement—or Nicky and Erik can take the basement, and Angela can have her own room. It won’t be open-plan, and they can design it largely like this house—or re-design it, if they decide that something else would suit them better. And Andrew and Kevin are exactly right—there’s safety in numbers, and Neil trusts this group of people more than he’s ever trusted anyone in his life.

Neil takes a mental step back.

All things being equal, what would he choose? If, a few years ago, he’d been given the option of this house or the setup that Renee wants, what would he have chosen?

He’d been a paranoid wreck, at the time. Had missed Andrew desperately. He’d been able to hang out with Kevin and Thea, but no one else, really—Allison, Renee, Dan, and Matt were all up in New York, and Nicky was in Germany, and Neil hadn’t had the kind of relationship with Aaron that would lend itself to visits. Still doesn’t, really, although that’s changing.

Neil would have _jumped_ at the opportunity to be surrounded by his friends, all the time, in their own little neighborhood. Would’ve loved it.

What’s changed?

Neil is less paranoid.

Well, actually, his paranoia levels haven’t changed much, Neil knows that now. Has to admit that now. And he likes having his family around, although maybe eating every meal with them would be a bit much. Living next door to them, having a way to see them regularly—daily, even—is ideal.

So: Nothing has changed.

The issue, specifically, is that Neil doesn’t want to give up this house because he’s happy here. Just like he didn’t want to graduate because he was happy as a Fox. Just like he doesn’t want to retire, ever, because he’s happy when he plays exy.

The problem with _that_ is that when he graduated, he found a new way to be happy. And if he moves, if he moves in with his family, he’ll be getting back most of what made it so good to be a Fox. So: If he’d found a new way to be happy when he was leaving the first place he’d ever _been_ happy, why can’t he find a new way to be happy when he’s moving in with all the people he’s ever been happy with?

Neil heaves a sigh. Apparently, sadness is a necessary fucking stop on the way to happiness. He doesn’t like this.

“Your decision?” Andrew prompts.

Mm. But there it is, isn’t it? Whether he’s in this house or a different one, he’ll be there with the man who doesn’t interrupt when Neil is thinking, and knows perfectly well when Neil has arrived at a conclusion. And at the end of the day, the best place for him, the best place for them both, will be one where they can keep growing. No sense in restricting themselves to the happiness they’ve found here when they could be finding happiness somewhere new, and sharing it with others. “No, we’re moving.”

Andrew brushes Neil’s hair back. “Are you sure?”

Neil nods. “I am.”

Andrew examines him, waiting.

Neil says nothing.

Actually, maybe he should say something. “You’ll be there. And everyone else will be there. And, also, we’ll have privacy. I love this house, and everything we’ve done in it—don’t give me that look, that was _not_ a euphemism—and everything we’ve done _to_ it, but everything worth doing we can recreate in the new house, and it’s really—I think we’ll be happy there. And moving out gives someone else the chance to be happy here.”

“No more backyard,” Andrew says. “Not a private one, anyway.”

Oh. Hmm. “If they put us at the back of the circle, we can use our front porch instead.”

“That’s true,” Andrew agrees. “Or we could sit in the backyard and blow bubbles with the kids. The babies, actually. Not our kids. Or our kids too, but babies like bubbles, right?”

“Is that how we’re referring to them?” Neil asks. “Nat and Paige are the kids, John and Freddie are the babies?”

“The problem, here, is that if _other_ babies are born, we’ll have to call them something else.”

“The toddlers.”

“Are you suggesting that we call John and Freddie the toddlers? Or that we call them the babies, and call any newborns the toddlers?”

“I am suggesting that all newborns go by toddlers,” Neil clarifies.

“Good idea,” Andrew snarks. “And we’ll live in an eternal opposite day forever.”

“We’re both straight.”

“You take that back.”

“If it’s opposite day, doesn’t that mean you want me to say it again?”

“I hate this. I hate this so much.”

“I _knew_ you’d love it.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“We already did that.”

Neil shrugs. “Could do it again.”

Andrew very nearly smiles. “Later.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes,” Andrew decides after a couple seconds.

Neil kisses his nose. “Cool. I love you.”

“I love you too, Neil. Good night.”

“Good night,” Neil says, tugging Andrew just a little bit closer. He waits, slowing his breath, until he feels Andrew fall asleep, and waits a little bit longer after that. How long after falling asleep do people go into REM? Neil wants to be awake if Andrew has nightmares. But Neil can’t keep himself awake that long, and when he falls asleep, he stays asleep. Andrew doesn’t have any nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me on a regular basis every time i write a fic for the past 7 years: hmm. i think i want to write some porn. i think it would be fun to write and probs fun to read and would be a really good way of exploring the dynamic between these two characters.
> 
> me writing the porn: oh my god. oh jesus i just wrote the word "the" and now i have to go sit in a corner and cringe at myself for three hours... this is horrible and awkward... why do i subject myself to this... 
> 
> me, post-porn writing: hmm. i think i want to write some porn. i think it w

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blame it On My Socially Awkward Dads](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25321891) by [Willow_bird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willow_bird/pseuds/Willow_bird)




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